WASHINGTON — President revealed his intention to force changes at the with an Thursday that targets funding for programs that advance “divisive narratives” and “improper ideology," the latest step in a broadside against culture he deems too liberal.
Trump claimed there was a “concerted and widespread” effort over the past decade to rewrite American history by replacing “objective facts” with a “distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth," adding that it casts the “founding principles” of the United States in a “negative light.”
The order he signed behind closed doors puts Vice President , who serves on the Smithsonian Institution's Board of Regents, in charge of overseeing efforts to “remove improper ideology” from all areas of the institution, including its museums, education and research centers, and the National Zoo.
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FILE - People gather for a ribbon cutting ceremony at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery to announce the installation of a life-size painting of President Abraham Lincoln by artist W.F.K. Travers, Feb. 10, 2023, in Washington. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)
It marks the Republican president's latest salvo against cultural pillars of society, such as universities and art, that he considers out of step with conservative sensibilities.
Trump recently had with the aim of overhauling programming, including the annual Kennedy Center Honors awards show.
The administration also recently by threatening the Ivy League school with the loss of several hundred million dollars in federal funding.
The executive order also hints at the return of statues and monuments of Confederate figures, many of which were taken down or replaced around the country after the police killing of in Minneapolis in 2020 and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, which Trump and other conservatives detest.
The order also calls for improvements to Independence Hall in Philadelphia by July 4, 2026, in time for the of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
FILE- People wait in line to enter the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Cultural on the National Mall in Washington, Mat 1, 2017. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)
Trump singled out the , which opened in 2016 near the White House, the Women's History Museum, which is in development, and the American Art Museum for criticism.
“Museums in our Nation's capital should be places where individuals go to learn — not to be subjected to ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history,” he said.
Linda St. Thomas, the Smithsonian Institution’s chief spokesperson, said in an email late Thursday, “We have no comment for now.”
Under Trump’s order, Vance also will work with the White House budget office to make sure future funding for the Smithsonian Institution isn’t spent on programs that “degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with federal law and policy.”
Trump also wants to ensure that the women’s history museum celebrates women and not “recognize men as women in any respect.”
It also requires the interior secretary to reinstate monuments, memorials, statues and similar properties that were removed or changed since Jan. 1, 2020, to “perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology.”
The Smithsonian Institution is the world’s largest museum, education and research complex. It consists of 21 museums and the National Zoo. Eleven museums are located along the National Mall in Washington.
The institution was established by Congress with money from James Smithson, a British scientist who left his estate to the United States to found “at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge.”
A dose of inspiration: Why doctors are prescribing museum visits
A dose of inspiration: Why doctors are prescribing museum visits
"Yes yes yes, that's extraordinary," exclaims Pascaline Bonnave, hopping around with glee after briefly studying a scarlet, poppy-esque drawing with her judicious eyes. "That's really beautiful. Now you must give a name to it."
Bonnave, dressed in blue jeans and a leather jacket covered in patches of flowers and birds, swivels to look at the progress of the other participants in her art therapy class.
The task for the dozen attendees today is to invent their own flower as well as to coin a plausible species name. There are tall, yellow florets heavily inspired by sunflowers; exquisite purple, mauve and pink posies; and winding chains of daisy-like blossoms.
"It's not that it's not beautiful," adds Bonnave, encouraging one woman who doubts her floral creation. "You just need to finish it. Add some shading. Give it some roots."
The afternoon's activity, simple as it may seem, is part of a unique initiative drawing on the genuine power of art and culture to improve people's health and wellbeing, reports.
For more than a decade, the French city of Lille's — which was inaugurated in 1892 and is home to France's second largest collection behind only the Louvre — has deployed a kind of "museo-therapy" that uses the museum space and the treasures held within it to help treat patients from local hospitals.
But in September 2023, this initiative became a little more formal when it signed an agreement with the (CHU) to offer 140 museum art therapy sessions over a year to patients who have been given a "museum prescription" by doctors, making it one of the most significant programs of its kind in the world.
The idea of a museum prescription, which fits under an umbrella of out-of-hospital, nonclinical treatment known as social prescribing, is that exposure to art and culture or history can complement, accelerate or potentially even displace some forms of medical care in traditional settings — in an effective, enjoyable and low-cost manner.
Lille's Palais des Beaux-Arts has been working with all kinds of participants, such as people with Alzheimer's, drug users and autistic children. Once a week, there's also an open class for the general public. This day's session is for women receiving treatment for endometriosis, medically assisted reproduction and gynecological or breast cancer.
Museums as social actors
Bonnave, leading the group above, begins each two-hour session with a brief tour of the museum's collection to inspire participants. For this class, she picked a few Realist paintings of flowers and fruits, otherwise known as nature morte, in the museum's Dutch section.
"I know the power of art," says Bonnave. "This place is a gold mine of inspiration."
Then, participants move to another part of the museum to do an art therapy session.
The efforts, which began a decade ago with sessions for autistic children, were in part triggered by the museum's need to involve the public in the arts as part of a French obligation for cultural institutions known as the , according to Marie Vidal de la Blache, the Palais's public development manager and lead for art-health projects.
"The role of museums isn't just to present art works," says De la Blache. "As a museum, we have to be a social actor. We can't just serve the same people."
The development of the program began with many meetings between city officials and museum figures as well as doctors and hospital representatives in Lille, and it took years to build the awareness, appreciation and demand for the approach.
"It took a while to spread," adds De la Blache. But now sessions are fully booked.
Lille's museum prescriptions program held its first session in November and is around half way through its year-long course. Questionnaires are being given to participants before and after sessions, which will later be studied to assess the impact of the project.
Nonetheless, according to Julia Hotz, a journalist and author of , a book exploring the impact of social prescribing projects in 30 countries across the world, there is already an "extremely wide" evidence base for the practice.
"There's a lot of evidence to show that social prescribing improves health outcomes," says Hotz. "And there is more and more every year."
For example, a longitudinal of 23,660 individuals in the UK participating in choirs, book clubs, amateur theater and other cultural groups between 2010 and 2015 found that people who were frequently engaged in arts "had lower levels of mental distress and higher levels of mental functioning and life satisfaction."
Similarly, spanning more than 90,000 elderly people over 16 countries in 2023 found those with hobbies had fewer depressive symptoms and higher levels of health and life satisfaction. A 25-year of adults in Copenhagen found those involved in sports groups had life expectancies up to 10 years higher. Meanwhile, a of 11,000 adolescents in the US found extracurricular arts activities reduced loneliness and boosted peer support — a lack of which can lead to antisocial or criminal behavior.
Hotz says there are a broad number of applications for social prescribing, such as treating diabetes and health issues, often with sports and physical activity-oriented clubs, as well as tackling loneliness, anxiety and attention disorders, with cultural initiatives like Lille's museum prescriptions.
"Museums take us out of our own head," she says. "We get lost in the beauty of something else. It removes us from our anxiety."
That claim is hard to disagree with while within the airy surroundings of the Palais des Beaux-Arts, whose highlights include Édouard Manet's intimate modernist portraits and Peter Paul Rubens' grand 17th-century masterpieces.
