There is a detail that explains this entire history. On 24 July, a US executive order mandated the installation of signs warning visitors to the National Museum of American History that its exhibitions should be renewed and directing them to other locations where they might find truthful information about the country's history. The signs are not going inside the museum. They are going on the pavements leading to it.
It is not an aesthetic choice. The Smithsonian is not an executive branch agency: it is a trust institution created by Congress in 1846 and governed by a Board of Regents of seventeen members, which includes the Chief Justice, the Vice President, three senators, three representatives, and nine citizens appointed by joint resolution of Congress. No president has the authority to dictate what is exhibited in its galleries. They do, however, have authority over the grounds managed by the National Park Service: over the pavement.
I recount this as it appears to be one of the most lucid examples I have encountered of a distinction I have been developing for some time, which, in the research I share with Adolfo Cortés García, is broken down into three components—a decomposition for which he is responsible. Legitimacy is one matter: the recognised right to occupy a field and for one's actions to be considered valid. Authority is another: the position from which one certifies according to the norms of that field. Power is distinct again: the effective capacity to ensure that a statement circulates or remains suppressed. These elements typically coincide. When they diverge, the composition of each becomes clearly discernible. We developed this distinction with the art world in mind; here, I apply it to another institution that produces public assertions regarding the nature of reality, and a national history museum is evidently such an institution.
Here the three pieces are separated in an almost didactic manner, distributed among three distinct subjects. The authority over what a display case says belongs to the Board of Regents and the museum's leadership, by law. The legitimacy belongs to the curators and historians, by virtue of competence accredited by their peers. And the power to exert pressure belongs to someone who possesses neither of the former. As that power cannot be converted into authority, it is exercised where it can reach: on the pavement, in the budget, in official letters. The sequence is documented and is worth reading for what it is: an escalation. In March 2025, an executive order mandated the removal from Smithsonian properties of what it termed improper ideology. In August of that year, a letter announced an internal review of museums and exhibitions. In December, another demanded materials: wall texts, educational materials, exhibition proposals, budgets, lists of objects, internal manuals. In July of this year, a 162-page report arrived, and three weeks later, the order for the signs.
The report warrants close examination, as its central accusation is not that the museum is being untruthful. Rather, it contends that the museum presents an erroneous narrative in an inappropriate tone. It maintains that the museum's leadership has adopted an ideological framework that no longer treats American history as a shared national heritage to be taught or celebrated, but as a political instrument of division; and that, insofar as a narrative is presented, it is not one of the triumph of liberty and the nation's genius, but one of regret, tragedy, and shame.
This accusation is not without merit. A national museum does indeed construct a narrative. It is not a neutral repository of objects: it selects, arranges, prioritises, and omits, and these decisions are interpretive and therefore open to debate. Anyone who claims that a national history museum merely displays facts has either never worked in one or is being disingenuous. The discussion regarding the narrative a public institution presents about its own country is legitimate, necessary, and should not discomfit anyone working within the cultural sector.
The issue is not that the narrative is being challenged. It is who is challenging it, and by what means. A historian who disputes an exhibition hall writes an article, publishes, presents arguments, and other historians respond: that constitutes a discussion, which functions because both parties submit to the same rules of evidence. A power that challenges an exhibition hall by demanding budgets, lists of objects, and internal manuals, and subsequently mandates the placement of placards on the street warning that the information within is unreliable, is not engaging in discussion. It is displacing the issue from a terrain where it might be lost to one where it cannot.
This displacement carries a consequence that extends beyond this specific case. A power that acts without legitimacy or authority does not merely impose or withdraw recognition without evaluation: it further ensures that any error remains undetectable. A false statement issued by the competent authority is corrigible because it was issued within the terrain where the rules of evidence prevail, and there it may be refuted. A placard on the pavement is not refutable by an article because it does not belong to that sphere of discourse. The visitor who reads the warning before entering is not offered an argument to examine: they are provided with a pre-emptive distrust that no exhibition hall will be able to undo, as it is not formulated in terms that admit a response. Correction requires that the assertion and its refutation share a common ground, and the operation consists precisely in removing the matter from that ground.
The museum director responded to a Congressional subcommittee in a manner I find exemplary precisely because of its lack of defensiveness. She stated that she takes the concerns raised seriously, that where they can improve they will, while maintaining that the report does not fairly characterise the museum's work as a whole, that the institution does not take sides in the country's political debates, and that telling the complete history is not anti-American, but rather a form of respect. The Secretary of the Smithsonian expressed a similar sentiment internally: that there is always room for improvement and that the report is not a fair characterisation. Neither response denies the possibility of review. Both refuse to accept the framing.
There is a precedent for how this ends when it ends poorly, and it comes from the Smithsonian itself. In 1994, the National Air and Space Museum prepared an exhibition on the Enola Gay and the end of the Second World War that included the historiographical debate surrounding the atomic bomb. Veterans' associations and members of Congress applied pressure through hearings, budget cuts, and calls for resignation. The exhibition was cancelled on 30 January 1995. Five months later, another opened in its place, and the description provided by the Smithsonian's own archives is among the most eloquent things I have read on this matter: it contained no interpretation, no graphic images, and no melted objects. Only the fuselage, with basic data about the aircraft and its restoration.
That is the end of the road, and it is not the censorship of specific content. It is a museum that ceases to interpret. When interpretation becomes costly, the rational exit for any institution is to cease doing so: display the object, provide the technical data, and remain silent. And a museum that does not interpret is not a more neutral museum. It is a warehouse with visitors. The American Historical Association formulated this year with a phrase that says it better than I can: patriotic history celebrates a nation's great achievements and also helps to grapple with the less grandiose and more painful parts; both are part of a shared past.
The signs, should they be installed, will be outside the building, on public ground, warning that what is inside cannot be trusted. It is the exact image of a power that cannot enter. And, precisely for that reason, it is also proof that the authority over what is recounted inside remains where it ought to be. What will decide how this ends is not the executive order: it is how long those who work inside can endure without beginning to remove interpretation from the galleries on their own to avoid trouble. That part does not appear in any official document, and it is what determines the outcome.
On the open conversation
This text applies to the Smithsonian case a distinction I explore in my research on recognition, which I share with Adolfo Cortés García: the separation between the legitimacy to exist within a field, the authority to certify according to its standards, and the power to determine whether something circulates or not. The decomposition is his contribution, and we formulated it with the art world in mind; a history museum puts it to the test in a different arena, and I am interested to see if it holds.
Furthermore, a question remains that our work does not answer and which this case clearly poses: what occurs when an institution removes interpretation in advance, without being ordered to do so, to circumvent conflict. It is not censorship and it leaves no documentary trace. This is not a text about American politics, but about what happens when power cannot transform into authority and acts where it can reach. It concedes without reservation that a national museum constructs a narrative and that this narrative is legitimately debatable: the question is with what instruments it is debated. If anyone wishes to intervene from the fields of museology, public history, institutional management, or conservation, this notebook remains open.
Sources
White House. Executive Order 14416, Restoring Trust in the Smithsonian Institution, 24 July 2026. And Executive Order 14253, Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, 27 March 2025.
White House Domestic Policy Council. Saving America’s Story: How Ideological Capture at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History Erases Our Heritage, 4 July 2026.
Anthea M. Hartig. Written testimony before the Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform of the House of Representatives, 21 July 2026.
Reuters, 8-9 July 2026: internal memorandum from the Secretary of the Smithsonian, Lonnie G. Bunch III.
National Coalition Against Censorship. NCAC Decries White House Policy Council Report Castigating the Smithsonian, 13 July 2026.
Associated Press, 24 July 2026: coverage of the executive order and its institutional framework.
20 U.S.C., Chapter 3, §§ 41-43, and Smithsonian Office of General Counsel, regarding the legal nature of the institution and the composition of the Board of Regents.
Smithsonian Institution Archives: cancellation of the Enola Gay exhibition (30 January 1995) and description of the replacement exhibition (28 June 1995).
American Historical Association and Organization of American Historians, 2026 statements.
Cortés García, Adolfo, and Juan A. Esteban Ruiz. Recognition and Surplus. Zenodo, 2026. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21630455