Lonnie G. Bunch III, the secretary of the Smithsonian, did not set out to make the exhibit “American Aspirations” his swan song.
But he said on Thursday that his organizing of an exhibition that honors America’s 250th anniversary could well be among his final acts as secretary.
“It’s probably the last exhibit I will curate, there’s no doubt about that,” he said wistfully in a walk-through of the show, which opens to the public at the Smithsonian Castle on June 2.
The Trump administration has asserted that the Smithsonian is too negative in its depiction of the United States and that it hopes to take control of the board that has kept Mr. Bunch at the helm. It is very possible that allies of President Trump could hold a majority of the seats by the fall.
Mr. Bunch — a historian, the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the Smithsonian’s secretary since 2019 — has spoken openly about his intention to buck efforts to diminish the institution’s independence, though he recognizes that two-thirds of its funding comes from the federal government.
“I love the Smithsonian, and I love thinking creatively about, how do you protect the Smithsonian?” Mr. Bunch said in the interview. “How do you make sure issues of scholarship and integrity are there?”
The “Aspirations” show, which runs through July 26, explores the country’s founding ideals through more than 30 objects from five of the Smithsonian’s 21 museums. One item on display is the small mahogany desk on which Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence.
“You can celebrate Jefferson and you can also recognize that he was a slave holder,” Mr. Bunch said, adding, “The great strength of a nation is not to think we’ve reached a promise now, but that Jefferson’s words challenge us and that people have voted, protested.”
Other Smithsonian plans for the 250th have fallen by the wayside, including the exhibition “Many Americas, Many 1776s,” which was going to highlight places beyond the 13 colonies and people often excluded from accounts of the nation’s founding. Instead of the Smithsonian’s annual Folklife Festival on the National Mall, that expanse has been ceded to President Trump’s Great American State Fair.
The Smithsonian has been under pressure since last year, when President Trump in an executive order accused it of promoting “narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive” and called for an end to spending on exhibitions or programs that “degrade shared American values, divide Americans by race or promote ideologies inconsistent with federal law.”
The Smithsonian is continuing to respond to a White House effort to review much of the institution’s content or risk potential cuts to its budget.
Davis Ingle, a White House spokesman, said last month that the administration’s review of museums and exhibitions “aims to ensure alignment with President Trump’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism in this 250th year of American Independence, and to support a broader vision of excellence that highlights historically accurate, uplifting and inclusive portrayals of America’s heritage.”
Much of the exhibition that Mr. Bunch organized with two Smithsonian curators — Abeer Saha and Harry Rubenstein — at first appears traditionally patriotic. There is a model of the Statue of Liberty by its creator, Frederic Auguste Bartholdi.
But Mr. Bunch pointed out in his tour: “The actual Statue of Liberty — even this one — is standing on broken chains, so it really is initially just about freedom and slavery.
“I wanted that complexity,” he continued. “You can look at this as ‘Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses,’ which is crucially important and has dominated, but don’t forget that it began as a celebration of the end of slavery.”
The exhibition does not shy away from the issues of race that in Mr. Trump’s view have overtaken some Smithsonian displays. At one point, Mr. Bunch stopped at a large Civil War broadside in which Frederick Douglass encouraged Black enlistment: “Men of Color: To Arms! To Arms!”
Mr. Bunch said he was resolute in the belief that the full scope of American history must be told. “I’m never going to run from race,” he said, “I mean, I’m just never going to do that. These are important issues.”
Asked if he had tried to avoid controversy while curating the show, Mr. Bunch said: “Did I pull punches? Not really.”
Other artifacts in the show include a bristol-board incandescent lamp designed by Thomas Edison and former Senator Daniel K. Inouye’s Medal of Honor. There is also a candle stand used to illuminate George Washington’s writing of his Farewell Address.
“Somebody asked me, ‘Is this a challenging time? Are you afraid?’” Mr. Bunch said, referring to White House pressure. “I said, ‘Afraid was trying to walk home with people trying to beat me up in New Jersey.’ This is not something to be afraid of. This is something where you stand firm to make sure that the integrity of this mission is protected.”
The White House has openly disparaged Mr. Bunch, particularly in connection with his 2019 book, “A Fool’s Errand: Creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the Age of Bush, Obama, and Trump,” Last year a White House communications director, Steven Cheung, called Mr. Bunch a “rabid partisan who manufactured lies out of thin air in order to boost sales of his miserable book.”
Some conservative pundits, such as Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, have called for the secretary’s removal, arguing, “I don’t see how any of the reforms that the Trump administration wants to accomplish at the Smithsonian are possible as long as Lonnie Bunch remains at the helm of the institution.”
After a flurry of scrutiny by the White House, the Smithsonian has managed in recent months to avoid any confrontations with Trump officials, perhaps in part because the president has been focused on other matters like the war in Iran.
The Smithsonian has also appeared to avoid additional controversy by, for example, eliminating wall text that might have proven politically divisive from a National Portrait Gallery exhibition. The museum said it was only experimenting with different types of labels.
Mr. Bunch said he had over time learned to strike a balance between diplomacy and defiance.
“When you’re Black in America, you’ve got to figure out how to get through, right? You’ve got to figure out how to build allies, when to stand firm, when to bang the table,” he said. “So in some ways, all of that prepared me for this moment.
“But do I wish I was in it?” he continued, referring to scrutiny by the Trump administration. “Of course not. Good Lord, I wish that I was doing my goodbye tour.”
