MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
President Trump has issued an executive order to try to make changes at the Smithsonian Institution.
A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
The Smithsonian is the world's largest museum education and research complex. And it's comprised of 21 museums and libraries each, 14 education centers and the National Zoo. The order also paves the way for the return of monuments that have been removed in recent years.
MARTIN: NPR culture reporter Isabella Gomez Sarmiento is with us now for more. Good morning, Isabella.
ISABELLA GOMEZ SARMIENTO, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: So the order is called Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History. Maybe start by telling us a bit more about what it says.
GOMEZ SARMIENTO: A lot of this is about the people and stories that are highlighted at these museums and sites and the language used to describe American history. The order directs Vice President JD Vance, who is on the Smithsonian's board of regents, to oversee the removal of, quote, "improper, divisive or anti-American ideology" from the Smithsonian's museums and research centers. Smithsonian secretary Lonnie Bunch sent an email on Friday telling staff that the Smithsonian will continue to employ internal review processes and that, quote, "as always, our work will be shaped by the best scholarship, free of partisanship, to help the American public better understand the nation's history, challenges and triumphs." The Smithsonian spokesperson confirmed that email to NPR. And we should note here Lonnie Bunch was previously the founding director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, one of the museums Trump singled out in the executive order.
MARTIN: There's also a section of the executive order focused on monuments. What does that say?
GOMEZ SARMIENTO: That's right. I mean, if we can rewind a little bit, there's been a growing movement in recent years to reflect on what history we honor in the U.S. and what may have been left out. But there was a turning point when a white police officer killed George Floyd, who was Black, in 2020. His death sparked wide protests. And for a lot of people, it was a reexamining of this country's racial history. Within a year and a half, 200 public Confederate symbols had been taken down, relocated, or renamed. That included things like monuments, school names, even road names. Those are numbers provided by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is a legal and advocacy group, which tracks Confederate iconography in the U.S.
I should say the executive order isn't specifically about Confederate symbols. But it instructs the Interior secretary to review monuments, markers and statues that may have been taken down or changed since January 2020, more than a year before Trump left office in his first term, and restore them. It calls for a wholesale review to make sure that memorials under Interior Department jurisdiction, quote, "do not contain descriptions, depictions or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living, including persons living in colonial times."
MARTIN: Do we know what monuments could actually be put back up?
GOMEZ SARMIENTO: That's the big question, and it's pretty unclear right now. Seth Levi of the Southern Poverty Law Center says many of the sites that did see changes were on land controlled by municipalities and state governments, not land controlled by the Department of the Interior or any of the bureaus it oversees, like the National Park Service.
SETH LEVI: I'm not actually aware of any removals on National Park Service land.
GOMEZ SARMIENTO: We reached out to the Department of the Interior and didn't hear back.
MARTIN: So, you know, a lot of this executive order focuses on how the story of America is told. So what are historians saying about this?
GOMEZ SARMIENTO: That's right. I spoke with art historian Erin Thompson. She's the author of a book called "Smashing Statues: The Rise And Fall Of America's Public Monuments." And she says that Trump's executive order is trying to gloss over some of the darker aspects of American history.
ERIN THOMPSON: But you can't turn an ugly history into a glorious one unless you're not telling the truth.
GOMEZ SARMIENTO: Thompson says it's important to grapple with mistakes from the past so we don't make them again, but ultimately, you can't control historical memory by controlling monuments.
MARTIN: That's NPR culture reporter Isabella Gomez Sarmiento. Isabella, thank you.
GOMEZ SARMIENTO: Thank you.
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