One of the institutions that has been in the sights (and firing line) of the US president is the Smithsonian. Among other things, the Director of the National Portrait Gallery (part of the Smithsonian) resigned under threat of the sack, there have been complaints from the White House about political bias in the displays (too much criticism and not enough celebration of American greatness), and there have been demands that enormous amounts of information about the Smithsonian’s collections and its current plans be handed over to the presidential administration for scrutiny.
So, when I was in DC last week, staying only a few yards from the Portrait Gallery, I was curious to see if there had been a revolution at the place, or even much noticeable change (its splendid courtyard is in the picture above). It may, of course, be too soon to tell. Museums can take as long to change course as battleships do (exhibitions are planned years in advance, and even ordinary labels tend to be the fruit of months of discussion). All the same there were as yet few hints of a new direction.
In the building that the Portrait Gallery shares with the American Art Museum, one ongoing exhibition remains the “Struggle for Justice”, illustrating the campaigns of several minority groups to secure (more or less) equal rights in the United States (plenty of DEI material here). A major new show, just next to that, is titled “American Winners: Athletes and entertainers who shaped the nation”. This might look like more of a gesture to the current administration (and maybe the title “American Winners” was coined with an eye on the White House). But scratch the jingoistic surface and it is clear that the portraits have been chosen to give a strong focus on diversity.
For me, though, the highlight of my recent visit was a new purchase (made jointly by the Portrait Gallery and the American Art Museum): Isaac Julien’s Lessons of the Hour, a meditation on the life of Frederick Douglass, freed slave, abolitionist, lecturer, writer, campaigner and (so the information panels insisted) “the most photographed man of the nineteenth century”. It’s worth a trip to the museum just for this. It’s a video installation on five screens, which brilliantly positions Douglass in his various geographical locations (from Baltimore to Scotland), straddling the past and present (his lecture audiences, as depicted here, include nineteenth-century and modern figures) and caught poignantly between extraordinary beauty and ghastly cruelty (in one of the most moving sections, gorgeous images of cotton flowers are overlain with the sound of the slave lash). The five screens make it impossible to take in at one sitting and part of the pleasure is not quite knowing where to look (the ten-screen version which has been on show elsewhere, must have been even more tantalizing).
At first sight, then, it is very much business as usual. But there has been one small, significant change. Since I was last there in the summer, a new black-and-white portrait photograph of Donald Trump has been inserted in the gallery of the presidents. Showing him almost banging on the desk in the Oval Office in front of American flags, it replaces a previous, more austere image, against a dark background, enlivened only by his bright red tie. You can see the two versions here. But the key difference is in the label. All the presidents on show in the gallery are accompanied by a couple of paragraphs of biography, which bend over backwards not to be judgemental (the Nixon paragraphs, for example, do not mention the circumstances of his departure from office).
All the presidents, that is, apart from (as of now) President Trump. There were so many objections from the White House to the wording on his old label that the Portrait Gallery has cut it right down, to no more than the dates of his presidency. Nothing else.
You can see why they made the decision, and maybe I would have too. Why waste time on that kind of stand-off? But if the only way to escape political pressure is to give no information whatsoever, then where does that leave the educational mission of the gallery? “Come and see controversial characters, but we’ll tell you nothing about them.” Really?
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