Recently on a sizzling day I noticed that I needed an indoor activity for me and my six children. Living near the capital of the Nation has its benefits, among them, the Smithsonian Museums. So we went to DC for a dose of air conditioning and culture.
While we entered, we were greeted by a remnant from the Pandemic era: a sign with a list of “recommended” health and safety measures such as masking, social distance and remediation, directly from 2021, when the museums finally re-opened after more than a year of COVID-19 closures.
Our 4-year-old opted for the destination: the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, specifically to see the dinosaur bones and dioramas. But we quickly got more than we had negotiated. A large part of the exhibition is not devoted to the asteroid who has wiped out the dinosaurs – but to climate change.
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This was not surprising. We started to expect from ideological hectoring at the Smithsonians. In the National Zoo it often feels like for every exhibition about the habitat or diet of an animal, there is a parallel warning that it dies due to climate change.
Part of the exhibition of climate change in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. (Photo by Bethany Mandel)
“Hey children, enjoy the zebra? Great – because he probably won’t make it, thanks to the SUV of your parents.”
In the Natural History Museum, the messages are just as terrible – except this time people are the endangered species. One exhibition states: “Since the last ice age, the climate of the earth has been warmed up. But now that warming is getting faster because of us.”
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The message is clear: “I hope you liked the dinosaur bones, children – because we might be the next.”
But climate change is not the only displayed story.
In the National Museum of American History, visitors get a heavy dose of diversity, equity and inclusion (dei). Despite the rapidly approaching 250th anniversary of the founding of America, there were no visible exhibitions or events that celebrated the milestone. In the week prior to the fourth July, the homepage of the museum emphasized four functions: a lunch desk, ladies suffrage, a 19th-century black firefighter and a community center for pregnant Latina immigrants. The Smithsonian did not respond to questions about Deadline.
As a historian told me: “The popular cultural exhibition on the second floor–probably the most popular in the museum is a Marxist struggle.
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Two years ago my children in the Hirshorn Museum took a children’s book in the title ‘My Own Way: Celebrating Gender Freedom for Kids’. One page reads: “You may both be both … you can’t be there!” Another shows a nude child who looks at a washing line with the caption: “Your truth is not hidden under your clothing.”
Even museums outside the capital – many of which still receive federal financing – the same themes. During a recent visit to the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia, we expected to see paintings and sculptures. Instead, my children were attracted to an exhibition filled with video screens entitled “Jamestown is sinking.”
The Chrysler Museum of Art includes this expected exhibition aimed at the subject: “Jamestown sinks.” (Photo by Bethany Mandel)
According to the exhibition description: “In the photographic series Zinkt Jamestown and the Video installation De Tolken, Greta Pratt, the relationship between climate change and colonialism is investigating in the Tidewater region in Virginia … compelling viewers to investigate how colonialization has changed by capitalist, the natural environment.”
In other words: climate change, colonialism, capitalism – fashion word bingo in a single art exhibition.
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Although the Chrysler Museum is not exclusively financed by taxpayer Dollars, over the years it has received $ 1.2 million in federal subsidies from agencies such as the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
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What raises the obvious question: why do our tax dollars endorse this?
Erik H. Neil, the director of Macon and Joan Brock in the Chrysler Museum, defended the exhibition: “We are honored to exhibit the work of Greta Pratt, a celebrated local artist and recent receiver of a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship. The Chrysler Museum of art is prompted to come to the areas of artity, and sprinkling, and sprinkling, and sprinkling. Discourse, and we are committed to presenting a broad spectrum of points of view without artistic expression. ”
There is a spark of hope. In the Kennedy Center, Richard Grenell started cleaning the house – aimed at ensuring that the government is about art funded by the government, not about indoctrination. It is a long -awaited shift that could mark a turning point.
As a historian told me: “The popular cultural exhibition on the second floor–probably the most popular in the museum is a Marxist struggle.
And it seems that the problem is already on the radar of the administration. Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Smithsonian is undergoing a radical assessment of all content in its 21 museums and zoo to eliminate political bias. According to internal documents, the decision came during a meeting of the regents of the closed door on 9 June. The assessment follows the implementation assignment of President Donald Trump, in which the removal of “incorrect, division or anti-American ideology” and the recovery of exhibitions that represent “American and Western values”.
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With more than 30 million visitors on Washington, DC for the Semiquincential of the Nation next year, the clock is ticking. If nothing changes, they walk into the Museum of American History and do not leave with a celebration of our establishment – but with a debt trip.
Time is essential.
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