CNN One Thing

How long have you been doing art?

Ooh, how long have I been doing art? Okay, well, I guess my whole life I can say.

Sasa Akil is a ceramics artist and poet based in Washington, D.C. She graduated from Howard University in 2024. In a year prior, the school offered her a unique opportunity to collaborate on a new sculpture exhibit being developed for the Smithsonian American Art Museum called The Shape of Power, Stories of Race and American Sculpture.

The curators of The Shape of Power, we're looking for students that they could discuss the exhibition, specifically the interpretations side of the exhibition. So that's like how it's going to be received by the public, kind of the messages that the curators want to make sure that they're getting across.

So you kind of got an early look at it and they wanted you to kind of interpret it and give them feedback as to how you received it.

Yeah, exactly. I don't think I've ever seen a comprehensive, you know, sculpture exhibition in the way that this one is.

The stated mission of the exhibit is to examine the role of sculpture in understanding and constructing the concept of race in the United States. It opened at the museum last November. Well, fast forward to March.

President Trump quietly signed an executive order yesterday that could change the face of the historic Smithsonian Institute. This latest directive threatens funding for programs he claims advance divisive narratives and improper ideology.

In the executive order, Trump called out the Shape of Power exhibit directly. He condemned it for stating that sculpture has been a powerful tool in promoting scientific racism, that race is a human invention, and that the United States has used race to, quote, establish and maintain systems of power, privilege, and disenfranchisement. And what goes through your mind when you hear about that?

Um, for me, truly, it's mind boggling the just blatant racism of it all. And, um, you know, like my name is on a plaque in the exhibition, you know, and so it's really wild to watch it be targeted, but also in a way. And as a young artist, as a black Muslim woman whose work is dedicated to like justice and creating a more just world. If the administration thinks that this exhibition that I had a small part in is wrong, then I think I'm probably doing the right thing.

Well, earlier this week, Trump took to social media to direct his lawyers to conduct a full review of the museum system and to offer some more thoughts of his own.

He writes, the Smithsonian is out of control, where everything discussed is how horrible our country is, how bad slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been. Nothing about success, nothing about brightness, nothing about the future. He goes on to say, this country cannot be woke because woke is broke. We have...

Artists like Sasa, along with many historians and museum experts, are outraged, saying the comments amount to a literal whitewashing of American history. But what exactly are these museums saying about race, and what goes into those decisions? My guest today is Leah Wright Rigueur. She's a political historian and associate professor at Johns Hopkins University. She's also a CNN contributor. We're gonna talk about what Trump's pivot on one particular museum could reveal about his whole agenda. From CNN, this is one thing. I'm David Rind. We're back in a bit. So, Professor Rigueur, can you just explain what exactly President Trump is asking the Smithsonian to do here?

'So, over the past few months, but it really has ticked up over the summer and over the last few weeks, the President of the United States has asked for a review of the Smithsonian as a cultural and kind of historic institute, and asked for review of the various museums, collections, and curated exhibits. He has singled out eight museums in particular. And of recent, the Museum of African-American History and Culture has come under his attention or perhaps his fire.

Yeah, what is the actual beef? Like, is he citing actual examples of stuff that appears in these museums?

Well, you know, when you look at the actual letter that was sent out to the director of the Smithsonian, Dr. Lonnie Bunch, it's actually pretty vague. However, they've taken issue with what they call a quote unquote, woke version of history. One that doesn't celebrate American exceptionalism, but rather as they say, it was negative, downtrodden, and puts too much blame for the horrors of this nation on white people. And, you know, I think it's a funny thing in part because it is such a departure from where Donald Trump was in 2017.

Thank you very much, everybody. It's a great honor to be here. This was some beautiful morning, and what a job they've done.

In 2017, he took a guided tour of the National Museum of African American History.

Comprehensive tour, but not comprehensive enough. So, Lonnie, I'll be back. I told you that. Because I could stay here for...

Long to relive me. And he raved about it. He said it was exceptional, it was incredible, and it was important that it was done with love and care by the curators, by the historians.

'I'm deeply proud that we now have a museum that honors the millions of African-American men and women who built our national heritage, especially when it comes to faith, culture, and the unbreakable American spirit.

So he's been there, he's seen it, and at the time he said it was great. So what's changed?

I think what's changed is that the entire attitude of the Trump administration towards really kind of museum and culture and ideological outlook has dramatically changed. Trump has been influenced by a number of players who've pointed out repeatedly to the president that there's just too much emphasis on inequality as it pertains to our national history.

Let's bring in Lindsay Halligan. She is the special assistant to the president. She's helping to spearhead this review. Lindsay, thanks for being with us.

And so we saw an interview the other day with a member of the administration. She really has been a key player in evaluating all of the museums and the historical institutions that fall under the Smithsonian.

'The fact that we had, our country was involved in slavery is awful, no one thinks otherwise. But what I saw when I was going through the museums personally was an over-emphasis on slavery.

And she said, essentially, that there's been too much emphasis on slavery.

And we should be able to take our kids, our students, through the Smithsonian and feel proud when we leave. There's a lot of history to our country, both positive and negative, but we need to keep moving forward. We can't just keep focusing on the negative. All it does is divide us.

Well, when they say these museums, and specifically the African American History Museum, that there's an over emphasis on slavery, is that actually true?

I don't think you can overemphasize slavery. It was pretty bad. That is pretty bad, I mean, it's also that kind of, you know, word salad that the president dished out a couple of days ago where he said, there's too much focus on how bad slavery was, something to that effect, which is, you can't overemphase how bad the slavery was. In fact, we, in this country, underemphasize how bad that slavery was because we were so uncomfortable with the nation's original sin. Part of what I think that they are reacting to is the fact that most of the exhibits or the eight exhibits that are being targeted make the nation's atrocities a central part of the story of this country. That includes slavery. And so it forces, because this is the job of historians and historical record keepers, particularly these national historians and record keeper. It's to keep the country honest. And I again point to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, in part because it is the museum, it's one of the museums that has received the most attention. If you've never been to the museum I encourage anyone who's listening to go as soon as possible to the Museum. It's free.

Big selling point.

'And it starts literally underground with the experience of the North Atlantic slave trade and how enslaved Africans were brought to this country. But what a lot of people don't realize is that as you move through the museum, you're actually moving up. So you're moving level by level. And it tells a story of resilience, of resistance, of freedom. As you move through the building, quite literally the story gets lighter and to quote Trump, brighter. As you move up, now it is all the wonderful and instrumental and really quite innovative ways that African-Americans in this country have triumphed. That's what really these museums in our country are designed to do, to tell that story in all its nuances, in all of its horrors, but in all it's beauty as well.

We got to take a quick break, but we'll be right back. Don't go anywhere. I want to step back here. Is it normal for US presidents to get involved with museums and their exhibits and curation procedures in such a granular way?

Well, here's the thing. US presidents have always taken an interest in how the United States is depicted, but also how they are depicted. We see this, for example, one of my favorite examples of this contrast is if you go to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, which is in Semivalley, California, and you walk in and there are kind of these very somber archival and collection rooms. But then you go to the museum, and there's quite literally Air Force One, right? This giant, and that is how Reagan, right, there's an exhibit that's dedicated to jelly beans because that is the president wants his legacy to be remembered as opposed to what actual archivists and historians are doing by going through the papers. But what is unusual about the moment that we have now is that the Smithsonian as a historical but public institution that receives quite a bit its funding from the federal government. Has long resisted the pull or the force of the executive branch. They do not allow presidents to tell them what to do. And so for somebody like Trump to come in and to order what he calls a judicial review, maybe he says, I'm going to have my lawyers. He doesn't say an independent commission or things like that. He says, I'm gonna have my lawyer's go through these museums to make sure that they align. Uh, with the outlook and the ideological beliefs of the Trump administration is really quite unusual.

Is there anything they can do to fight back or do they just kind of have to go along with it?

Well, I think one of the things that the museums have done in order to fight back, I should be very clear, the Smithsonian has not responded in any real public way. But one of things that they are doing is the president has asked for a significant amount of documents and reviews. And these various museums are clearly complying. But they are also making an argument about the necessity of these exhibits, of these documents, and really the work that they do for the public. And so one of the things that I like to point out, and not to pick on the National Museum of African American History and Culture again, but a lot of conservatives have complained, including recently, that Clarence Thomas is not included, that there's no exhibit devoted to Clarenced Thomas and black conservatives in the museum. And that's actually not entirely true. Yes, there was a choice to not include Clarence Thomas in the museum. And I think that's a curatorial choice that I'm sure the museum is happy to explain and has explained multiple times. But it's also true that there is an entire exhibit devoted to Ben Carson. And so part of the decision that museums have to make and that places like the Smithsonian have to make is, well, as much as we would love to include everything. We can include everything. So we make choices about who we're going to include. And so at some point, someone made a choice about what kind of conservatism they wanted to include, but the point is it's included, it's there.

Right. It's just a different kind, and it may kind of be interacting with the current moment. This is kind of an aside, but as the Metropolitan Museum of Art here in New York, one of my favorite places to go in that museum is the, it's called Visible Storage, where they have stuff that is not on main display, but it's kind of tucked away and people can see it. It feels like a little secret. I love it, but it does kind of get to that point that there are choices these museums have to make. You're saying there are legitimate reasons that a museum might include one thing and not the other.

'Absolutely. And I think there are all kinds of implications for this. I mean, you know, one of the things that the Trump administration has, at least on a surface level, been paid a lot of attention to is this idea of anti-Semitism and rising anti-semitism within the United States and the memory of the Holocaust. And part of the adage that comes out of for historians is about how powerful the past is to remember. So that this never happens again. And so as the Trump administration implores us to remember never again, never again. I think it's important to say, well, if that's good for the goose, then it's good the gander. Never again across all of these things, right? Never again for the American Indian Museum. Never again, for the National Museum of African-American History and Culture, right. Like these are the same stories in the same.

Why shouldn't we want to say slavery never again?

So, I mean, part of the shock of some of the administration's statements around slavery over the last couple of days has been, how do you in one breath say, never forget the Holocaust, and then say, there's been an overemphasis on slavery? That is cognitive dissonance at its minus.

It's tough to square, yeah.

'It's tough to square, but it's also not tough to square if you point out that the administration has used, particularly in this term in office, that the administration has taken a squarely anti-black approach to its agenda. And now, you know, I know the administration would deny this, but it is hard to deny when we've seen, for example, the erasure of African American historical figures from various federal websites. From naval ships, from various stories, and now the administration's saying, ah, there's been too much emphasis on slavery and we need to do a review on this. These are fundamentally anti-black statements. These are anti-Black beliefs. And so part of what I really struggle, I think, to reckon with is this essentially attempt to sane wash. The administration is simply saying that, you know, they're just trying to brighten up history and it's not directed at anything in particular. We just feel like the history has been too negative. When in fact, a central part of the story of America, including America's greatness has been a story that is about the horrific brutalization marginalization and oppression of vast swaths of Americans. And so I think the Trump administration is very deliberately trying to obscure that and to sidestep it in ways that will have a devastating effect for all Americans.

Yeah, and the timing is really notable, too, with the big celebration for America's 250th birthday next year. A lot of questions about what that programming will look like. But in the meantime, as you point out, if anybody has questions or just wants to see these places for themselves, the Smithsonian Institution is free. Doesn't cost you a thing, so you can go see it whenever you want. Leo, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Thanks for having me.

Leah Wright Rigueur is a CNN contributor and history professor at Johns Hopkins University. That's it for us today. We're back on Wednesday. I'll talk to you then.