{"id":21728,"date":"2025-07-19T15:23:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T15:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/21728\/"},"modified":"2025-07-19T15:23:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T15:23:11","slug":"can-you-mount-an-art-exhibition-about-race-in-the-age-of-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/21728\/","title":{"rendered":"Can you mount an art exhibition about race in the age of Trump?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Washington
\n CNN
\n \u00a0\u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n It is one of the most evocative works from the American Civil War: A sculpture of a Black man who had escaped from slavery helping an injured White Union soldier lost in hostile territory.\n <\/p>\n

\n When it was unveiled in 1864, John Rogers\u2019 \u201cThe Wounded Scout, a Friend in the Swamp,\u201d was celebrated for its anti-slavery message and patriotic tone. But in 2025, a Smithsonian exhibition, \u201cThe Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture,\u201d asked visitors to reconsider the message behind the piece.\n <\/p>\n

\n On display, the sculpture is paired with a description that prompts viewers to consider how the work, and others by Rogers \u201creinforced the long-standing racist social order,\u201d despite its pro-Union and emancipation sentiment.\n <\/p>\n

\n The exhibition\u2019s efforts to challenge enduring ideas about race and American sculpture became a subject of President Donald Trump\u2019s ire earlier this year. In an executive order, he condemned the exhibition for stating that \u201csculpture has been a powerful tool in promoting scientific racism,\u201d that \u201crace is a human invention\u201d and that the United States has used race \u201cto establish and maintain systems of power, privilege, and disenfranchisement.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\n \u201cMuseums in our Nation\u2019s capital should be places where individuals go to learn \u2014 not to be subjected to divisive narratives,\u201d the executive order said.\n <\/p>\n

\n Trump has championed a cultural agenda built around celebrating, as the executive order put it, \u201cshared American values\u201d and \u201cunmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity, and human flourishing,\u201d and he has put Vice President JD Vance, who serves on the Smithsonian\u2019s Board of Regents, in charge of stopping government spending on exhibits that don\u2019t align with that agenda.\n <\/p>\n

\n That has forced the Smithsonian into an awkward position.\n <\/p>\n

\n In June, the Smithsonian began a review of content in its museums. The institution has repeatedly said it is committed to being \u201cfree from political or partisan influence\u201d \u2013 but the review has raised serious questions over whether the world\u2019s largest museum complex will curb candid discussions about the country\u2019s past, beginning with exhibits like \u201cThe Shape of Power.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\"President<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\n Sasa Aakil, a young artist who helped with \u201cThe Shape of Power,\u201d said that it would be \u201ccatastrophic\u201d if the Smithsonian were to change many of its exhibits.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cAmerica has never been good at truth. That\u2019s why so many people are doing the work that they\u2019re doing. That\u2019s why this exhibition exists.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n For the amount of attention it garnered from the president, the exhibition at the Smithsonian\u2019s American Art Museum has a surprisingly humble, intimate feel.\n <\/p>\n

\n Tucked away on the third floor of a sprawling neo-classical building shared with the National Portrait Gallery in downtown Washington, the exhibit holds 82 sculptures dating from 1792 to 2023. The pieces are arranged according to a series of topics with prompts asking visitors to consider how they encounter the pieces.\n <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n A large passage of text on the wall at the exhibition entrance says: \u201cStories anchor this exhibition,\u201d and that through it, visitors can discover how artists used sculpture to \u201ctell fuller stories about how race and racism shape the ways we understand ourselves.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n The stated goal of for the exhibit is \u201cto encourage visitors to feel invited into a transparent and honest dialogue about the histories of race, racism, and the role of sculpture, art history and museums in shaping these stories,\u201d its curators have written.\n <\/p>\n

\n Ferdinand Pettrich\u2019s \u201cThe Dying Tecumseh,\u201d for example, portrays a Shawnee warrior\u2019s death during the War of 1812. Completed in 1856, he is shown in a relaxed pose, reclining as if asleep.\n <\/p>\n

\n In reality, he died in battle and his body was mutilated by American soldiers.\n <\/p>\n

\n Pettrich, according to the exhibit, made the sculpture as political propaganda for Vice President Richard Mentor Johnson, who had claimed he killed Tecumseh and made the alleged act part of his campaign slogan. It also reinforced racist ideas about Native Americans during a time when the United States was rapidly expanding westward, the exhibit said.\n <\/p>\n

\"Ferdinand<\/p>\n

\"Julia<\/p>\n

\n Yards away from Hiram Powers\u2019 \u201cGreek Slave,\u201d a famous 19th century sculpture, is Julia Kwon\u2019s \u201cFetishization,\u201d a 2016 work featuring a hollow, female torso wrapped with a vibrant patchwork of silk bojagi, Korean object-wrapping cloth. The intention, Kwon told CNN, is to comment \u201con the gravity and absurdity of the objectification of Asian female bodies.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Asked about its objections to the exhibit, Lindsey Halligan, a White House official who Trump has tasked with helping to root out \u201cimproper ideology\u201d at the Smithsonian, told CNN in a statement: \u201cThe Shape of Power exhibit claims that \u2018sculpture has been a powerful tool in promoting scientific racism,\u2019 a statement that ultimately serves to create division rather than unity.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWhile it\u2019s important to confront history with honesty, framing an entire medium of art through such a narrow and accusatory lens overshadows its broader cultural, aesthetic, and educational value,\u201d Halligan said in a statement.\n <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\n \u201cInstead of fostering dialogue or deeper understanding, the Shape of Power exhibit\u2019s approach alienates audiences and reduces complex artistic legacies to a single, controversial narrative. After all, it\u2019s hard to imagine Michelangelo thinking about racism as he chiseled David\u2019s abs \u2013 he was in the relentless pursuit of artistic perfection, not pushing a political agenda.\u201d (Michelangelo\u2019s work is not part of the exhibit.)\n <\/p>\n

\n Some see value in the president\u2019s push to reshape the museums. Mike Gonzalez, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, expressed optimism about the Smithsonian\u2019s review, arguing that the institution should not mount exhibitions that examine the US through \u201ca prism of the oppressed and the oppressor.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI think, you know, you have to tell the whole story, not a small part of the story that is designed to make people feel grievances against their own country,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\n But critics say the administration\u2019s review has the potential to undermine the nation\u2019s ability to understand its complicated history through art.\n <\/p>\n

\n Examining art from the past has the potential to hit at the core of how Americans understand their country, Northwestern University art history professor Rebecca Zorach told CNN, and that\u2019s the value of exhibitions like \u201cThe Shape of Power.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cArt provides ways to process these issues. I think some people are afraid of what it means to kind of have that opportunity,\u201d Zorach said. The administration\u2019s claims of a \u201cdivisive, race-centered ideology\u201d are a \u201creal caricature\u201d of what museums and other cultural institutions are trying to do, she said.\n <\/p>\n

\n It was also \u201castonishing\u201d that the administration would dispute a scientifically accepted view that race is a construct, she added.\n <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\"Statues<\/p>\n

\n Sasa Aakil, a 22-year-old artist who was a student collaborator on \u201cThe Shape of Power\u201d, told CNN the exhibition was not designed to make people feel resentment towards their country, but to consider the broader context of the art.\n <\/p>\n

\n She recalled the first time she saw \u201cThe Dying Tecumseh.\u201d It unnerved her, she said, especially as she learned more about the distorted version of the history the artwork relayed.\n <\/p>\n

\n For Aakil, the statue is a reminder that museums have always made some people uncomfortable.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cMany of these sculptures were always problematic, were always painful and were always very violent. And this exhibition is forcing people to see that, as opposed to allowing people to live in a fantasy,\u201d she said.\n <\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\n Another piece, \u201cDNA Study Revisited\u201d by Philadelphia artist Roberto Lugo, is intended to push back against the ways sculpture has been used to bolster ideas about racial classifications.\n <\/p>\n

\n In a self-portrait, Lugo uses different patterns that correspond to parts of his ancestry, drawing from Spanish, African, Portuguese and indigenous peoples of the Caribbean.\n <\/p>\n

\n Lugo told CNN that he believes art is \u201ca way for us to understand the world through someone else\u2019s experiences.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThrough exhibitions like this, I hope we can begin to normalize storytelling from diverse communities,\u201d he added. \u201cEvery story matters, and art gives us a voice in a world where we have too often been silenced.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n While it\u2019s unclear what changes, if any, the Smithsonian will make to \u201cThe Shape of Power,\u201d the institution has changed exhibits that have drawn controversy in the past.\n <\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\n In 1978, religious groups sued over an evolution exhibition that they alleged violated the First Amendment, but a court sided with the Smithsonian, and the National Museum of Natural History kept the exhibit up.\n <\/p>\n

\n But in 1995, the Smithsonian reduced the size and scope of an exhibit on Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, after veterans\u2019 groups and lawmakers complained about what it said about World War II.\n <\/p>\n

\n And in 2011, the National Portrait Gallery, which shares the same building as the American Art Museum, debuted \u201cHide\/Seek,\u201d the first major museum exhibition on gender and sexual identity at the Smithsonian.\n <\/p>\n

\n The show featured the video \u201cA Fire in My Belly\u201d by the late artist David Wojnarowicz, which includes a scene where ants crawl over a crucifix, prompting uproar from the Catholic League and conservative members of the House of Representatives. It was quickly removed, but not without criticism from those that argued that the Smithsonian was capitulating to homophobic censorship.\n <\/p>\n

\n The planned run for the \u201cThe Shape of Power\u201d exhibition began November 8, 2024, and is to continue through September 14. The Smithsonian did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Washington CNN \u00a0\u2014\u00a0 It is one of the most evocative works from the American Civil War: A sculpture…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21729,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,229,88],"class_list":["post-21728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21728\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}