exhibition

Sept. 8, 2026 11:29 AM PT

WASHINGTON — Lonnie Bunch is stepping down from the leadership of the Smithsonian Institution following a tumultuous year in which President Trump tried to remake the portrayal of U.S. history by the Smithsonian museums and other cultural entities.

Bunch said in a news release Tuesday that he was departing the position he had held since 2019 “with very mixed emotions and heartfelt gratitude.” The Smithsonian said he would leave the post at the end of the year.

Bunch’s departure comes two months after a White House report branded the leaders of the Smithsonian Institution, especially at the National Museum of American History, as radical activists who cannot be trusted, an indication that Trump could be preparing to install his own team.

Anthea M. Hartig, the first female director of that museum, faced growing scrutiny from Trump and other Republicans over the summer after the White House Domestic Policy Council’s report saying the museum’s leadership doesn’t tell history “in a way that is inspiring, unifying, and worthy of our great republic.”

Three weeks after the report’s release, Trump ordered his administration to install signs in front of the U.S. history museum telling visitors that some of the exhibits are inaccurate. Hartig pushed back, telling lawmakers during congressional hearings that the report “does not fairly or accurately characterize the full body of work at the museum.”

There had been speculation that firings were in the offing. Trump doesn’t have the power to fire leaders at the Smithsonian with the swiftness he’s managed at other top cultural institutions in Washington, most notably the Kennedy Center, where a board of his supporters named him chairman.

The Smithsonian operates outside the executive branch and museum directors report to Bunch, who is subject to oversight from a Board of Regents that includes Vice President JD Vance, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, a bipartisan group of lawmakers and so-called citizen regents.

Roberts, who serves as Smithsonian’s chancellor, said in a release that Bunch had “pursued excellence in the telling of our nation’s story.”

The White House did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

The Smithsonian has been under examination by the Trump administration since 2025 as it has focused on the images and messages presented to the public as the nation approached its 250th anniversary.

A March 2025 executive order, Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, led to signs being changed at federal parks, exhibits being altered or in some cases removed, and military bases being renamed. Trump specifically cited the National Museum of African American History and Culture and argued that the Smithsonian as a whole was engaging in a “concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history.”

Several months later, the White House ordered a wide-ranging review of the Smithsonian museums and exhibitions before the country’s 250th birthday, with a goal of aligning the institution’s content with Trump’s interpretation of American history.

In a letter sent to Bunch at the time, the White House detailed the steps it expected the organization to take as part of the announced review. The examination is of all public-facing content, including social media, exhibition text and educational materials, to “assess tone, historical framing, and alignment with American ideals,” according to the letter.

That review initially focused on eight museums — the National Museum of American History, the National Museum of Natural History, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the National Museum of the American Indian, the National Air and Space Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Portrait Gallery and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

Kinnard and Fields write for the Associated Press. Kinnard reported from Columbia, S.C.

Inside the Universalist Unitarian Church of Riverside, a line of masked people filed into the red-lighted chapel, one by one, to take part in the rite of confession.

The private booth was framed in flowers, and rather than a priest listening inside, it was a microphone recording their confessions, to be played at an upcoming art exhibition. The brick triangle-roofed church that held the booth has stood since opening in 1892; that night, it was the site of a masquerade, or as Riverside artist Perry Picasshoe called it, the “Masqueerade.”

Picasshoe, whose real name is Neveah Marquez, hosted the event, which had an entirely LGBTQ+ guest list and one requirement: Bring a mask, whatever that looks like to you.

Marquez, a 26-year-old transgender woman robed entirely in red, stood at the pews and danced to the experimental electronic DJ sets and drag performances as guests entered in masks that ranged from papier-mâché deer antlers to collaged photos of eyes and lips.

The event came as a celebration ahead of the Riverside native’s first solo exhibition, “SagradX,” which will open Saturday at Riverside Art Museum and remain through Jan. 31.

The recorded confessions, layered over one another until they become an unintelligible cacophony, represent just one piece of the 25 paintings, photographs and interactive displays in the exhibition. The show explores the meaning of “sacred” as Marquez documents her most private places and experiences, and asks viewers to consider what they hold sacred.

The exhibition, she says, began with heartbreak.

Neveah Marquez (Perry Picasshoe), 26, sits inside the Riverside Art Museum.

(Carlin Stiehl / For De Los)

“The first time I started thinking about sacredness … was when my ex-partner brought somebody into our bed,” said Marquez.

“I was crying, distraught, and drove over to these hills over Lake Mathews [in Riverside] and I realized: The bedroom was sacred to me. That’s why it hurt so much. And I started thinking, if it wasn’t sacred to them, how do we decide what is sacred to each of us?”

The very headboard of that bed sits in the exhibition; on it, Marquez painted fairy-tale creatures representing the lovers gallivanting across the woods.

While Marquez’s experience with betrayal sparked the idea, the exhibition explores sanctity in many different scenarios: In one, the artist plays with the concept of the digital safe space by inviting guests to look through her phone as she is tied on a handmade iron-wrought cross. Inside the exhibition space, she uses a small painter’s brush to slowly paint the white walls red over the course of the show.

In curating the exhibition, Marquez began to look inward, painting and photographing herself in ways she never had before: through the lens of femininity. She lived the previous 26 years of her life as a man, growing up religious to the point that she once considered becoming a priest. The paintings serve as portals into a part of her that she long held inside.

“I describe it like having blurry vision your whole life and not realizing how clearly you can see, until you put glasses on,” Marquez said. “That’s how painting myself as a woman felt.”

Neveah Marquez (Perry Picasshoe) considers what is sacred.

(Carlin Stiehl / For De Los)

Though she initially identified with her male birth name, the more she painted herself in Venus-like, feminine poses and with longer hair, her understanding of her identity shifted. Illuminated by her signature scarlet red clothing and tastefully shrouded in sheets, the soft expression on her face was inspired by Raphael’s “La Fornarina.”

“I wasn’t thinking much of it in the moment, but as I kept painting these portraits, I was thinking a lot about myself and thinking about gender and my identity,” Marquez said. “Through my art process, I realized: ‘Maybe I would be a pretty woman.’ That’s what scared me the most from transitioning, was not feeling like I would be beautiful enough.”

In “SagradX,” Marquez’s body is documented vulnerably; easing into her own identity becoming a painfully honest artistic process, which the audience is now invited to watch.

“I feel like I don’t paint very often because when I do, it’s just so emotionally intense. Like when Olivia Rodrigo wrote that she’s scared of her guitar because she couldn’t lie to it, that’s how I feel about painting,” Marquez said. “I can’t lie to my painting.”

Neveah Marquez (Perry Picasshoe) wears long, flowing red clothes.

(Carlin Stiehl / For De Los)

Aside from her self-portraits, Marquez includes photographs of her ice blocks project, in which she placed 25-pound blocks where immigration enforcement raids took place in the Inland Empire last year. These were once safe places that she says have been “desecrated with fear.”

Marquez’s personal journal, which documented her inner joys and struggles over the last year, is also open on a table in the exhibition for guests to read through, draw over, or tear. For Marquez, “SagradX” was the catalyst to “let everything out.”

“If the show is about vulnerability, I need to practice that for myself as well. Otherwise, you would see in the work that there’s a blockage, you can sense when artists aren’t fully honest,” Marquez said. “I want people to question, ‘What is sacred to you?’ If I give you access to something sacred to me, what will you do with that?”

Others had previously voiced their opposition to the Met’s plan to commemorate Galliano.

Julie Menin, speaker of New York City Council, said, external: “After my numerous and lengthy meetings and conversations with the Met, I am pleased that they have agreed to not honour John Galliano.

“From the beginning, I have told them that I strongly disagreed with this decision, and at this rising time of antisemitism, it had served as a gut punch to the Jewish community.

“This is the correct decision, as the harm and pain this was causing was simply unacceptable.”

Meanwhile, Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, which aims to counter antisemitism, said that with antisemitism at “crisis levels”, honouring Galliano would be “misguided”.

“Even Galliano ultimately recognised what the Met should have done from the start,” he added. “This was the wrong move at the wrong moment. Timing matters.”

Galliano is regarded by some as one of the greatest fashion designers and returned to the fashion industry following his conviction, serving as creative director of Margiela for a decade until 2024.

The Pro Bowl is no more, the NFL announced Wednesday, ending an exhibition of the league’s top players that was held in some form almost every year since 1951.

The game wasn’t played in 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but that was the only pause in the postseason event.

The league said 88 players will still be named as Pro Bowl players and honored in Los Angeles after this season. Several flag football events also will take place at that time.

“The Pro Bowl has always been about recognizing the players who distinguish themselves as the very best in the NFL,” league executive vice president Peter O’Reilly said in a statement. “A Pro Bowl selection will return to its original purpose, honoring the best of the best. We want that distinction to carry even greater meaning for the players, their families, their clubs and our fans.”

The Pro Bowl has waned in popularity in recent years. Once a staple in Honolulu, the NFL has moved the event to various cities and even switched from tackle to flag football in 2023.