Beauty is Not Partisan: How Art Museums Should Respond to Political Pressure

In March of last year, the Trump administration issued an executive order criticizing institutions such as the Smithsonian Institute for portraying America’s “unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness” as “inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed”. 

Less than five months later, the administration published an open letter demanding a review of the Smithsonian’s documents and exhibit material, including labels, online content and internal communications. 

At the same time, one-third of museums in the United States claim to have lost federal funding, grants and contracts since the beginning of Trump’s presidency. Museum attendance, which has been low since the pandemic, has continued to decline. Ticket sales at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which Trump took over in February, dropped nearly 50% from last year’s season. 

These cultural institutions, which have historically garnered public trust and respect, are faltering. Without steady patronage, even the most capable and confident museum leadership would find it difficult to carry out regular operations. In addition to the pressure of funding crises, the Trump administration’s agenda for the cultural identity of art institutions has added further instability at this vulnerable moment.

Fatima Hendricks, manager of Exhibitions and Residencies at the Chicago Artist Coalition (CAC), described some of the challenges she has encountered in an interview with The Gate. Her organization, a non-profit group that supports creatives in Chicago, relies on government grants, including sponsorships from the recently-targeted National Endowment for the Arts, which altogether accounted for 50-70% of CAC’s total funding. 

“It was a decent amount of our budget for sure,” Hendricks reflected. “It came as a shock to know that we weren’t going to be able to rely on that for the next fiscal year.” 

Art museums find themselves in a double bind, she explained. On the one hand, they rely on government and philanthropic funding to run programming and sponsor artists; on the other, they are rightfully unwilling to give up curatorial or administrative freedom in order to comply with the demands of the president. 

In the face of this conundrum, which has raised the alarm on censorship issues, news outlets and museum directors have rushed to define the role of art museums in politics. Implicit in this search for identity and purpose lies a more urgent question: how should art museums, along with any societal value they may have accrued, set forth in today’s America?

The most common reaction portrays the issue as a fork in the road, outlining just two choices for institutions faced with government pressure. One piece, published by The Guardian, exemplifies this binary in its headline: “submit or find ways to resist”. Although the article provides a helpful defense of the exhibits under fire, it validates Trump’s false dichotomy, pushing museums further into a pigeonhole they never had to occupy.

In reality, Trump is making art institutions play a losing game. Under the combined pressure of the president’s executive orders and today’s political moment, the immense world of artistic and curatorial possibilities has narrowed, prematurely, to just two choices: either yield to the president or swing hard towards rebellion and transgression. Let’s take a closer look at these paths.

To “submit” to Trump’s executive order would turn museums into “monuments that remind Americans of our extraordinary heritage [and] consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect Union…” in the order’s own language. We need not exert ourselves trying to picture what a government-curated art exhibit would look like — it’s been done before. 

In 1971, Richard Nixon’s administration sponsored a show called “If We’re So Good, Why Aren’t We Better?” which guided visitors through a propagandistic maze of American productive potential. The exhibit, which cost half a million dollars, was a mess: steels balls rolled amok across the floor, a souvenir machine caused havoc and plexiglass props towered over the scene. 

Scarier than the possibility of being absurdly ineffective, presidentially commissioned art exhibits could manifest in a thousand Orwellian ways. By imposing state values onto that which is founded on free expression, governments inevitably create uncanny combinations like the infamous “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength” of Orwell’s 1984. A recent example can be found in an ICE campaign poster, which depicts the Statue of Liberty — a symbol of American acceptance and refuge — as part of a call to join deportation efforts. Certainly, then, art museums cannot opt for this path.

The other end of the curatorial spectrum does not bode well either. In recent years, politically critical art has included the following: a sculptural encyclopedia cataloging marginalized events, places and individuals; a lobby wrapped in red and black vinyl asking “WHO IS FREE TO CHOOSE? WHO SPEAKS? WHO IS SILENT?” among other slogans; and a cut-and-scrape collage reconstruction of Gettysburg inviting the viewer to “reconsider how narratives about American history are shaped and contested.” At the 2024 Venice Biennale, America was represented by the Choctaw and Cherokee artist Jeffrey Gibson, whose multicolor textiles featured woven captions like “WE WANT TO BE FREE” and a pin that said “Treat Me Right”.

Even as these pieces deliver crucial messages — historical truths and social ideas that deserve constant recognition and discussion — they do not reach their full potential. They are too reliant on text, too intent on either repelling or affirming the viewer upon first glance. In their rush to confront us with bold and obvious captions, they flatten and oversimplify, allowing the poignancy of their messages to slip away in the process. Ultimately, these artworks act as shibboleths for those who hold certain political views rather than actually grappling with the most important complexities of our world.

To answer the question posed earlier: the best path forward for American art museums is neither to give in nor double down. In fact, artists and art institutions will suffer if they choose either one, losing their voice either by self-censorship or oversimplification. The Trump administration has backed art museums into a political corner, asking them to pick between propaganda and heavy-handed revolution. When art is presented with an ultimatum built on such faulty premises, it loses its power. The way out mustn’t rely on words, but on the artist’s classic tools: color, form, shape, stroke, depth, texture, weight, lightness, darkness, etc. 

By embracing creativity and avoiding images too easily interpreted, artists do not sacrifice their voice. Neither do museums who display these works in a way that is open-ended, informative and interesting. In fact, escaping the false binary of the current political climate will only benefit museums, as art regains its breadth of vision.

Art museums are institutions of nuance, complexity and beauty. They have too much civic value to become victims of the culture wars and too many universal benefits to stand on either side of a party line. 

When the Trump administration passes down a list of absurd demands, art museums must not become impulsive reactionaries. Instead, they ought to embrace their traditional advantages — ones conveyed in the artworks they display: subtlety, shrewdness and the ability to hold more than one truth at once.

The image featured in this article is licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. The photo was originally taken by Jean-Pierre Dalbéra. No changes were made to the original, which can be found here.