Donald Trump and Tim O’Hare don’t want museums. They want monuments. | Opinion
Three seconds is all you need to understand how President Donald Trump views the purpose, value and intent of art.
That’s the length of a looping video from the White House’s recent social media post — a commissioned oil painting of an immediately iconic Trump photo, bloodied ear and fist pumping defiantly as he survived an assassination attempt. The portrait includes the American flag fluttering in the top right, with a caption that reads: “Some new artwork at the White House” alongside the glancing eyes emoji.
The photo renders a spontaneous moment that isn’t inherently propagandistic but perfectly captures the vision Trump projects of himself — a would-be victim of deluded antagonists, who, sustained by his natural vigor and commitment to his country, nonetheless overcomes his vile enemies. Hanging his triumphant moment in the White House assigns and codifies that he is the hero of his story, and ours.
For Trump, flattery is the standard.
Trump’s recent executive order screed against the Smithsonian, titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American Institutions,” meanwhile, explicitly demands the renowned constellation of federally funded museums make a certain kind of American visitor feel admired. In Trump’s view, the Smithsonian in its current form “fosters a sense of national shame” by “disregarding the progress America has made.” Shameful for who?
What precedes and follows is a predictable, metronomic recitation of this decade’s culture war greatest hits, steady enough to practice your paradiddles. Trump promises in the order that he will make our museums “remind Americans of our extraordinary heritage, consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect Union, and unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity, and human flourishing.”
While Trump’s direct control over the museum appears limited, he does have the ability to financially penalize Smithsonians by prohibiting “expenditure on exhibits or programs that degrade shared American values” — a potential precursor to pulling federal grants.
Stop me if you’ve heard the rest:
“divisive, race-centered ideology;”
“male athletes participating in women’s sports;”
and perceived slights against “the nuclear family.”
The four Democrats on the House committee overseeing the Smithsonian, including Dallas Rep. Julie Johnson, appear to be taking the executive order seriously. Their strongly worded letter to Vice President JD Vance charges that “we now stand at the brink of seeing the Smithsonian at its worst,” arguing that Trump’s plans would convert a revered institution into a museum “shaped solely by the views and ideology of one individual as a means of expanding his political power.”
I doubt the vice president will take up the cause of preserving Black history, especially if it interferes with his busy schedule defending German Nazi-sympathizing movements abroad or the racist calls from inside the (White) house.
But the lawmakers are entirely correct: Trump is incapable of perceiving any cultural product that does not mirror the world he’s decreed or, better yet, orbit around him. Museums such as the National Museum of African American History and Culture will always fall short until they start positioning him as Black history’s main character.
More important is that the president wields his executive powers to halt the Smithsonian’s free and independent pursuit of its historical and artistic work. Conclusions freely made can’t be melted down, bronzed and recast in his image.
CLOSE TO HOME, FORT WORTH MUSEUM ATTACKED FOR PHOTO EXHIBIT
The nearest Smithsonian may be over 1,300 miles away, but the spirit animating the White House is right in our backyard.
In January, I wrote the latest chapter of censorship’s encroachment on our most valued culture institutions. The suspects — County Judge Tim O’Hare, Tarrant County Republican Party Chairman Bo French — were usual. The claims: absurd.
Some reactionary and culturally illiterate political and religious leaders alleged that a display at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth featuring a handful of nudes exactly as unerotic as a cherubic baby, were “child pornography.” Even worse, the accusations were made against Sally Mann, one of the most influential, critically acclaimed photographers in American history.
The gambit worked. Fort Worth police seized Mann’s photos as part of a child sexual assault investigation. (The department denied public information requests seeking confirmation of who, exactly, made the formal accusation to the cops.) O’Hare said the quiet part out loud when he lent his name to an open letter that explicitly tied a false accusation of sexual abuse to the queer identities featured elsewhere in the Modern’s “Diaries of Home” exhibit that featured Mann’s photos.
“The exhibit as a whole effectively works to normalize pedophilia, child sexual abuse, the LGBTQ lifestyle, and the breakdown of the God-ordained definition of family,” read the open letter from the Dallas-based Danbury Center.
The police returned Mann’s artwork. Because of course they did! Undeterred by an investigation that, unsurprisingly, returned nothing, state Rep. David Lowe, R-North Richland Hills, proposed a bill that would penalize museums by up to $500,000 for every item in a museum deemed “obscene or harmful.”
Legal scholar Amy Adler told me that our Mann controversy embodied multiple concerns over how the law could be weaponized against free expression by exploiting the vagaries of determining what is obscene or harmful to minors.
“It’s very hard to define whether something’s obscene [or] whether it’s harmful to minors,” Adler said. “And it’s well known that when a law is vague, that presents problems of a chilling effect on people who might want to display work.” She said that museums could take down “perfectly legal material” in fear of those who may target any nude artwork that someone deems sexual in a manner that puts children in danger.
Elizabeth Larison, director of arts and culture advocacy for the National Coalition Against Censorship, told me that “we’re in a perilous moment where we’re seeing the federal administration and now states, using every legal and sometimes extra legal tool they can to target people and ideas that engage in speech or expression that they disfavor.”
An attack on one museum, whether purging the Smithsonian of woke or the Modern of (alleged!) smut is an eventual attack on us all. The nation’s plunge into censorship won’t be contained by the four walls of museums. Just on Tuesday, the Texas Freedom to Read Project found a school district that pulled pictures of the Virginia state flag from its online research database for elementary school kids, because the flag pictures a robed woman with one bare breast.
Some, like Trump, purge with Wite-Out and red pens. The boys running North Texas use fig leaves and chastity belts. But no matter the weapon of choice: emboldening the government to audit and correct the formation of culture and history collapses our ability to learn about our country, our neighbors and ourselves.
Functioning adults need to understand the serious threat posed by these unserious people. Trump, Lowe and all of our paranoid demagogues are plenty alike in that they want to make their anxieties our problem.
Any subversion of their fearful and ignorant world view is an existential threat we must all be suffering from. And if the Trumps and Lowes aren’t stopped right here, what will stop them from stifling any of our museums? I don’t want to visit a National Juneteenth Museum that throws us a party but can’t tell us the whole truth of why we’re celebrating.
Instead, I want our museums to be rigorous, independent, thought-provoking cultural hubs that challenge me. I believe most people want that, too. Nonetheless, there will always be a market for taking the truth and recasting it into trinkets for children perpetually in need of coddling.
This story was originally published April 24, 2025 at 5:35 AM with the headline "Donald Trump and Tim O’Hare don’t want museums. They want monuments. | Opinion."
