{"id":125933,"date":"2025-09-07T17:07:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T17:07:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/125933\/"},"modified":"2025-09-07T17:07:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T17:07:13","slug":"milwaukee-art-museums-new-director-was-previously-targeted-by-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/125933\/","title":{"rendered":"Milwaukee Art Museum&#8217;s new director was previously targeted by Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The former director of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, who stepped down after President Donald Trump <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2025\/06\/09\/nx-s1-5424548\/national-portrait-gallery-kim-sajet-trump\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">claimed to have fired her<\/a>, will now run the Milwaukee Art Museum.<\/p>\n<p>Kim Sajet resigned in June from the Smithsonian gallery that includes presidential portraits along with artists and other luminaries. Trump said she was a \u201chighly partisan person\u201d in a statement claiming to have fired her. The Smithsonian maintained that Trump did not have the legal authority to do so.<\/p>\n<p>In a statement at the time, Sajet <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/06\/13\/arts\/design\/kim-sajet-resigns-smithsonian-national-portrait-gallery.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">said<\/a> stepping down was \u201cnot an easy decision, but I believe it is the right one\u201d for the institution.<\/p>\n<p>                            Stay connected to Wisconsin news \u2014 your way<\/p>\n<p class=\"gform_description\">Get trustworthy reporting and unique local stories from WPR delivered directly to your inbox.<\/p>\n<p>She will head the Milwaukee Art Museum as it celebrates the 50th anniversary of the museum\u2019s Bradley Collection of Modern Art, the museum noted in a release. That collection includes \u201cnearly 400 modern masterpieces that transformed the museum and put Milwaukee on the cultural map,\u201d according to the release, including works by Pablo Picasso, Mark Rothko and Andy Warhol.<\/p>\n<p>Sajet was born in Nigeria to Dutch parents and raised in Australia. She\u2019s lived in the U.S. for nearly 30 years. Before she was director of the National Portrait Gallery, she worked for history and art institutions in Pennsylvania, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art.<\/p>\n<p>In a statement, she said she was \u201ckeen to expand on (the museum\u2019s) commitment to living artists and also explore the educational opportunities that flow from the art and design of the past.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2560\" height=\"1706\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/AP18043628594757-scaled.jpg\" alt=\"A man in a suit and a woman with short blonde hair and a large necklace stand together, smiling, at a formal indoor event with other people in the background.\" class=\"wp-image-365048\"  \/>National Portrait Gallery Director Kim Sajet, center, and actor Tom Hanks, right, pose for a photograph before a ceremony for the unveiling of the official portraits for former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama at the Smithsonian\u2019s National Portrait Gallery, Monday, Feb. 12, 2018, in Washington. Andrew Harnik\/AP Photo<\/p>\n<p>Wisconsin Public Radio, \u00a9 Copyright 2025, Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System and Wisconsin Educational Communications Board.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The former director of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, who stepped down after President Donald Trump claimed to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[449,458,459,64,63,460,134],"class_list":["post-125933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}