The heavily scrutinized museum director came to Congress this week knowing his audience. Anthea Hartig, director of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, is known to institutions like “your” museum. He strongly emphasized his love for this country. He even mentioned his family’s Revolutionary War roots. Hartig had been called to testify in two hearings that House Republicans had planned to answer a A 162-page White House report accusing the American history museum of “extreme political activism.” But his opening remarks, in which he also insisted that the report “does not fairly reflect the full work of this museum,” did not prevent the patriotic sniff test.
“Do you like America?” Representative Eric Burlison of Missouri, a Republican, asked Hartig yesterday during a hearing held by the House Subcommittee on Government Efficiency. “I love this country unconditionally,” Hartig replied, a sentiment he would repeat at least half a dozen times during this fact-finding trial on Capitol Hill.
Whether he confirmed or denied his loyalty was immaterial. Hartig asserted that the museum is “committed to a rigorous, reality-based, quality museum experience” and welcomes “permanent discussions so that visitors can understand how we have wrestled with democracy and citizenship and freedom and national identity.” He called telling the full story of American history “a form of homage to the American people.” But the GOP’s verdict had already been passed. The meetings, rather than serving as an opportunity to gather information, were only intended to expand Donald Trump’s attacks on the Smithsonian by enlisting Congress in its efforts to reshape the public archive.
Hartig’s appearance followed more than a year of pressure on the Smithsonian from the White House as it has sought to purge “bad ideas” from the institution and combat what it sees as a pessimistic view of history that focuses too much on — in Trump’s words — “how bad slavery was.” They marked the institution’s biggest public and external test yet, as some members reprimanded Hartig. Trump’s interest in the Smithsonian has already led to changes in the wall text discussing his impeachment, as well as the resignation of National Portrait Gallery Director Kim Sajet after Trump tried to fire him on social media last year. But the White House hasn’t tried to change the Smithsonian like it has the Kennedy Center, and it can’t — the institution’s unique legal status and leadership structure keep it from the president’s whims. In contrast, Congress owns most of the public and private agency funding and oversees the agency, which is governed by an agency board.
During two days of congressional testimony, Democrats opposed the museum’s creation as political favoritism and defended the Smithsonian’s independence, including their own. reportnoting errors in the White House document. Republicans, meanwhile, supported the administration’s claims and denied Hartig’s public statements, particularly the outspoken comments made during the 2021 Slave Settlement Project Conference webinar where he said, “As we know at this conference, loving America is very difficult.” The White House had taken a quote from his report as an example of what it sees as Hartig’s lack of patriotism, and Trump’s allies in Congress endorsed it this week as his personal motto, during a hearing that quickly took on a credibility test.
Perhaps, in a way, it was: Yale Historian David Blight, who also testified on both days, noted that in his July 4 report claiming that the museum deviated from its mission, the Trump administration cited the institution’s opening statements without considering the political context that could have evoked such a “victory”: the Cold War. The Heritage Foundation’s Mike Gonzalez, who Republicans called as a witness both days, was playing his part in Tuesday’s hearing when he made accusations of Marxism at the museum before his call to “clean house” at the Smithsonian. (Witnesses also included Hillsdale College professor Matthew Spalding yesterday and the president of the conservative American Main Street Initiative, Jeffrey H. Anderson, today.)
Whether “love” is the measure by which one should judge the credibility of a historian seemed beyond the scope of the discussion. Nuance was perceived as a threat. It seemed no coincidence that the two issues that GOP members faced the most were Hartig’s statement about the controversy of patriotic love and the show that was closed more than three years ago, called “Usichana (It’s Hard),” which touched on the struggles of transgender youth.
This sense of ambiguity in the representatives’ approach to questions was not lacking. There was a recurring pattern: A GOP member would ask a loaded question—whether a museum should display sexually themed material, for example—and Hartig would try, seemingly earnestly, to answer, and almost immediately he would meet: Yes or no! It’s a yes-or-no question! In a particularly telling moment today, Representative Mike Carey asked Hartig what he meant when he said he wanted to change the museum’s “America First” approach. He had barely uttered the words “I would say that the museum of American history” before she interrupted him, insisting that he was not answering the question.
Serving in Congress and running a history museum seemed like they might be very different professions. GOP lawmakers frequently used the kind of narrow logic and fallacious sentiment that historians object to, such as when Rep. Pat Fallon asked Hartig to admit that America “is the history of the greatest nation that has ever known.” Burlison suggested to Hartig that, with the World Cup bringing legions of foreign tourists to the country, “you’d think” that the Smithsonian would be “the one institution that would be trumpeting the great and wonderful things that this country has done.” Again and again, Hartig’s GOP interlopers seemed to work from a definition of a museum that sees its role as disseminating propaganda.
Anyone who had come to the Hill hoping to gain insight into the true philosophy of the American history museum or its operations would have been hard pressed to find it. The first case began with Hartig’s YouTube design giving thanks to the land. The second, held by the Parliament’s Administrative Committee, ended with an employee bringing out, for at least the third time in two days, a poster board with pictures of the queen and other display materials.
The museum review fell into a few groups. One line of criticism involved selecting artifacts that lawmakers didn’t like and wanting to keep as representative of the museum’s 1.7 million objects. Another offered a sort of museum version of What About, where representatives played curator and offered exhibit suggestions: “Did you have a new version of George Washington for 250?” one member asked. “What about Thomas Jefferson?” This seemed to misunderstand the limitations of space and time in a museum that has no shortage of Pioneer material. Another MP on Wednesday commented on the historical importance of the banjo (the museum has 45) and how the species that Lewis and Clark discovered should be discussed in the exhibit (which appears to be the basis of a natural history museum nearby).
The related line of attack contradicted the tone of the museum but again felt strained. The National Museum of American History is unpatriotic and doesn’t honor the country’s founding father enough, members suggested, never mind a large room dedicated to the Star-Spangled Banner or a statue of George Washington. Hartig seemed prepared for this point on Day 2: “We have several exhibits that cover the founder’s era right now: 368 items, 340 labels. George Washington is mentioned 54 times. You have to walk through the entire George Washington section in the Kenneth Behring Hall of Military History to reach the 15-foot Dedication Resolution.
GOP representatives also repeatedly emphasized the idea that America had led the world in ending slavery and that the museum should highlight that. Blight, the Yale professor, corrected the record: The unique thing about the United States is not that it abolished slavery, because many nations did. he did before himbut it required the killing of hundreds of thousands of civilians in a civil war to do so.
For years, the Smithsonian has operated outside the influence of the White House, and its great work has been celebrated on both sides of the aisle—see none more so than President George W. Bush’s efforts to establish the National Museum of African American History and Culture and praise for its portrayal of complex history, which Representative Jonathan Jackson of Illinois, a Democrat, praised yesterday. Still, the Smithsonian has never succumbed to political winds either.
This week’s festivities recalled the controversy of the 1990s, when the Air and Space Museum’s planned exhibit on the Enola Gay had Congress threatening to cut its funding from the institution’s total. The debate over whether the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima should be displayed alongside evidence of the damage it caused had the US Army and Air Force Association coming after the museum leadership and similar claims of low patriotism. Smithsonian Secretary at the time, Michael Heyman, he defended colleagues at ABC Night callusing words that could have come from the mouth of current Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch: “When someone is dealing with important events, to present a complete picture of their events as long as it is unbiased and balanced is the responsibility of the Smithsonian,” Heyman said. That defense didn’t hold up, however. Air and Space Museum Director Martin Harwit, who had pushed for the full Enola Gay story, resigned. The show that eventually opened had little text and none of the historical context he had intended.
In that period of 1994 Night call segment, interviewer Aaron Brown posed a question to Heyman and US Army National Guard Commander William Detweiler that feels very applicable today. Perhaps, Brown said, “what the Army wants here is a memorial, a memorial — and what the Smithsonian wanted was something else, it was history.”
