When museums become battlegrounds for “truth”

museums as – From a Trump executive order targeting Smithsonian exhibitions to Hungary and Poland rewriting curatorial decisions, museums are increasingly treated as terrain in cultural wars. Across Europe and the United States, researchers and curators describe the same p

On March 2025. the Smithsonian Institution—described as the largest museum complex in the world—found itself at the center of a culture fight that had already spilled far beyond Washington. D.C. In an executive order signed by Donald Trump. the White House declared that recent years had seen museums set aside historical truth for what it called a “distorted narrative driven by ideology.”.

The Smithsonian, a hybrid institution with a unique structure, was not directly controlled by a government branch. Yet the order’s message was clear: pressure the public purse and you can pressure the story. The annual budget of about $1 billion approved by Congress covers salaries and ongoing expenses; research. exhibitions. educational projects. and other initiatives rely on sponsorships. donations. and partnerships. That funding design—meant to let a museum operate with some independence—also creates a choke point that political actors can exploit.

In a short video response that has racked up almost 50. 000 views within six months. Matt Walsh framed the “battle of the museums” in blunt moral terms. arguing that “wokeness” in museums is an agenda that won’t stop spreading “the truth.” In the comment thread that followed. many agreed with the premise; others accused museums of hiding reality. The executive order spoke in the language of national pride and policy. but it targeted the same nerve: what museums show. how they interpret it. and what kind of citizen those images are supposed to produce.

The March 2025 order—titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History”—said the Smithsonian had come under the influence of a divisive. race-centred ideology. It singled out last year’s Smithsonian American Art Museum exhibition “The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture.” The order claimed the exhibit “promotes the view that race is not a biological reality but a social construct. ” and it said the shift had promoted narratives portraying American and western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.

The Smithsonian’s critics also demanded changes that go beyond content framing. The policy outlined in the order called for removing “inappropriate ideologies” and banning federal financing for exhibitions or programs that “degrade shared American values. divide Americans based on race. or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with Federal law and policy.” It also demanded that museums “celebrate the achievements of women in the American Women’s History Museum” while not recognizing men as women in any respect. adding a direct restriction: they must not recognize trans women as women.

For cultural strategist Michael Peter Edson, the irony is the kind that makes museum professionals sound tired rather than surprised. “It’s remarkable that the very Enlightenment ideas underlying the Smithsonian – promoting science and innovation and challenging questioning authority and doctrine with fact-based evidence – are today being attacked by the party in power. ” he said. Edson. a director and museum founder with 30 years of experience in the global cultural sector. rose at the Smithsonian from starting as a window cleaner to becoming director of web strategy and new media. a role he held until 2015.

The executive order’s target is not only art, but the method of historical work. Sarah Weicksel. a history researcher and director of the American Historical Association—described in the text as the largest of its kind in the world with over 11. 000 members—said the accusation that museums are teaching an ideology is simply false. She argued that historians aim to analyze different perspectives. but the “gold standard” is historical evidence. and the Smithsonian’s artifacts and information are based on evidence that contextualizes their place in history.

One of the clearest examples of the order’s clash with museum logic is the National Museum of African American History and Culture. a Smithsonian institution established by Congress in 2003 and opened in 2016. The museum houses artifacts including Emmett Till’s casket and Louis Armstrong’s trumpet. Weicksel described the ambivalence these objects create—one exhibit tied to how talent can overcome adversity. the other speaking to racial hatred that breeds violence and death. “Both are historical evidence of their times. and for history to be accurately represented. both must be accessible to the public. ” she said.

Weicksel pushed the argument toward what museums owe the public in practical terms: to feel patriotic in the United States. she said. people have to understand both “the terrible things that occurred” and the “very positive things.” She argued slavery shaped America’s economy. society. and culture. and that understanding the violence necessary to maintain the oppressive system helps people appreciate abolitionists and the accomplishments of people who were enslaved while living vibrant lives within slavery. “If you only have in mind an idealized version of American history. you’re always going to be holding the past up to this standard that never existed. ” she said.

This is where the American dispute echoes what has played out across Europe. When the right-wing populist Law and Justice (PiS) party came to power in Poland in 2015. the text says it began replacing museum and gallery directors with people more aligned with the party’s preferences to make institutions more docile. In Italy. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni demanded the dismissal of the director of the Egyptian Museum of Turin after he allowed Arabic speakers free entry. In Hungary under Fidesz. some museums removed references to Hungarian fascists and the fact that the country fought alongside the Axis powers in World War II.

Authoritarian governments. the piece argues. don’t just pressure museums—they try to erase what doesn’t fit the promised image of a glorious past. During communist totalitarianism. Romania experienced firsthand the transformation of museums into places where people had to conform to the party’s truth rather than historical truth. The text traces influences from then to now. including marginalization of “bourgeois art. ” inflating the Communist Party’s role in Romania’s national history. and the promotion of Dacianism.

Even after the end of those regimes, history remains political in the public square. Romanian political parties such as AUR used historical figures such as Michael the Brave and Vlad the Impaler in electoral campaigns. The text says politicians have justified and made excuses for crimes and hateful ideologies committed and promoted by Ion Antonescu and Corneliu Zelea Codreanu. and it notes that Călin Georgescu. described as a politician who mystifies and falsifies Romanian history. almost became president.

Museums, the reporting insists, are not only archives. They are where a society decides what deserves memory. In the piece, Ljiljana Radonić—referenced through an article titled “Our” museums vs. “inherited” museums: PiS and Fidesz as mnemonic warriors—turns the lens toward “mnemonic warriors. ” people who aim to control collective memory. She describes “negative memory” as how communities remember crimes committed by their own members. often missing the “element of complicity in committing the crimes. ” or placing it at a very low “hierarchy of visibility.”.

The text uses Croatia’s Jasenovac concentration camp museum as an example of how that hierarchy works. It says that initially the names of those who committed atrocities were available almost completely only on the museum’s website and in an additional digital information area. with near absence from the permanent display. In 2023 updates were made and the names of camp commanders are now visible.

Even when museums focus on heroism, the omissions can be deliberate. Warsaw Rising Museum, the text says, presents the city’s fight for liberation from German occupation in 1944 in detail. For the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. however. it says there are few details to humanize Jewish participants. and the entire museum speaks about Polish experience. Polish courage. Polish solidarity. Polish victims and Polish pain. It ties this approach to Jarosław Kaczyński’s position that it should be “about Polish truth. not Polish shame.”.

Poland’s cultural institutions under PiS and after PiS show how power can move through administrative channels rather than overt censorship. Polish cultural journalist Jakub Dąbrowski is quoted describing how the government emphasized culture it deemed important by steering financial flows. reorganizing institutions. and filling leadership positions with loyal appointees while marginalizing others. Dąbrowski also credits a key lever: the Ministry of Culture’s power to appoint directors of public museums. Between 2016 and 2022. the text says individuals with conservative political views were assigned without any selection process to management positions at the National Museum. the Centre for Contemporary Art. and the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in Warsaw. as well as the National Museum in Krakow. Where official selections were required, committees were politically controlled.

When Donald Tusk’s liberal government came to power in 2023, there were “another round” of replacements, according to Dąbrowski. He argues liberal governments can still use some of the same tactics for ideological and pragmatic reasons as populists. even if “style” differs: PiS acted “ruthlessly. ” while liberal parties operated with “kid gloves. ” keeping a softer. more collaborative touch.

One consequence shows up in the kind of curatorial work museums are permitted to do without being punished. Karol Nawrocki—an independent supported by PiS—won the 2025 presidential elections by a narrow margin. showing that the text says a significant part of the country still has affinity for conservative values. Dąbrowski says PiS pursued a deliberate policy aimed at strengthening national pride through culture and education. and that curatorial projects critically examining official narratives can now be labeled “anti-Polish” or even “traitorous.” These accusations. Dąbrowski adds. find “fertile ground” among voters anxious about regional instability or migration pressures. making open. self-reflective dialogue about the past harder.

That dynamic is dramatized in the Gdańsk Museum exhibition “Our Boys,” which opened in July 2025 and runs until May 2026. It tells the story of Polish citizens from the Pomerania region forced to join the Nazi army. a history the text says was hidden after Germany lost the war. Conservative politicians and their voters. the reporting says. considered the exhibit anti-Polish. triggering protests in front of the museum building with over 100 participants denouncing it.

The exhibition’s curator, Andrzej Hoja, argues the controversy is rooted in fear and gaps in personal knowledge. The text explains that Pomerania is a border region between Poland and Germany that passed through both states’ control. After 1939, Germany invaded Poland and Pomerania became a German province. Unlike other regions where residents retained citizenship. most Poles in Pomerania were forced to take German citizenship; as German citizens. they had to join the army if the government demanded it. or face imprisonment. camp deportation. or other punishments. The exhibit cites research suggesting around 200,000 men from the region were forced to join the army.

After the war ended. the former soldiers avoided talking about it—speaking meant admitting ties to Germany. seen at the time as the Soviet Union’s greatest enemy. Hoja is quoted saying there is some memory in some families but many gaps people don’t understand; they worry what really happened. The exhibition, Hoja says, aims to bring clarity and peace to residents by showing they are not alone.

Organizers were surprised by the response to their call for donations from personal archives: visitors came from hundreds of kilometres away, and the team has received more than 2,000 messages of feedback since the opening, almost all of them positive.

Outside the region, reactions were mixed after politics entered the picture. Former president Andrzej Duda posted a message on X accusing the exhibition of “relativizing history. ” saying presenting the soldiers of the Third Reich as “our own” is a misrepresentation of history and a moral provocation. The scandal was picked up by national and international press. Hoja responded to the outcry by pointing to the naming: the exhibit calls the men “Our boys. ” and the curator says politicians were angered that the exhibition treated the men as relatives.

The push and pull inside “Our Boys” reads like a microcosm of what Radonić calls mnemonic warfare: the struggle over whether painful complexity belongs in the public record, or whether it should remain sealed behind family silence.

It also mirrors how museums are sometimes treated as props in elections rather than places where evidence is tested. In the text, Radonić says mnemonic warriors manipulate democratic checks and balances to enforce their version of historical truth. Memory, she notes, is power.

In Romania. the text ties that power directly to cultural absence: even with authoritarian and populist pressures. it says museums still hide a lot. It adds that there is no official museum of communism. of Roma culture and history. or of the LGBTQ+ community. and that topics like Roma enslavement and Romania’s role in the Holocaust remain largely absent from museum institutions.

When those stories are missing. the message becomes a question of worth—who is allowed to be remembered and who is treated as disposable. Weicksel said that if parts of memory are erased—through the erasure of exhibitions. hiding objects. or destruction of materials—then what remains can become false memory. and that false memory serves power.

Dąbrowski puts it in terms of political messaging: taking control of cultural institutions sends society a signal about how effectively a party defends values. He adds that in a cultural war this message matters to core voters even if they never visit a museum.

The American and European stories are also bound together by one uncomfortable fact: the more regimes treat museums as a threat, the more museums become a place where the fight shows.

The reporting returns to Edson and Weicksel with a different definition of what museums can be in a democratic society. Edson says a museum stands for something that ought to be good: “It’s honest. It’s thoughtful. it tells difficult truths. it seeks the truth.” He describes a museum as transparent about what it does and accountable.

Weicksel’s vision is more human than institutional. Museums, she says, are where people come together to learn about people who are both like themselves and unlike themselves. They build historical empathy and help people think about their own place in the present.

Edson warns against the comfort of a single, uncontradictory narrative. He cites a moment from the American History Museum on the 200th anniversary of the Constitution. when it built an exhibit about camps where Japanese Americans were interned during World War II. He framed it as an American lesson: “Being a strong nation also means questioning your mistakes.”.

Radonić ends the circle with a Europe-wide reminder of what happens when history is shut down rather than confronted. The text recalls how wars followed the breakup of Yugoslavia: about 140. 000 people. including Serbs. Croats. Bosnians and others. died in conflicts motivated by nationalist hatred. It says the memory politics of socialist Yugoslavia did not confront massacres and civil war; after Tito’s death. it resurfaced more fiercely. Each side used enemy symbols from World War II—Croats calling themselves ustaši and describing Serbs as cetniki. a group active between 1941 and 1945 and responsible for massacres against Croats and Bosnians.

The reporting’s final argument is not abstract. It says avoiding the less glorious parts of history drives societies apart. makes them more vulnerable to extremist lies. and leaves museums with one job that keeps getting harder: to approach history with true honesty so people can understand their present and prepare for the future.

In that sense. Walsh’s line about a “battle of the museums” lands with the force of a warning—even if the politics behind it are rejected. Museums may not be perfect. They carry their own ideas and limits. But in democracy, they can be improved through dialogue and criticism. When governments treat museums as enemies. the public sees what is at stake: not just art and exhibitions. but who gets to decide what a nation is allowed to remember.

museums Smithsonian Donald Trump executive order American history memory politics Poland museums PiS Fidesz Hungary Giorgia Meloni Gdańsk Museum Our Boys Jasenovac Warsaw Ghetto Uprising mnemonic warriors Ljiljana Radonić Sarah Weicksel