museum

President Trump on Tuesday said he intends to expand his crusade against what he calls “woke” ideology from the Smithsonian Institution to museums across the country.

“The Museums throughout Washington, but all over the Country are, essentially, the last remaining segment of ‘WOKE,’” Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding that the Smithsonian is “out of control,” and that everything featured in its exhibits discuss, “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.”

To prevent more of the same in other institutions, Trump said he has instructed his attorneys, “to go through the Museums, and start the exact same process that has been done with Colleges and Universities where tremendous progress has been made.”

Contacted for comment, a White House rep said, “President Trump will explore all options and avenues to get the Woke out of the Smithsonian and hold them accountable. He will start with the Smithsonian and then go from there.”

They did not respond to a request for clarification on how the administration intends to vet the content of exhibits at other museums, or whether or not the president intends to issue an executive order with details on a plan.

Trump’s concern about the Smithsonian first became public in late March when he issued an executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which directed Vice President JD Vance to remove “improper ideology” from the Smithsonian’s 21 museums and the National Zoo in Washington, D.C.

Two months later, Trump exerted even greater control when he said he’d fired Kim Sajet, the longtime director of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, for being “a highly partisan person, and a strong supporter of DEI.” It soon became apparent that it wasn’t in Trump’s power to do so and Sajet continued to work.

In early June the Smithsonian rejected Trump’s attempt to fire Sajet after a lengthy Board of Regents meeting. The Regents issued a statement stating that the organization’s secretary, Lonnie G. Bunch, “has the support of the Board of Regents in his authority and management of the Smithsonian.” It was implied that Bunch would be the one making personnel decisions, not Trump.

Still, the statement opened the door to the idea that the Smithsonian might make changes that would appease Trump’s criticism.

“To reinforce our nonpartisan stature, the Board of Regents has directed the Secretary to articulate specific expectations to museum directors and staff regarding content in Smithsonian museums, give directors reasonable time to make any needed changes to ensure unbiased content, and to report back to the Board on progress and any needed personnel changes based on success or lack thereof in making the needed changes,” the statement read.

Sajet resigned a few days later, writing in a note to staff, “From the very beginning, my guiding principle has been to put the museum first. Today, I believe that stepping aside is the best way to serve the institution I hold so deeply in my heart.”

Other museums are ringing alarm bells about what it could mean for art and history at large.

The Japanese American National Museum in L.A.’s Little Tokyo recently issued a statement condemning what it called the, “Reshaping of Smithsonian Museums” to fit “the administration’s historical interpretation.”

“These latest attempts to sanitize and reshape history to fit a narrow ideological narrative amount to nothing less than the erasure of history,” said JANM’s President and Chief Executive Ann Burroughs. “We cannot reverse America’s journey toward a more just and equitable future. Museums must be places of truth, not propaganda — spaces where the next generation can confront the complexity of our nation’s injustices, mistakes, and darkest chapters; where empathy, social responsibility, and the courage to defend democracy are nurtured.”

The American Alliance of Museums also recently issued a statement warning of “growing threats of censorship against U.S. museums.”

“In recent months, museums have faced increasing external pressures to modify, remove, or limit exhibitions and programs,” the statement read. “People trust museums because they rely on independent scholarship and research, uphold high professional standards, and embrace open inquiry. When any directive dictates what should or should not be displayed, it risks narrowing the public’s window into evidence, ideas, and a full range of perspectives.

“This is not just a concern for select institutions,” the statement continued. “These pressures can create a chilling effect across the entire museum sector.”

As Gov. Gavin Newsom prepared to announce that he would take on President Trump’s redistricting plans on behalf of California, scores of federal immigration agents massed outside the venue Thursday.

Newsom was set to speak at the Japanese American National Museum in downtown Los Angeles, when Border Patrol Sector Chief Greg Bovino, who has been leading the immigration operations in California, arrived in Little Tokyo, flanked by agents in helmets, camouflage, masks and holding guns.

“We’re here making Los Angeles a safer place since we won’t have politicians that’ll do that, we do that ourselves,” Bovino told a Fox 11 reporter in Little Tokyo. “We’re glad to be here, we’re not going anywhere.”

When the reporter noted that Newsom was nearby, Bovino responded, “I don’t know where he’s at.”

Newsom’s office took to X to share that agents were outside, posting: “BORDER PATROL HAS SHOWED UP AT OUR BIG BEAUTIFUL PRESS CONFERENCE! WE WILL NOT BE INTIMIDATED!”

The apparent raid Thursday, during which one person was detained, comes amid calls from elected officials for an end to renewed immigration operations across the L.A. area. Federal agents have carried out a string of raids over the past week, arresting several people at car washes and Home Depot stores.

Immigrant advocates and city leaders had hoped such sweeps had stopped with a federal judge’s July order, affirmed by a U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel on Aug. 1. The courts ruled that immigration officials cannot racially profile people or use roving patrols to target immigrants.

In a press conference outside of the museum following the operation, Mayor Karen Bass said, “there’s no way this was a coincidence.”

“This was widely publicized that the governor and many of our other elected officials were having a press conference to talk about redistricting, and they decided they were going to come and thumb their nose in front of the governor’s face. Why would you do that? That is unbelievably disrespectful, it’s a provocative act,” Bass said.

“They’re talking about disorder in Los Angeles,” the mayor said, “and they are the source of the disorder in Los Angeles right now.”

In an emailed response, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said Bass, “must be misinformed.”

“Our law enforcement operations are about enforcing the law — not about Gavin Newsom,” she said. McLaughlin added that U.S. Customs and Border Protection “patrols all areas of Los Angeles every day with over 40 teams on the ground to make LA safe.”

Newsom and Democratic allies, including organized labor, were at the Democracy Center at the Japanese American National Museum to announce the launch of a campaign for a ballot measure which, if approved by voters, would redraw the state’s congressional maps to favor Democrats before the 2026 midterms.

William T. Fujioka, chair of the Board of Trustees of the Japanese American National Museum, was attending the Newsom press conference when federal agents jumped out of SUVs just feet away from him in front of the museum.

Video captured of the scene showed federal agents on either side of a man, in a red shirt and jeans, whose hands were cuffed behind his back. As a passerby shouted that they were “cowards,” Bovino said “well done.”

Carlos Franco said he works with Angel, the man who was arrested by federal agents, and said Angel was in Little Tokyo delivering strawberries. His delivery van was still parked outside the museum more than an hour after he was arrested, Franco said. Franco came straight to the scene after he received calls that his coworker had been arrested.

Angel is a “father, a family man,” Franco added.

“He was just doing his normal delivery to the courthouse,” Franco said. “It’s pretty sad, because I’ve got to go to work tomorrow, and Angel isn’t going to be there.”

Saying he was shaken by his friend’s apprehension, Franco advised everyone to “be careful in general, whether you’re undocumented or not.”

DHS did not immediately respond to questions about the arrest.

Fujioka said the agents’ appearance in Little Tokyo “is a parallel of what happened in 1942,” and noting that the museum was built on the location where L.A. residents of Japanese descent “were told to come here and put on buses and sent to camps.”

At 73, Fujioka is a third-generation Japanese American. He said about 20 people were arrested during ICE raids two weeks ago at area restaurants and businesses in and near Little Tokyo Village Plaza.

“What’s happening right now is reprehensible,” he said. “One of the fallacies is that this is only targeting Latinos. If you look at the Vietnamese, Cambodian, Hmong, Chinese, even Japanese communities, they’re being picked up right in court.”

Speaking with community leaders on L.A.’s Westside early Thursday morning, Bass condemned the continued raids and said she believed they violated the temporary restraining order upheld by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this month.

“Even though we’ve had two successful court decisions, the administration continues with their unconstitutional behavior. Coming and going to Home Depot stores, continuing to chase people through parking lots, detaining them for no particular reason under the auspices that they could be criminals, [it] comes down to one thing — and that is racial profiling,” Bass said.

The Trump administration last week petitioned the Supreme Court to allow mass deportation efforts across Southern California, seeking to lift a ban on “roving patrols” implemented after a lower court found such tactics likely violate the 4th Amendment.

“We know the next step is to go to the Supreme Court, and we are hoping that we will have a good decision there,” Bass said. “But the question looms before us, even if we do have a positive court decision: ‘Will the administration follow the rule of law?’”

Times staff writer Laura J. Nelson contributed to this report.

MIAMI — For decades, its powerful lighthouse illuminated Miami’s Biscayne Bay, and during the height of the Cold War, what was known as the Freedom Tower stood as a beacon of hope for hundreds of thousands of Cubans fleeing communist rule.

The 14-story Spanish Revival skyscraper was where, from 1962 to 1974, the U.S. State Department welcomed Cuban refugees with medical services, English classes, and comfort kits containing essentials and something wholly exotic to the new arrivals: peanut butter.

After decades of neglect, what was once Miami’s tallest building is getting a well-deserved facelift. Next month, it will reopen as a museum honoring the history of Cuban exiles with immersive, state-of-the-art exhibits that explore the meaning of migration, freedom and homeland.

Ellis Island of the South

The reopening of what’s dubbed the Ellis Island of the South comes at a sensitive moment. Cuban Americans — who dominate politics in Miami — voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump in the last presidential election. But the president’s crackdown on migrants — including Cubans — is increasingly viewed as a betrayal and has left many second-guessing that support. Not surprisingly, recent protests against Trump have gathered outside the tower.

The organizers of the museum, while tiptoeing around the present-day politics, are nonetheless unapologetic in their embrace of the American dream. In Miami, a thriving crossroads where 70% of residents speak Spanish as their first language and more than half are foreign-born, compassion for migrants runs deep.

“It’s cyclical,” said Rene Ramos, who as head archivist of Miami Dade College participated in the $65 million renovation led by the school. “This country has had moments where it clearly saw the value of immigrants and other moments when it did not. What we’re doing here is reminding people what immigrants can accomplish when they’re given the opportunity.”

The iconic building opened in 1925 as the headquarters of the once-acclaimed Miami Daily News, which shuttered decades ago. It was designed in the style of a Moorish bell tower from Seville, Spain, by the New York architectural firm Schultze & Weaver, which was behind some of the most glamorous hotels, theaters and office towers of the era.

It was renamed the Freedom Tower when President John F. Kennedy launched the Cuban Refugee Assistance Program to resettle the streams of middle-class individuals and families fleeing Fidel Castro’s revolution. It’s estimated that nearly 400,000 Cubans relied on services provided at the tower by the U.S. government in coordination with the then-fledgling Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Miami. The total cost of the refugee assistance ran over $730 million by 1971 — almost $6 billion in today’s dollars — a U.S. government report from that year found.

A safe place for refugees

Known to the Spanish-speaking migrants as “El Refugio,” or “The Refuge,” it was a safe place to get vaccines, fill out paperwork and receive financial assistance of around $120 per month. In the Grand Hall, with its giant windows and Corinthian columns, the Pizarra de la Suerte — the Bulletin Board of Good Luck — carried job notices to help the Cubans adjust to their new life, according to a replica of the hall in the museum.

At the time, metropolitan Miami was a tropical tourist town, with fewer than 1 million inhabitants. Most émigrés fanned out across the United States.

“They weren’t staying in Miami because they didn’t want warmth and sunshine. There were no jobs,” said Madeline Pumariega, the president of Miami Dade College, whose own Cuban parents relocated to Amarillo, Texas, after arriving here.

But over time, the exiles would trudge back from the cold and snow to put their unmistakable Cuban stamp on what would become one of America’s most vibrant cultural and economic hubs.

Jorge Malagón, who teaches history at Miami Dade College, was just 5 when he arrived. But he still wells up recalling the hardship of his departure — when Cuban customs officials ripped open his teddy bear looking for contraband jewelry — and arriving in Miami on a “Freedom Flight” paid for by the U.S. government and being immediately shuttled in a school bus from the tarmac to the Freedom Tower.

“The memories never go away,” said Malagón, who recalls being welcomed with a bar of unfamiliar peanut butter and a block of government cheese. “To this day, a grilled cheese sandwich with cheap, Velveeta processed cheese is still comfort food to me.”

The Freedom Tower, a national historic landmark, was long ago overtaken by Miami’s fast-growing steel and glass skyline. Abandoned for years, it was rescued in 1997 by Cuban American businessman Jorge Mas Canosa, a top exile opponent of Castro. He later sold it to a prominent Cuban American family and it was then donated to Miami Dade College.

Even in a dilapidated state, the tower remained a mecca of the Cuban diaspora. In 2003, tens of thousands of salsa fans gathered here to show their respects to Cuban-born singer Celia Cruz. And Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose parents migrated from Cuba, used it as the backdrop to announce his bid for the U.S. presidency in 2015.

The current restoration was funded by $25 million investment from the state of Florida, with additional funding from Miami Dade College, private donors and federal government grants.

Galleries designed by the same firm behind New York City’s National September 11 Memorial & Museum provide a gripping account of the Cuban American journey to freedom. They include exhibits dedicated to Victims of Communism, the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion that the CIA organized against Castro, and the 14,000 unaccompanied minors sent by their parents as part of the U.S.-led Operation Peter Pan.

Giant media screens project scenes of protest and acts of courage by newer residents of the Magic City fleeing persecution in Venezuela, Haiti and Nicaragua. There’s also a makeshift recording studio for those who passed through the Freedom Tower to add their testimony to an archive of over 300 oral history interviews with exiles, including prominent voices like singer Gloria Estefan.

Emerging from the dark galleries of often traumatic stories of dislocation and exile, the museum’s final stop is a gallery flooded with all the sun, salsa music and pastel hues that make modern-day Miami so beloved.

“Miami and the world would not be what it is today without them,” said Pumariega. “That’s important and so is the contributions that immigrants play in our country, and I think will continue to play beyond this moment.”

Goodman writes for the Associated Press.

Maybe you’ve heard about San Francisco’s doom loop. But have you met its jumbo nude?

As just about any San Franciscan could tell you, “doom loop” is shorthand for the city’s post-pandemic troubles. Many of those worries stem from dwindling demand for office space, but would-be visitors have also been nervous about crime and withering retail energy.

That brings us to the jumbo nude. It’s a 45-foot, semi-translucent sculpture of a woman now standing at the foot of Market Street, officially named R-Evolution. Not everyone loves her, but she is one among many new or improved elements attracting locals and visitors these days.

Even with San Francisco’s office vacancy rate hovering around 35%, the sun keeps rising and visitors keep smiling, most of them, much of the time.

Make your way to the city and you can see major park upgrades at the Presidio and Ocean Beach. Or you can frolic among massive balloon installations, vintage photo booths and ‘60s artifacts in permanent and pop-up places that bill themselves as museums.

There’s also the prospect of a new “bay lights” show with 50,000 illumination points on the Bay Bridge. (Those lights were supposed to be on by now, but installation snags led to a delay; organizers say they’re hoping to be ready “sometime this fall.”)

Also, the food doesn’t hurt. When our critic Bill Addison chose 101 of his favorite California restaurants recently, 35 of them were in San Francisco.

Meanwhile, crime has been falling since early 2023, especially this year. Tourist arrivals are 11% behind 2019 but have grown steadily since 2021.

As this list attests, there’s plenty to see. But first, we should talk about a few places not on this list.

One is Fisherman’s Wharf. It has added a SkyStar Ferris wheel (which migrated from Golden Gate Park in 2023) and the Port of San Francisco says it will soon begin a big redevelopment, but the area remains dominated by T-shirt shops and multiple old-school restaurants that have been shuttered since the pandemic. The neighborhood was to have added a Museum of Failure this year but, not kidding, the enterprise collapsed amid an intellectual property dispute before opening. The storefront “failure” sign was still up in June, creating the snarkiest photo op ever.

Another mixed bag is Union Square, whose hotels, department stores and passing cable cars have made it the starting point for legions of tourists through the decades. The square is still pleasant by day, with young visitors drawn to assorted free games (ping-pong, badminton, cornhole) while cable cars pass, tourists line up for Big Bus tours and guests at the adjacent Beacon Grand Hotel (formerly the Sir Francis Drake) explore the neighborhood. But many key retailers have shuttered, including Saks Fifth Avenue and Nordstrom, and Macy’s will follow. (The company has said it will close as soon as it finds a buyer for the property.)

“We feel safe here. But kind of disappointed by all the closures,” said Melinda Parker, visiting San Francisco with her husband from Boise. Also, Parker said, “a city should be judged on the quality of its public toilets. They have one here, and it’s closed.”

Still, there are more than enough bright spots to light up a San Francisco visit. Let’s go back for a second to Tunnel Tops, one of the city’s recently improved park spaces. You grab a snack, commandeer a patio table and gaze upon the Presidio and Golden Gate. A family debate erupts over whether to hit a museum next or try an urban hike. This is a sort of problem, but a nice choice to have. And San Francisco now offers plenty like that.

NEW YORK — It would seem the most straightforward of notions: A thing takes place, and it goes into the history books or is added to museum exhibits. But whether something even gets remembered and how — particularly when it comes to the history of a country and its leader — can become complex, especially when the leader is Donald Trump.

The latest example of that came Friday, when the Smithsonian Institution said it had removed a reference to Trump’s 2019 and 2021 impeachments from a panel in an exhibition about the American presidency. Trump has pressed institutions and agencies under federal oversight, often through the pressure of funding, to focus on the country’s achievements and progress and away from things he terms “divisive.”

The Smithsonian on Saturday denied getting pressure from the Trump administration to remove the reference, which had been installed as part of a temporary addition in 2021. The exhibit “will be updated in the coming weeks to reflect all impeachment proceedings in our nation’s history,” the museum said in a statement.

In a statement that did not directly address the impeachment references, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said: “We are fully supportive of updating displays to highlight American greatness.”

But is history intended to highlight or to document — to report what happened, or to serve a desired narrative? The answer, as with most things about the past, can be complicated.

American stories

The Smithsonian’s move comes as the Trump administration has asserted its dominion over many American institutions, such as removing the name of a gay rights activist from a Navy ship, pushing for Republican supporters in Congress to defund the Corp. for Public Broadcasting — prompting its elimination — and getting rid of the leadership at the Kennedy Center.

“Based on what we have been seeing, this is part of a broader effort by the president to influence and shape how history is depicted at museums, national parks and schools,” said Julian E. Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. “Not only is he pushing a specific narrative of the United States but, in this case, trying to influence how Americans learn about his own role in history.”

It’s not a new struggle, in the world generally and the political world particularly. There is power in being able to shape how things are remembered, if they are remembered at all — who was there, who took part, who was responsible, what happened to lead up to that point in history. And the human beings who run things have often extended their authority to the stories told about them.

In China, for example, references to the June 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square are forbidden and meticulously regulated by the ruling Communist Party government. In Soviet-era Russia, officials who ran afoul of leaders such as Josef Stalin disappeared not only from the government itself but from photographs and history books where they once appeared.

Jason Stanley, an expert on authoritarianism, said controlling what and how people learn of their past has long been used as a vital tool to maintain power. Stanley has made his views about the Trump administration clear; he recently left Yale University to join the University of Toronto, citing concerns over the U.S. political situation.

“If they don’t control the historical narrative,” he said, “then they can’t create the kind of fake history that props up their politics.”

Framing history

In the United States, presidents and their families have used their power to shape history and calibrate their own images. Jackie Kennedy insisted on cuts in William Manchester’s book on her husband’s 1963 assassination, “The Death of a President.” Ronald Reagan and his wife got a cable TV channel to release a carefully calibrated documentary about him. Those around Franklin D. Roosevelt, including journalists of the era, took pains to mask the effects of paralysis on his body and his mobility.

Trump, though, has asserted far greater control — a sitting president encouraging an atmosphere where institutions can feel compelled to choose between him and the facts, whether he calls for it directly or not.

“We are constantly trying to position ourselves in history as citizens — as citizens of the country, citizens of the world,” said Robin Wagner-Pacifici, professor emerita of sociology at the New School for Social Research. “So part of these exhibits and monuments are also about situating us in time. And without it, it’s very hard for us to situate ourselves in history because it seems like we just kind of burst forth from the Earth.”

Timothy Naftali, director of the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda from 2007 to 2011, presided over its overhaul to offer a more objective presentation of Watergate — one not beholden to the president’s loyalists. In an interview Friday, he said he was “concerned and disappointed” about the Smithsonian decision. Naftali, now a senior researcher at Columbia University, said that museum directors “should have red lines” and that he considered one of them to be the removal of the Trump impeachment panel.

While it might seem inconsequential for someone in power to care about a museum’s offerings, Wagner-Pacifici says Trump’s outlook on history and his role in it — earlier this year, he said the Smithsonian had “come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology” — shows how important those matters are to people in authority.

“You might say about that person, whoever that person is, their power is so immense and their legitimacy is so stable and so sort of monumental that why would they bother with things like this … why would they bother to waste their energy and effort on that?” Wagner-Pacifici said. Her conclusion: “The legitimacy of those in power has to be reconstituted constantly. They can never rest on their laurels.”

Hajela and Italie write for the Associated Press.

Smithsonian Institution says it will update exhibit to reflect all impeachments of US presidents following backlash.

The parent organisation of a top-visited history museum in the United States has denied that political pressure played a role in the removal of a display about the impeachments of US President Donald Trump.

The Smithsonian Institution, which runs the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC, said on Saturday that it removed the “temporary” placard for failing to meet the museum’s standards in “appearance, location, timeline, and overall presentation”.

“It was not consistent with other sections in the exhibit and moreover blocked the view of the objects inside its case. For these reasons, we removed the placard,” the institution said in a statement.

“We were not asked by any Administration or other government officials to remove content from the exhibit.”

The Smithsonian Institution, which runs 21 museums and the National Zoo, said the impeachment section of the museum would be updated in the coming weeks to “reflect all impeachment proceedings in our nation’s history”.

The statement comes after The Washington Post on Thursday reported that the museum removed an explicit reference to Trump’s impeachments last month, resulting in its exhibit about impeachment incorrectly stating that “only three presidents have seriously faced removal”.

The Post, citing an unnamed person familiar with the exhibit plans, said the display was taken down following a “content review that the Smithsonian agreed to undertake following pressure from the White House to remove an art museum director”.

The museum’s removal of the display drew swift backlash, with critics of Trump casting the development as the latest capitulation to the whims of an authoritarian president.

“You can run, but you cannot hide from the judgment of history,” Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Friday.

“So, here’s my message to the president: no matter what exhibits you try to distort, the American people will never forget that you were impeached – not once, but twice.”

Trump has, with lightning speed, moved to exert greater control over political, cultural and media institutions as part of his transformative “Make America Great Again” agenda.

In March, the US president signed an executive order to remove “improper ideology” from the Smithsonian Institution’s properties and deny funding for exhibits that “degrade shared American values” or “divide Americans based on race”.

During his first term, Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives twice, in 2019 and 2021, but he was acquitted by the Senate on both occasions.

He was the third US president to be impeached, after Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, and the only US president to be impeached twice.

Former President Richard Nixon faced near-certain impeachment before his resignation in 1974 in the wake of the Watergate scandal.

NEW YORK — The Smithsonian Institution has removed from an exhibit a reference to President Trump’s two impeachments, a decision that comes as the White House exerts pressure to offer a more positive — and selective — view of American history. A spokesperson said the exhibit eventually “will include all impeachments.”

A label referring to impeachment had been added in 2021 to the National Museum for American History’s exhibit on the American presidency, in a section called “Limits of Presidential Power.” Smithsonian spokesperson Phillip Zimmerman said Friday that the section, which includes materials on the impeachment of President Clinton and the Watergate scandal that helped lead to President Nixon’s resignation, needed to be overhauled. He said the decision came after the museum was “reviewing our legacy content recently.”

“Because the other topics in this section had not been updated since 2008, the decision was made to restore the Impeachment case back to its 2008 appearance,” Zimmerman said in an email.

He said that in September 2021, the museum installed a temporary label on content concerning Trump’s impeachments. “It was intended to be a short-term measure to address current events at the time,” he said. But the label remained in place.

“A large permanent gallery like the American Presidency that opened in 2000 requires a significant amount of time and funding to update and renew,” he said. “A future and updated exhibit will include all impeachments.”

White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said the Smithsonian has “highlighted divisive DEI exhibits which are out of touch with mainstream America” for too long.

“We are fully supportive of updating displays to highlight American greatness,” he said in a statement that did not address the missing reference to Trump’s impeachments.

Trump’s impeachments were more recent

Trump is the only president to have been impeached twice — in 2019, for pushing Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden, who would defeat Trump in the 2020 election; and in 2021 for “incitement of insurrection,” a reference to the Jan. 6, 2021, siege of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters attempting to halt congressional certification of Biden’s victory.

The Democratic majority in the House voted each time for impeachment. The Republican-led Senate each time acquitted Trump. Soon after Trump’s first impeachment, the history museum issued a statement saying that curators “will determine which objects best represent these historic events for inclusion in the national collection.”

Since returning to office in January, Trump has cut funding, forced out officials and otherwise demanded changes across a range of Washington cultural institutions, including the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress, the Kennedy Center and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The current administration has targeted interpretations of history

In March, Trump issued an executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” in which he alleged that the Smithsonian was beholden to “a divisive, race-centered ideology.” He has placed Vice President JD Vance in charge of an effort to ensure no funding goes to “exhibits or programs that degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with Federal law and policy.”

Congressional Democrats issued a statement in April calling Trump’s order a “flagrant attempt to erase Black history.”

Last week, artist Amy Sherald canceled a planned exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery after officials raised concerns over her painting “Trans Forming Liberty, 2024,” in which she depicts a nonbinary transgender person posing as the Statue of Liberty. Sherald is best known for her painting of then-First Lady Michelle Obama, which was commissioned by the Portrait Gallery.

Founded in the 19th century, the Smithsonian oversees a network of cultural centers that includes the portrait gallery, the history museum, the National Zoo and the Smithsonian Gardens. News of the Trump impeachment label being removed was first reported by the Washington Post.

Italie writes for the Associated Press.

For thousands of years, the Chumash people lived along California’s Central Coast and on its Channel Islands. Then the newcomers arrived — Spanish explorers, Catholic missionaries, Mexican rancheros, California settlers — and the Chumash way of life was dismantled, their people enslaved and their traditions, culture and language forbidden.

So it’s hardly surprising that the main message at the new Santa Ynez Chumash Museum and Cultural Center is as poignant as it is defiant: “We are the first people. And we are still here.”

The Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians Elders Council commissioned New Mexico sculptor George Rivera to create this arresting bronze sculpture, “Keeping Our Culture Alive,” to stand near the entrance to the museum.

(Patrick W. Price)

The museum, which opened in May, sits on Highway 246 and Edison Street in tiny Santa Ynez, just across the road from Chumash Casino Resort operated by the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians. But where the resort is a sleek, modern high-rise, the low-lying museum and lushly landscaped grounds are dedicated to the past, showcasing the stories, craftsmanship and even the plants of the Chumash, whose bands ranged along the coast from Malibu to Morro Bay and as far inland as the San Joaquin Valley, said Nakia Zavalla, the tribal historic preservation officer and cultural director of the Santa Ynez band.

While the focus is on the past, however, the museum’s storytelling is high-tech, with lots of interactive displays that activate with just the wave of a hand. The tribe doesn’t permit photos inside the museum, and the few photos provided for publication don’t really do the exhibits justice, so believe me when I say the displays are far more engaging than just shelves of artifacts and well worth a visit for adults and children.

From the large parking lot, the path to the entrance winds along a man-made recirculating stream lush with spiky, deep-green mounds of deergrass (Muhlenbergia rigens), feathery sandbar willow (Salix exigua) and a variety of juncus such as basket rush (Juncus textilis), used for making the tribe’s intricate baskets. The 3.5-acre grounds as well as the museum itself were designed by Jones & Jones Architects of Seattle, which also designed the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

The main entrance is visually stunning, bringing visitors inside a larger-than-life “ap” (pronounced ahp), a towering representation of the traditional Chumash dwellings made from willow branches and dried leaves of tule plants, such as hardstem bulrush (Schoenoplectus acutus), which also grows on the grounds. The museum’s entry is like a giant dome with a big round skylight at the top. The large, sloping walls feature projections of birds taking flight and sparks rising from the faux firepit in the center of the room, along with detailed illustrations recognizing the region’s Chumash bands.

The broad curving walls and round skylight of the giant dome-shaped “ap” create a distinctive and dramatic entrance to the Santa Ynez Chumash Museum and Cultura Center.

(Patrick W. Price)

Inside, the exhibits are arranged in a meandering flow (just follow the blue line) that introduces visitors to a large and engaging range of interactive displays and stories, many of which were provided by elder Maria del Refugio Solares, Zavalla’s “fifth great-grandmother” and one of the last native speakers of the Chumash language Samala. Some tribal members are trying to resurrect Samala through classes and “just getting together and speaking with each other,” said Zavalla. “It’s opened so many doors to understanding our culture, our medicinal plants and ceremonies.”

Solares died in 1923 at 81, but left wax cylinder recordings of Chumash songs, stories and translations with linguist and Native American language ethnologist John Peabody Harrington. Incorporating Solares’ songs and stories makes the exhibits come alive.

For instance, near the beginning of the permanent exhibit there is a cave-like room explaining the Chumash understanding of the universe, which is divided into three levels. The upper world is inhabited by celestial Sky People, such as Sun and Sky Coyote, whose peón gambling games affected the seasons for everything from harvesting acorns to hunting game. The dark, eerie lower world is dominated by two giant rattlesnakes whose writhings cause the ground in the middle world — our world — to shake.

The phases of the moon? Those are caused by the way Slo’w, the Sky Eagle, stretches his wings. Thunder? The result of two brothers in the Upper World playing a rowdy stick game.

Nearby, an alcove features a preserved California condor known as AC8, the last female in the wild who was taken into captivity in 1986 to become part of a breeding program to rebuild the critically endangered population of North America’s largest land bird. In the exhibit, you must look up to see her, preserved as if in flight, her massive wings outstretched, while below is a miniature depiction of the local hills with a small gliding shadow of a condor in flight.

Further on are hunting outfits made from deer and bear heads and skins, examples of traditional Chumash stick and gambling games, and stuffed animals for children that were — literally — dead, cuddly rabbits carefully preserved. There are exquisite medallions and hair ornaments made from iridescent abalone shells and strings of Chumash currency — tiny, doughnut-shaped beads created from carefully cut olivella shells.

A coiled line with large silver hooks, attached to a smooth, palm-size rock was once used for fishing and is now part of the exhibit at the Santa Ynez Chumash Museum and Cultural Center.

(From the Santa Ynez Chumash Museum and Cultural Center)

And of course, there are multiple examples of Chumash basket weaving, from the tightly woven vessels used to hold food and even water to the carriers designed to securely tote babies. The museum includes more recent history as well, such as the startling news that running water wasn’t available on the reservation until 1969.

Outside, in the 3.5-acre cultural park, you can follow a winding trail through the Ancestor’s Grove — young coast live oak trees, each with a marker honoring a deceased tribal elder — to view the long redwood plank canoe known as a tomol, big enough to seat at least six adults and used annually to re-create the trips their ancestors made between the mainland and the Channel Islands. The park also features another recirculating stream and 100 species of native plants that would have provided food, shelter and habitat in the region before the explorers and colonists arrived.

The landscape is constantly changing, said Megan Carey, the museum’s collections and archives manager. “One of my favorite things about the Culture Park is that you see something different, something blooming, every week.”

A condor’s-eye view of the sprawling Santa Ynez Chumash Museum and Cultural Center, with its 3.5 acres of paths through 100 species of hyperlocal native plants.

(From the Santa Ynez Chumash Museum and Cultural Center)

Picture this: A gaggle of 21-year-olds squeeze into a booth, pull the curtain and smile for the camera. After a series of mysterious analog rumblings, the booth expels a tiny strip of prints. The posers crowd in to savor the tiny film prints — and raise their cameras to snap digital images of them.

While boomers blink in puzzlement, legions of digital natives have embraced the old-school ritual and machinery of the photo booth — and the people at San Francisco-based Photomatica are among those building empires on that enthusiasm. Their latest venture: a Photo Booth Museum in Silver Lake, which opens Thursday.

For anyone who grew up with digital photography, a photo booth is a sort of visual adventure — a selfie with “analog magic.” And at $6.50 to $8.50 for a strip of four photos, it’s more affordable than plenty of other entertainment options. Photomatica, one of several companies riding the photo booth wave, has been restoring and operating these contraptions since 2010. This is the company’s second “museum.”

At the new L.A. site at 3827 W. Sunset Blvd. (near Hyperion Avenue), the company has gathered four restored analog photo booths — two of which date to the 1950s — and one digital booth. The 1,350-square-foot space is designed to look “as if you walked into a Wes Anderson movie set,” said spokeswoman Kelsey Schmidt.

The machines are retrofitted to accept credit cards and Apple Pay, but otherwise the technology is original on the old machines — which means no retakes and a 3-to-5-minute wait for image processing. The film-based booths print black-and-white images only; the digital booth offers a choice of color or black and white.

Is this at all like a traditional museum experience? No. It’s a for-profit venture. Though visitors might learn a little about photography history, the core activity is making and celebrating selfies. So far, Schmidt said, the booths have been especially popular with people under 25, especially female visitors.

A birthday group gathers for a snapshot in the Photo Booth Museum, San Francisco.

(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)

Photomatica rents out and operates about 250 booths (including bars, restaurants, hotels, music venues and special events) nationwide. The company hatched the museum idea after drawing immediate crowds with a booth in the Photoworks film lab on Market Street in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood.

On its Thursday opening night, the L.A. Photo Booth Museum will operate from 6 to 10 p.m., offering up a limited number of free photo sessions and key chains. Otherwise, daily hours will be 1 to 9 p.m.

The concrete walls of the David Geffen Galleries were still bare Thursday evening. The landscaping outside was still settling in, and pockets of construction were still visible. But the minute the music poured out of the upstairs entryway, it finally hit: The new LACMA was actually here.

After five years of construction, so much debate about its scale, design and ambitions, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art held its first event Thursday night inside the Peter Zumthor-designed building. A sprawling, immersive concert by composer and SoCal jazz hero Kamasi Washington called for multiple bands, each with about a dozen musicians, to play site-specific arrangements throughout the empty galleries before art has been installed. A woodwind ensemble overlooked Park La Brea through floor-to-ceiling glass; a choir stacked harmonies that floated over the span of the structure as it crossed Wilshire Boulevard.

Hundreds of VIPs and members of the media took it all in. The project has its skeptics, including how the museum’s permanent collection will function in it. But for now, museum members could slink about the echoing halls of L.A.’s newest landmark and ponder the possibilities.

Guests at the sneak peek inside the new building Thursday cross a glass-lined expanse that crosses over Wilshire Boulevard.

LACMA Director Michael Govan addresses members of the media assembled for the first public peek inside the empty building, which still needs to complete some construction details and install the art before opening, targeted for April 2026.

The design of the museum has morphed over the years, from a dark, curvaceous amoeba-like form that echoed the nearby La Brea Tar Pits to a design that retains the curves up top but shifts to rectilinear glass on the galleries level below.

The preview event Thursday featured musicians staged throughout the building.

Preview events give museum members a chance to view Zumthor’s design before art is installed. One of the lingering questions is how the concrete walls will fare given the museum’s new plan to shift from permanent collection displays to ever-rotating exhibitions — and all the rehanging of artworks that will be required.

The setting sun casts long shadows from visitors looking out toward the rooftop of Renzo Piano’s Resnick Pavilion and, off in the distance on the left, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures’ domed terrace.

Artist Tony Smith’s installation “Smoke” has a new home outside the David Geffen Galleries. The museum recently announced the addition of a forthcoming Jeff Koons’ sculpture, “Split-Rocker.”

When the new building opens in April 2026, LACMA has said, the ticketing process will be handled at kiosks on the ground level.

Inside another one of the galleries. Some of the architecture-circle speculation about the building has centered on the finish of the building’s concrete, inside and out.

The view from the David Geffen Galleries as it crosses Wilshire Boulevard.

Times art critic Christopher Knight, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his early analysis of the LACMA building plan, and Times music critic Mark Swed attended the preview concert event Thursday. Check back for their first impressions of the new space.

“The general public was admitted to new Los Angeles County Museum of Art for the first time on Friday night — not to look at art but to listen to music,” wrote Times music critic Albert Goldberg in 1965. Exactly 70 years and three months later, history repeated itself.

Thursday night was the first time the public was allowed into LACMA’s David Geffen Galleries. The occasion was a massive sonic event led by jazz saxophonist Kamasi Washington. More than a hundred musicians spread out in nine groups along 900-foot serpentine route of Peter Zumthor’s new building, still empty of art.

The celebration, which drew arts and civic leaders for the first of three preview nights, was far grander than the concert on March 26,1965, that opened LACMA’s Leo S. Bing Theatre the night before the doors opened to the museum’s original galleries. That occasion, a program by the legendary Monday Evening Concerts in which Pierre Boulez conducted the premiere of his “Éclat,” helped symbolize an exuberant L.A. coming of age, with the Music Center having opened three months earlier.

Monday Evening Concerts had been a true L.A. event drawing local musical celebrities including Igor Stravinsky and showing off L.A.’s exceptional musicians. The mandolinist in “Éclat,” for instance, was Sol Babitz, the father of the late, quintessential L.A. writer Eve Babitz. Boulez, an explosive composer, eventually turned the 10-minute “‘Éclat,’ for 15 instruments” into a 25-minute orchestral masterpiece, “Éclat/Multiples,” and left unfinished sketches behind to extend that to a full hour.

Kamasi Washington performing Thursday night.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Washington turned out to be the ideal radical expansionist to follow in Boulez’s footsteps for the new LACMA, with a resplendent enlargement of his 2018 half-hour EP, “Harmony of Difference.” The short tracks — “Desire,” “Knowledge,” “Perspective,” “Humility,” “Integrity” and “Truth” — employ nearly three dozen musicians in bursts of effusive wonder.

For LACMA, Washington tripled the number of musicians and the length. What some critics thought were bursts of bluster, however enthralling, became outright splendor. Introducing the program, LACMA Director Michael Govan called it an event that has never happened before and may never happen again. I got little sense of what this building will be like as a museum with art on the walls, but it’s a great space for thinking big musically and, in the process, for finding hope in an L.A. this year beset by fires and fear-inducing troops on our streets.

Washington is one of our rare musicians who thrives on excess. He has long been encouraged to aim toward concision, especially in his longer numbers, in which his untiring improvisations can become exhausting in their many climaxes. But that misses the point. I’ve never heard him play anything, short or long, that couldn’t have been three times longer. His vision is vast, and he needs space.

In the David Geffen Galleries, he got it. The nine ensembles included a large mixed band that he headed, along with ensembles of strings, brass, woodwinds and choruses. Each played unique arrangements of the songs, not quite synchronized, but if you ambled the long walkways, you heard the material in different contexts as though this were sonic surrealism.

A crowd gathers to watch Washington on Thursday.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Acoustically, the Geffen is a weird combination. The large glass windows and angled concrete walls reflect sound in very different ways. Dozens of spaces vary in shape, size and acoustical properties. During a media tour earlier in the day, I found less echo than might be expected, though each space had its own peculiarities.

Washington’s ensembles were all carefully amplified and sounded surprisingly liquid, which made walking a delight as the sounds of different ensembles came in and out of focus. A chorus’ effusiveness gradually morphed into an ecstatic Washington saxophone solo down the way that then became a woodwind choir that had an organ-like quality. The whole building felt alive.

There was also the visual element. The concert took place at sunset, the light through the large windows ever changing, the “Harmony of Difference” becoming the differences of the bubbling tar pits nearby or the street life on Wilshire or LACMA’s Pavilion for Japanese Art, which looks lovely from the new galleries.

Govan’s vision is of a place where art of all kinds from all over comes together, turning the galleries into a promenade of discovery.

LACMA Director Michael Govan addressing the crowd Thursday night before Kamasi Washington performs.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Musically, this falls more in line with John Cage’s “Musicircus,” in which any number of musical ensembles perform at chance-derived times as a carnival of musical difference — something for which the Geffen Galleries is all but tailor-made. Nevertheless, Washington brilliantly demonstrated the new building’s potential for dance, opera, even theater.

The museum may not have made performance a priority in recent years, but Washington also reminded us that the premiere of Boulez’ “Éclat” put music in LACMA’s DNA. Seven decades on, Zumthor, whether he intended it or not, now challenges LACMA to become LACMAP: Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Performance.

Ever since Brutalist architecture emerged in the 1950s, the style has been polarizing. Concrete might be gray, but public response rarely enters into gray areas. The buildings’ raw, unfinished concrete forms, typically simple, are loved or hated.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is nearing completion of its own new Brutalist building, designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, 82, to house the permanent collection of paintings, sculptures and other works of art. For three days and one evening, beginning July 3, museum members will get a sneak peek at the empty interior spaces of the David Geffen Galleries. The fully finished project, with art installed, doesn’t open until April 2026.

Concrete is not eco-friendly, either in production or in results like heat magnification, and some celebrated architects with a social justice bent refuse to use it. But its visual power is undeniable — a strength of the huge Zumthor design. His poured-in-place concrete gobbles 347,500 square feet, including 110,000 square feet in 90 exhibition galleries and corridors lofted 30 feet above ground atop seven massive piers, crossing Wilshire Boulevard.

Some of my favorite art museum buildings are Brutalist in design, like Marcel Breuer’s fortress-like former Whitney in New York (1966), and Louis Kahn’s refined classicism at the Kimbell in Fort Worth (1972). Brad Cloepfil’s Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, which may be the best new American museum built for art in the last 15 years, uses concrete brilliantly to illuminate Still’s rugged painting motifs. Zumthor’s Geffen doesn’t come close.

I’ve written a lot about the long-aborning LACMA project over the last dozen years, focused on the design’s negative impact on the museum program, but that’s now baked in. (The museum pegs the building cost at $720 million, but sources have told me the entire project cost is closer to $835 million.) L.A.’s encyclopedic museum, with a global permanent collection simply installed geographically as straightforward chronology, is dead, and the Geffen Galleries prevent it from ever coming back. Changing theme shows drawn from the collection, curatorially driven, are the new agenda.

Horrizontal light enters from floor-to-ceiling windows around the perimeter of Peter Zumthor’s LACMA design.

(Iwan Baan)

Having theme galleries is like banishing the alphabet that organizes the encyclopedia on your shelf. Chronology and geography are not some imperialistic scheme dominating global art. They just make finding things in a sprawling encyclopedic art collection easy for visitors. Good luck with that now.

I’ve pretty much avoided consideration of the building’s aesthetics. The exception was a 2013 column responding to “The Presence of the Past,” a somewhat clumsy exhibition of Zumthor’s still-evolving design conception, which has changed greatly in the final form. Reviewing purpose-built architecture is a fool’s errand when you can’t experience the purpose — impossible for another 10 months, when the art-installed Geffen opens.

A press event Thursday allowed entry into the gallery spaces, however, so a few things are now obvious. One is that museum galleries are theatrical spaces — there’s a reason they’re called shows — and chances are you’ve never seen so much concrete in one place. Sometimes it’s sleek and appealing, sometimes splotchy and cracked. (Surface mottling could soften over time.) But across floors, walls and ceilings of 90 bunker-like rooms and long, meandering corridors, the limitless concrete is monotonous. Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King” meets Beckett’s theater of the absurd.

Another is that views from the floor-to-ceiling windows that surround the building will offer lovely, interesting city vistas — welcome relief from the monotony. (Curtains will be installed around the perimeter.) A third is that the light, some entering horizontally from the side windows and a couple thin clerestory slots, but much of it from fixed vertical ceiling cans, is going to be a problem.

Those windows are also one of the biggest design losses in the value-engineering, undertaken to control ballooning costs. (Adjusted for inflation, the original Whitney Museum’s construction cost per square foot was about $633, Kimbell’s was about $469, and LACMA clocks in at $1,400, according to its website. Brutalist, indeed.) The floor plate was originally planned to follow the organic curves of the ceiling plate, with continuous, hugely expensive curved-glass windows linking the two. Now the floor plan is largely rectilinear.

The glass panels had to be flat, so the composition is a bit more dynamic. But the roofline overlaps can be jarring. At one end the hovering curved roof looks like a pizza too big for the box below.

All surfaces of 90 bunker-like galleries are concrete, with plans for drilling holes and pounding in anchors to hang art.

(Christopher Knight / Los Angeles Times)

Also daunting: Art will be hung on all that concrete by drilling holes in the walls and pounding in anchors. Moving the art will be cumbersome, requiring concrete patching. The entire process is labor-intensive and expensive.

Zumthor is the sixth architect to have had a whack at LACMA, following earlier efforts by William L. Pereira, Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates, Bruce Goff, Rem Koolhaas, and Renzo Piano. Koolhaas never got beyond the proposal stage, although his marvelous idea pioneered the teardown-then-build-a-pavilion-on-stilts plan now coming to very different fruition. Only Goff produced a notable building, with a novel Japanese Pavilion that conceptually turned inside out the spiral Guggenheim Museum by his mentor, Frank Lloyd Wright. (Happily, the Japanese Pavilion can now be seen from the street.) The rest were mostly meh, salted with an occasional ugh.

Zumthor and LACMA Director Michael Govan pronounce the new Geffen building to be “a concrete sculpture,” which is why it’s being shown empty now. The cringey claim is grandiose, and it makes one wonder why being architecture is not enough. If it’s true, it’s the only monumental sculpture I know that has a couple of restaurants, an auditorium and a store. Apparently, an artistic hierarchy exists, with sculpture ranked above architecture.

That’s odd, because we’ve also been repeatedly told that LACMA built the place to undermine such conceits. Museum officials are still banging away on the absurd claim that a single-story building for art, banishing distinctions between “upstairs/downstairs,” confers an egalitarian marker on what global cultures produce. Hierarchy, however, is not a matter of physicality or direction, but of conceptual status. Rosa Parks was riding on a single-level bus, not a double-decker, and she knew exactly what her mighty refusal to sit in the back meant.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

LACMA should be half as savvy. Climb the 60-plus steps up to the Geffen Galleries, or take an elevator, and when you arrive some art will be out front and some out back. Surely, we won’t regard that front/back difference as anti-egalitarian.

Will the Geffen Galleries be successful? My crystal ball is broken, but I see no reason why it won’t be a popular attraction. And that is clearly the museum’s priority.

An urban environment with a talented architect’s unusual art museum design tagged by a monumental topiary sculpture on the main drag — that’s a description of Frank Gehry’s incomparable Guggenheim Bilbao, the great 1997 museum in Basque northern Spain, where Jeff Koons’ marvelous floral “Puppy” sculpture holds court out front. (Every palace needs topiary, a leafy green power emblem of culture’s control over nature; Koons’ 40-foot-tall West Highland white dog makes for an especially cuddly symbol of guardianship.) Now the description fits LACMA too.

The museum just announced the acquisition of Koons’ floral behemoth, “Split-Rocker,” a rather bland hobby horse topiary that merges a toy dinosaur’s head with the hobby horse’s head. LACMA is next door to the La Brea Tar Pits & Museum, and the kiddie dino, a natural history plaything, forces a shotgun wedding with a degraded example of art history’s triumphant motif of a man on a horse. Govan worked on Bilbao before coming to L.A., and the formula there is being repeated here. L.A.’s eye-grabbing building won’t be as great nor its Instagram-ready topiary be nearly as good as the Bilbao ensemble, but when does lightning strike twice?

As museums, Bilbao and LACMA couldn’t be more different. One has a small, mostly mediocre permanent collection of contemporary art, while the other has a large, often excellent permanent collection of global art from all eras. The so-called Bilbao Effect sent cultural tourism, then already on the rise, skyrocketing. With the David Geffen Galleries, LACMA has put its very expensive eggs in that tourism basket.

Guests walks across part of the new building that spans Wilshire Boulevard.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

It might take some time to work. The U.S. is the world’s largest travel and tourism sector, but it’s the only one forecast by the World Travel & Tourism Council to see international visitor decline in 2025 — and probably beyond. Between erratic pandemic recovery and an abusive federal government hostile to foreigners, worries are growing in L.A. about the imminent soccer World Cup and the Olympics.

It’s also surprising that the museum is now bleeding critical senior staff, just as LACMA’s lengthy transformation from a civic art museum into a tourist destination trembles on the verge of completion. Previously unreported, chief operating officer Diana Vesga is already gone, deputy director for curatorial and exhibitions J. Fiona Ragheb recently left, and chief financial officer Mark Mitchell departs next week.

Those are three top-tier institutional positions. Let’s hope they don’t know something we also don’t know.

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, rising on what used to be a parking lot in Exposition Park in downtown L.A., is devoted to visual storytelling: the comics of Charles M. Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Alex Raymond (“Flash Gordon”), movie concept art by Neal Adams (“Batman”) and Ralph McQuarrie (“Star Wars”), paintings by Frida Kahlo and Jacob Lawrence, photography by Gordon Parks and Dorothea Lange, illustrations by Norman Rockwell and N.C. Wyeth.

So when George Lucas and wife Mellody Hobson chose Mia Lehrer and her L.A. firm, Studio-MLA, to design the 11 acres of landscape around — and on top of — MAD Architects’ swirling, otherworldly, billion-dollar building, the driving forces behind the Lucas Museum made it clear that the landscape had to tell a story too.

Lehrer and her team studied how directors, illustrators and painters use topography to help amplify, among other things, emotion, sequence and storyline.

A long stretch of park space extends from the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which sits next to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

“We looked at the landscapes of myths and movies,” said Kush Parekh, a principal at Studio-MLA. “How do you take someone on a journey through space? How does the terrain change the story — and how can it be the story?”

The result — which feels surprisingly grown-in even though the museum won’t open until next year — is a sinuous, eclectic landscape that unfolds in discrete vignettes, all promoting exploration and distinct experience. Each zone contains varied textures, colors, scales and often framed views. A shaded walkway curls along a meandering meadow and lifts you toward a hilly canyon. A footbridge carries you above a developing conifer thicket. A plant-covered trellis, known as “the hanging garden,” provides a more compressed moment of pause. The environment, like a good story, continually shifts tone and tempo.

“It’s episodic,” Parekh said. “Each biome reveals something new, each path hints at what’s ahead without giving it away.”

A key theme of the story is the diverse terrain of California — a place that, in Lehrer’s words, “contains more varied environments in a single day’s drive than most countries do in a week.” Foothills and valleys, groves and canyons, even the mesas, plateaus and plains of the Sierra and the Central Valley — Lehrer calls all of it a “choreography of place.”

Lucas Museum staff and design team stand under the trellis of “the hanging garden.”

Another, more subtle, layer of this narrative is time. Plantings were laid out to bloom in different seasons and in different places. Bright yellow “Safari Goldstrike” leucadendron, edging the meadow and canyon, come alive in late winter and early spring. Tall jacarandas, spied from a foothills overlook, emerge then quickly disappear. “Bee’s Bliss” sage, lying low in the oak woodland, turn lavender blue in the early summer. Something is always emerging, something else fading.

“Every month, every visit, feels different,” Parekh said.

Even the alpine-inspired plantings cladding the museum’s roof — colorful wildflowers, long sweeping grasses and coarse scrubs, all chosen for their hardiness, lightness and shallow roots — follow this rhythm.

“They’re alive. They change. They move with the climate,” Lehrer said.

The landscape creates the illusion that some plantings run right up to the museum. Here, the black void on the underside of the building is the opening for a giant waterfall that will cascade to a pool below.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

The grounds include the terraced seating of an amphitheater.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

The plant palette includes low-water selections.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Amazingly, the rest of the landscape is a kind of green roof as well, sitting atop a 2,400-spot underground parking structure — available to those visiting the Lucas or any of Expo Park’s other institutions. Wedged between the greenery and the parking are thousands of foam blocks, mixed with soil and sculpted to form the landscape while minimizing weight on the building below.

“I wish I had invested in foam before we started this,” joked Angelo Garcia, president of Lucas Real Estate Holdings. “It’s everywhere. These mountains were created with foam.”

“It’s full-scale ecology sitting on top of a structural system,” noted Michael Siegel, senior principal at Stantec, the museum’s architect of record, responsible for its technical oversight and implementation.

“That’s how the best storytelling works,” Lehrer added. “You don’t see the mechanics. You just feel the effect.”

Foam blocks buried in the soil shape the terrain while minimizing weight on the parking structure below.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

As you make your way through the rolling landscape, it becomes clear that it’s also crafted to meld with MAD’s sculptural design — a hovering, eroded form, itself inspired by the clouds, hills and other natural forms of Los Angeles.

“There’s a dialogue,” Garcia said.

Paths bend instead of cut; curving benches — cast in smooth, gently tapering concrete — echo the museum’s fiber-reinforced cement roofline. Bridges arc gently over bioswales and berms. Ramps rise like extensions of the building’s base. Paving stones reflect the color and texture of the museum’s facade.

“It was never landscape next to building,” Lehrer said. “It was building as landscape, and landscape as structure. One continuous form.”

Closer to the building, where a perimeter mass damper system that the design team has nicknamed the “moat” protects the museum from seismic activity, landscape nestles against, and seemingly under, the structure’s edges, further blurring the barrier between the two. Rows of mature trees being planted now will help soften the flanks. Vines will hang from the Lucas’ floating oculus, right above its entry court.

The building’s oculus eventually will have vines hanging from it.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art rises in Exposition Park, its rooftop clad with solar panels and gardens, the skyline of downtown Los Angeles rising behind it.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

A worker on the green rooftop of the museum.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

The topography was designed to minimize environmental impact. Hundreds of plants, mostly native to the region, are drought-tolerant (or at least require little watering). A rain-harvesting system captures water for irrigation. And on the north edge of the museum will be “The Rain,” a waterfall that doubles as a passive cooling system, replacing traditional air-conditioning infrastructure. (Dozens of underground geothermal wells provide additional cooling.)

In this part of South L.A., park space is egregiously scarce, a remnant of redlining and disinvestment. This space — set to be open to the public without a ticket, from dawn to dusk — is a game changer, as is a massive green space on Expo Park’s south side that also replaces a surface parking lot and tops an underground garage. (That latter project has been delayed until after the 2028 Olympics.)

“It’s hotter, it’s denser and it’s long been overlooked. We wanted to change that,” Lehrer said of the area.

What was once a walled-off asphalt lot is a porous public space, linking Expo Park to the rest of the neighborhood via its four east-west pathways and opening connections on the north side to Jesse Brewer Jr. Park, which the Lucas Museum has paid to upgrade. The museum also funded the creation to the south of the new Soboroff Sports Field, which replaces a field that was adjacent to the site’s parking lot. The Lucas’ circular plaza and amphitheater with seating for hundreds, have the potential not only to host museum events but also to become popular community gathering spots.

Kush Parekh, left, and Mia Lehrer of Studio-MLA.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Treetops rising along the museum’s curvaceous silhouette.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

For Lehrer, the landscape is a convergence of civic and ecological ideas that she’s developed throughout her career — really ever since a chance encounter with the intricate original drawings for Central Park while she was studying at the Harvard Graduate School of Design spurred her to pivot from planning to landscape architecture. At this point, she’s created arguably more major new public spaces in Los Angeles than any other designer, including two vibrantly didactic landscapes at the adjacent Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, downtown’s 10-acre Vista Hermosa Park and the artfully layered grounds and lake surrounding SoFi Stadium.

“This brings everything together,” she said. “Design, ecology, storytelling, infrastructure, community. It’s the fullest expression of what landscape can be.”

Lehrer credits Lucas with not just permitting her to explore these ideas but encouraging her to push them further. Lucas supported the rare — and costly — installation of mature plantings. Usually the landscape is the last part of a building to emerge.

The progress in the grounds is a bright spot for the museum, which has been grappling with construction delays, the surprise departure of its executive director and, most recently, the layoffs of 15 full-time and seven part-time employees, part of a restructuring that a museum official said was “to ensure we open on time next year.”

As the new building accelerates toward that opening, the vision outside is becoming more clear.

George Lucas, center, wife Mellody Hobson and then-Mayor Eric Garcetti as the Lucas Museum began construction in 2019.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

“To have an open-minded client, who gets landscape and also appreciates creativity, it’s rare,” Lehrer said. Lucas, who grew up on a farm in Modesto, has been developing the vineyards, gardens and olive groves of his Skywalker Ranch in Northern California for decades.

“I have always wanted to be surrounded by trees and nature,” Lucas said. “The museum’s backyard is meant to provide a respite in a hectic world.”

June 17 (UPI) — The Louvre, home to the Mona Lisa and other iconic works of art in Paris, closed abruptly Monday as the museum’s staff staged an impromptu strike over a surge of tourists who were left standing in long lines.

Ticket agents, gallery attendants and security refused to return to work, following a morning union meeting, citing overcrowding and understaffing. After four hours of talks with management, the Louvre reopened to confused and tired visitors.

Monday’s strike comes after French President Emmanuel Macron announced earlier this year that the centuries-old Louvre would undergo renovations to include a separate wing for the Mona Lisa to control crowds better.

The “New Renaissance” project, which will repair and modernize the former royal palace, will take a decade to complete. Ticket prices are slated to go up next year for tourists who do not live in the European Union to help pay for the project.

Last year alone, 8.7 million tourists visited the Louvre with many complaining about insufficient signage, tight spaces and lack of restrooms. The Louvre was originally designed to accommodate 4 million visitors a year.

Louvre President Laurence des Cars, who was appointed in 2021, limited visitors to 30,000 a day after attendance surged in 2018 to more than 10 million. He has warned that parts of the museum are “no longer watertight” and that fluctuating temperatures could damage the priceless artwork.

The Louvre, the world’s most-visited museum, has withstood war, terror, and pandemic – but on Monday, it was brought to a halt by its own striking staff, who say the institution is crumbling under the weight of mass tourism

The Louvre was thrust into shutdown by a staff walkout, with workers arguing it is buckling under the strain of excessive tourism.

In what seemed an unimaginable scene, the sanctuary housing da Vinci masterpieces and centuries of cultural marvels was brought to a halt on Monday. Countless tourists, clutching their entry passes, were left languishing in long queues underneath I. M. Pei’s famed glass pyramid.

Kevin Ward, 62, from Milwaukee, said: “Thousands of people waiting, no communication, no explanation. I guess even (the Mona Lisa) needs a day off.”

The busiest museum in the world was brought to a halt the day after anti-tourism demonstrations rippled through southern Europe. Protesters assembled in Mallorca, Venice, Lisbon and further afield, criticising an economic regimen they claim marginalises residents and undermines city life.

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The Louvre was hit by an unexpected strike during a routine meeting when gallery attendants, ticket agents and security staff refused to work, protesting against overwhelming crowds, insufficient staffing and what has been described by one union as “untenable” working conditions.

It’s a rarity for the Louvre to shut its doors unexpectedly. The museum has closed in times of war, during the pandemic, and on the occasion of a few strikes – including impromptu walkouts due to overcrowding in 2019 and safety concerns in 2013.

However, it is unusual for such closures to occur so abruptly, without prior notice, and in plain sight of waiting visitors.

Moreover, this disruption occurs mere months after President Emmanuel Macron announced an ambitious ten-year plan aimed at addressing the very issues now coming to a head – water damage, hazardous temperature fluctuations, antiquated infrastructure, and visitor numbers exceeding the museum’s capacity.

Yet, for the employees on the front line, the proposed improvements seem a long way off. “We can’t wait six years for help,” declared Sarah Sefian, a gallery attendant and visitor services agent. “Our teams are under pressure now. It’s not just about the art – it’s about the people protecting it.”

At the heart of the turmoil is the Mona Lisa – the iconic 16th-century painting that attracts contemporary throngs more reminiscent of a celebrity meet-and-greet than a traditional art viewing.

An estimated 20,000 visitors cram daily into the Salle des États, the Louvre’s most expansive chamber, all eager to capture a selfie with Leonardo da Vinci’s mysterious lady behind her protective glass. The atmosphere is often chaotic, bustling, and so crowded that numerous visitors overlook the surrounding masterpieces by Titian and Veronese, which remain underappreciated.

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“You don’t see a painting,” lamented Ji-Hyun Park, 28, who travelled from Seoul to Paris. “You see phones. You see elbows. You feel heat. And then, you’re pushed out.”

President Macron’s strategy for revolutionising the museum, labelled the “Louvre New Renaissance,”, aims to offer a solution. The Mona Lisa is set to be housed in a new, specially designated space, with timed-entry tickets to facilitate better viewing experiences.

Plans also include inaugurating a fresh entrance near the Seine River by 2031 to alleviate congestion at the current pyramid entry point. “Conditions of display, explanation and presentation will be up to what the Mona Lisa deserves,” Macron declared in January.

Nonetheless, Louvre staff have accused Macron of hypocrisy, arguing that the proposed 700 million to 800 million-euro renovation plan conceals an underlying issue. Despite Macron’s commitment to creating new access points and exhibition areas, the museum’s yearly governmental subsidies have plummeted over 20% in the past ten years, a period when visitor figures dramatically increased.

“We take it very badly that Monsieur Le President makes his speeches here in our museum,” Sefian remarked, expressing discontent over the state’s diminishing financial contributions year on year.

While many striking staff intend to stay off work for the entire day, Sefian mentioned that some may briefly return to open a limited “masterpiece route” for a few hours, granting visitors access to key attractions like the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo. The full museum is expected to resume normal operations by Wednesday, and tourists with time-sensitive tickets from Monday might have the opportunity to use them then.

The Louvre saw 8.7 million visitors last year, which is more than twice what its facilities were designed for. Despite imposing a daily limit of 30,000 visitors, staff report that the experience has become an everyday challenge, citing insufficient rest areas, scarce bathrooms, and intensified summer heat due to the pyramid’s greenhouse effect.

The modest but pungent survey of paintings by Noah Davis at the UCLA Hammer Museum is a welcome event. It goes a long way toward demythologizing the Seattle-born, L.A.-based artist, who was heartbreakingly struck down by a rare liposarcoma cancer in 2015, when he was barely 32.

The show affirms his gift for what it was: Davis was a painter’s painter, a deeply thoughtful and idiosyncratic Black voice heard by other artists and aficionados, even as his work was in invigorating development. Talented artists often come into a steadily mature expression in their 30s, the moment when Davis’ accelerating growth was brutally interrupted. The show’s three dozen paintings are understandably uneven, but when Davis was good, he was very good indeed.

That intriguing capacity resonates in the first picture, “40 Acres and a Unicorn,” which hangs alone in the show’s entry to mark the start of his career. Davis was 24 and had studied at Cooper Union in New York and the artist-run Mountain School of Arts in L.A.’s Chinatown. The 2007 painting is not large — 2½ feet tall and slightly narrower — but it casts a spell.

In Western art, a man on a horse is a classic format representing a hero, but here Davis sits a young Black man astride a mythic unicorn — notably white — its buttery beige horn shining amid the painting’s otherwise neutral palette. It’s easy to see the youth as signifying the artist, and the replacement for an art-historical horse likewise standing in for a mule. That animal was famously promised to thousands of formerly enslaved people near the end of the Civil War, along with 40 acres of Confederate land on which they had worked, uncompensated and abused, making the white planter class rich.

Noah Davis, “40 Acres and a Unicorn,” 2007, acrylic and gouache on canvas

(Anna Arca)

The 1865 pledge to redistribute confiscated lands as restitution to African Americans for their enslavement didn’t last a year before being annulled — reparations as rare, unique and desirable as a unicorn, offered by an untrustworthy white ruling class. (Had the 1865 redistribution happened, imagine where we might be today, as racist cruelties initiated by the federal government are running rampant.) Davis, placing his at least symbolic self on the unicorn’s back, plainly asserts his social and cultural confidence. Art is imagination made real, and as a Black American artist, he’s going to ride it forward.

Perhaps the canvas’ most beautiful feature is the rich skin of black acrylic paint within which he and his steed, both rendered in soft veils of thin gouache, are embedded. The luminous black abstraction dominating the surface was visibly painted after the figures, which feel like they are being held in its embrace.

Thirty-nine paintings on canvas and 21 on paper are installed chronologically, the works on paper selected from 70 made during Davis’ lengthy hospitalization. The layering of topicality, color sensitivity, art-historical ancestors and figuration and abstraction in “40 Acres and a Unicorn” recurs throughout the brief eight-year period being surveyed. (The traveling show was organized by London’s Barbican Art Gallery with Das Minsk, an exhibition hall in Potsdam, Germany.) The most abstract painting is on a wall by itself in the next room, and it demonstrates Davis’ unusual exploratory strategies.

Titled “Nobody,” a four-sided geometric shape is rendered in flat purple house paint on linen, 5 feet square. The layered difference in materials — an image built from practical, domestic paint on a refined and artistic support — is notable. The irregular shape, however two-dimensional, seems to hover and tilt in dynamic space. It suggests a 2008 riff on the long, rich legacy of Kazimir Malevich’s radical, revolutionary geometric abstractions from 1915.

Noah Davis, “Nobody,” 2008, house paint on linen

(Christopher Knight / Los Angeles)

The reference to the Russian avant-garde recalls that Malevich’s art was dubbed Suprematism, which bumped aside the academic hierarchy of aesthetic rules in favor of “the supremacy of pure artistic feeling,” most famously represented as a painted black square. Here, it twists into an inevitable jab at an ostensibly liberal Modern art world, still in fact dominated by unexamined white supremacy.

“Nobody” weaves together art and social history in surprising ways. It’s one of three geometric abstractions Davis made, their shapes based on the map contour of a battleground state in the revolutionary election year that brought Barack Obama to the presidency.

Colorado, a state whose shape is a simple rectangle, flipped from George W. Bush in 2004, while the secondary color of Davis’ choice of purple paint was created by combining two primary pigments — red and blue. The color purple also carries its own recognizable, resonant reference, embedded in popular consciousness for Alice Walker’s often-banned Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and Steven Spielberg’s hit movie of the book, a record holder of dubious distinction, tied for the most Oscar nominations (11) without a single win. Davis’ torqued purple rectangle looks to be in mid-flip.

That Davis exhibited but ultimately painted over the other two works in his geometric series might suggest some dissatisfaction with their admittedly obscure nature. (“Nobody” almost requires footnotes.) He returned to painting the figure — “somebody” — but often embedded it in visually sumptuous abstract fields. The hedge behind “Mary Jane,” a young girl in a striped pinafore, visually a cousin to the little girl engulfed in billowing locomotive steam clouds in Édouard Manet’s “The Railway,” is a gorgeously writhing arena of spectral green, gray and black forms.

Noah Davis, “Mary Jane,” 2008, oil and acrylic on canvas

(Kerry McFate)

So is the forest of “The Missing Link 6,” where a hunter with a rifle sits quietly at the base of a massive tree trunk, virtually secreted in the landscape, like something rustling in the dense foliage in a Gustave Courbet forest. The missing-link title declares Davis’ intention to join an evolutionary chain of artists, the hidden hunter adding an element of surprise.

Art history is threaded throughout Davis’ work. (He spent productive research time working as an employee at Art Catalogues, the late Dagny Corcoran’s celebrated bookstore, when it was at MOCA’s Pacific Design Center location.) The tension between established and new art, which seeks to simultaneously acknowledge greatness in the past while overturning its rank deficiencies, is often palpable. Nowhere is the pressure felt more emphatically than in the knockout “1975 (8),” where joyful exuberance enters the picture, as folks cavort in a swimming pool.

The subject — bathers — is as foundational to Modern art as it gets, conjuring Paul Cézanne. Meanwhile, the swimming pool is quintessentially identified with Los Angeles. (Another fine pool painting, “The Missing Link 4,” has a Modernist Detroit building as backdrop, painted as a grid of color rectangles reminiscent of a David Hockney, an Ed Ruscha or a Mark Bradford.) Bathers are an artistic signal for life crawling onto shore out of the primordial ooze or basking in a pastoral, prelapsarian paradise.

For America, the swimming pool is also an archetypal segregationist site of historical cruelty and exclusion. Davis seized the contradiction.

Draining public swimming pools to avoid integration in the wake of civil rights advances happened in countless places. It showed the self-lacerating depth to which irrational hate can descend, as policy advocate Heather McGhee wrote in her exceptional book, “The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together.” People were willing to harm everyone in a community by dismantling a popular public amenity rather than accept full equality. In “1975 (8),” the title’s date is within just a few years of the Supreme Court’s appalling ruling in Palmer vs. Thompson, which gave official blessing to the callous practice McGhee chronicled.

Noah Davis, “The Missing Link 4,” 2013, oil on canvas

(Robert Wedemeyer)

The 2013 painting’s composition is based on a photograph taken by Davis’ mother four decades earlier. A bright blue horizontal band in an urban landscape is dotted with calmly bobbing heads. A leaping male diver seen from behind dominates the lower foreground, angled toward the water. The soles of his bare feet greet our eyes, lining us up behind him as next to plunge in.

Davis suspends the aerial diver in space, a repoussoir figure designed to visually lead us into the scene. Like the unicorn rider, he assumes the artist’s metaphorical profile. A moment of anticipatory transition is frozen, made perpetual. Waiting our turn, we’re left to contemplate the soles of his feet — a familiar symbol of path-following humility, whether in Andrea Mantegna’s Italian Renaissance painting of a “Dead Christ” or countless Asian sculptures of Buddha.

The marvelous painting was made at a pivotal moment. A year before, Davis and his wife, sculptor Karon Davis, joined four storefronts on Washington Boulevard in Arlington Heights to create the Underground Museum. Their aim was to create a self-described family-run cultural space in a Black and Latino neighborhood. (Money came from an inheritance from his recently deceased father, with whom Davis was close.) A year later, the ambitious startup expanded when the project took on the internationally acclaimed Museum of Contemporary Art as an organizing partner. One room in the show includes mock-ups of classic sculptures — imitations — by Marcel Duchamp, Dan Flavin, Robert Smithson and Jeff Koons, which Davis made for an exhibition to reference the classic 1959 Douglas Sirk movie about racial identity, “Imitation of Life.” The appropriations ricochet off the feminist imitations of Andy Warhol and Frank Stella paintings that Elaine Sturtevant began to make in the 1960s.

Not all of Davis’ paintings succeed, which is to be expected of his youthful and experimental focus. An ambitious group that references raucous daytime TV talk programs from the likes of Maury Povich and Jerry Springer, for example, tries to wrestle with their trashy exploitation of identity issues as entertainment — DNA paternity tests and all. But a glimpse of “Maury” with a crisp Mondrian painting hanging in the background just falls flat. The juxtaposition of popular art’s messy vulgarity with the pristine aspirations of high art is surprisingly uninvolving.

Still, most of the exhibition rewards close attention. It handily does what a museum retrospective should do, securing the artist’s reputation. At any rate it’s just a sliver of some 400 paintings, sculptures and drawings the artist reportedly made. Whatever else might turn up in the future, the current selection at the Hammer represents the brilliant early start of Davis’ abbreviated career. Forget the mythology; the show’s reality is better.

Noah Davis, “Imitation of Jeff Koons,” 2013, mixed media

(Christopher Knight / Los Angeles Times)

President Trump got his way Friday, just not on his terms.

Two weeks after Trump said he fired the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery director, Kim Sajet, she stepped down of her own accord.

“It has been the honor of a lifetime to lead the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. This was not an easy decision, but I believe it is the right one,” Sajet wrote in a note to staff shared in an email by the Smithsonian Institution’s leader, Lonnie Bunch. “From the very beginning, my guiding principle has been to put the museum first. Today, I believe that stepping aside is the best way to serve the institution I hold so deeply in my heart. The role of a museum director has never been about one individual — it is a shared mission, driven by the passion, creativity, and dedication of an extraordinary team.”

The news follows Trump’s May 30 post on Truth Social that he was firing Sajet, the first woman to hold her post at the National Portrait Gallery, for being “a highly partisan person, and a strong supporter of DEI.”

Trump’s authority to fire Sajet immediately came under question. The Smithsonian is not part of the executive branch, and the president does not choose its Board of Regents. Reports soon surfaced that Sajet continued to show up at work each day.

On Monday the Board of Regents held a lengthy meeting and then issued a statement that said Secretary Bunch had the board’s support “in his authority and management of the Smithsonian.” The statement declared the institution’s full independence, including in personnel decisions. The statement said Bunch had been directed to “articulate specific expectations to museum directors and staff regarding content in Smithsonian museums, give directors reasonable time to make any needed changes to ensure unbiased content, and to report back to the Board on progress and any needed personnel changes based on success or lack thereof in making the needed changes.”

It is unclear if Sajet, who served as the museum’s director for 12 years, made her decision prior to the Board of Regents meeting. The Smithsonian did not respond to a question about that.

“Once again, we thank Kim for her service. Her decision to put the museum first is to be applauded and appreciated,” Bunch wrote in his email to staff. “I know this was not an easy decision. She put the needs of the Institution above her own, and for that we thank her.”

Kevin Gover, the undersecretary for museums and culture, will serve as acting director, Bunch said.

The Smithsonian has a delicate task ahead as it moves forward following Trump’s March 27 executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” It directs Vice President JD Vance to remove “improper ideology” from the Smithsonian’s 21 museums and the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., and threatens to end federal funding for exhibitions and programs based on racial themes that “divide Americans.”

Bunch’s email to staff stressed that the organization has an imperative to remain nonpartisan.

The Smithsonian Institution asserted its independence Monday evening in a statement that could be read as a rejection of President Trump’s late-May firing of National Portrait Gallery Director Kim Sajet.

The Smithsonian’s statement said the organization’s secretary, Lonnie G. Bunch, “has the support of the Board of Regents in his authority and management of the Smithsonian.” The statement suggested that all personnel decisions will be made by Bunch, not Trump.

The announcement came after a much-anticipated Board of Regents meeting to discuss the fate of Sajet. The Washington Post had reported that Sajet quietly continued to show up for work each day after Trump’s social media post, which said he was firing Sajet for being “a highly partisan person, and a strong supporter of DEI.”

The Smithsonian’s statement Monday did not explicitly state that Sajet would remain in her position, and the institution did not respond to a Times question on that subject. But the text of the statement is clear in its intent, beginning: “In 1846, the Smithsonian was established by Congress as an independent entity.”

It continues: “Throughout its history, the Smithsonian has been governed and administered by a Board of Regents and a Secretary. The board is entrusted with the governance and independence of the Institution, and the board appoints a Secretary to manage the Institution.”

The Smithsonian’s move comes shortly after the White House proposed a 12% reduction in funding to the Smithsonian in the 2026 budget — including the elimination of funding for the National Museum of the American Latino, which is in the development stages and aims to open on or near the National Mall; and the Anacostia Community Museum, which opened in 1967 and honors Black culture.

The Smithsonian became a target for Trump beginning March 27, when he issued an executive order titled “Restoring truth and sanity to American history.” That order demanded an end to federal funding for exhibitions and programs based on racial themes that “divide Americans.”

“Once widely respected as a symbol of American excellence and a global icon of cultural achievement, the Smithsonian Institution has, in recent years, come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology,” the order read. It also instructed Vice President JD Vance to remove “improper ideology” from the Smithsonian’s 21 museums and the National Zoo in Washington.

The order followed Trump’s ongoing attempts to reshape federal cultural institutions, including his February takeover of the Kennedy Center.

One major difference between the Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian: The Kennedy Center’s board is appointed by the president, but the Smithsonian’s board consists of officials representing all three branches of government. Vance is on the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents, as is Chief Justice John G. Roberts.

“Since its inception, the Smithsonian has set out to be a nonpartisan institution,” the statement Monday read. “As the nation’s museum, the Smithsonian must be a welcoming place of knowledge and discovery for all Americans. The Board of Regents is committed to ensuring that the Smithsonian is a beacon of scholarship free from political or partisan influence, and we recognize that our institution can and must do more to further these foundational values.

“To reinforce our nonpartisan stature, the Board of Regents has directed the Secretary to articulate specific expectations to museum directors and staff regarding content in Smithsonian museums, give directors reasonable time to make any needed changes to ensure unbiased content, and to report back to the Board on progress and any needed personnel changes based on success or lack thereof in making the needed changes.”

As protesters swarmed downtown Los Angeles to denounce ICE raids in their communities and the deployment of the National Guard, a potent image kept flashing across television screens and social media: officers in riot gear facing off against flag- and sign-waving demonstrators in front of a strikingly resonant, red mural posing a series of queries interrogating the very nature of power and control.

Barbara Kruger’s 30-by-191-foot “Questions” takes up the entire side wall of the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Geffen Contemporary warehouse building, facing Temple Street and — notably — the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building. Like many of Kruger’s most iconic images, including her famous 1989 abortion rights poster, “Your Body Is a Battleground,” the mural features words in starkly clear graphic design — in this case, white letters on a red background asking nine now-prophetic questions:

“Who is beyond the law? Who is bought and sold? Who is free to choose? Who does the time? Who follows orders? Who salutes longest? Who prays loudest? Who dies first? Who laughs last?”

The mural was commissioned in 1990 by former MOCA curator Ann Goldstein, who is now at the the Art Institute of Chicago.

Former MOCA Chief Curator Paul Schimmel posted a TV screenshot of protesters in front of the mural on Sunday with the caption, “#Barbara Krugers #moca mural doing its art job as the riots against #ice consume LA.”

Reached for comment Monday, Schimmel added that Kruger “understood the importance and power of a mural facing the then-new Federal Building. Multiple generations of MOCA staff have brought it back to life because of its profundity.”

Kruger, a longtime L.A. resident, responded Monday to The Times’ request for comment about the mural’s immersion in this fraught moment of city history, writing via email: “This provocation is giving Trump what he wants: the moment he can declare martial law. As if that’s not already in play.”

In a YouTube video posted to MOCA’s website when the museum reinstalled the mural in 2018, Kruger says: “There was a very visible wall on the side of this building, and it was an opportunity to make a statement about pride and prominence and power and control and fear. The questions were always the important part of the work.”

At another point in the video, she adds: “One would hope that in the 30 years since, things would have changed a bit. And things have changed. For the good and for the bad, and for everything in between.”

Images of “Questions” abound on social media, including on X, where a few users recognized the significance of the art behind the protesters. Misinformation has been rampant on social media, and one post showed a photo of a masked individual creeping below the mural with the claim that the person “broke into the MOCA Museum and destroyed everything.”

A MOCA representative debunked that claim Monday, saying that the museum closed early, at about 1:30 p.m. Sunday, “out of an abundance of caution and for the safety and well-being of our staff and visitors,” and that it expected to open again, per its normal operating hours, on Thursday. The museum is always closed Monday through Wednesday.

The only damage to the Geffen Contemporary was some graffiti that the museum said could be removed.

Cleanup continues after a night of protests in downtown Los Angeles on June 9, 2025.

(Damian Dovarganes / Associated Press)

Adding a hyper-meta art moment, MOCA’s current durational performance, “Police State” by Pussy Riot frontwoman Nadya Tolokonnikova, continued until 6 p.m. inside the building, just without its usual live audience. The performance consists of Tolokonnikova sitting at a bare wooden table inside of a corrugated steel structure resembling a Russian prison cell.

Tolokonnikova, who spent two years in a Russian prison following a performance in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, spent those hours Sunday broadcasting live audio of the protests outside mixed with her own heartbeat to the empty museum.

“Police State Exhibit Is Closed Due To The Police State,” she wrote in a post on X.

“Durational performance is a scary thing to step into: once you said you’re going to show up, you can’t just leave simply because of the National Guard had a whim to occupy the city, so my choice was to stay and continue doing my job as an artist,” she said in a statement.

June 6 (UPI) — A pair of stolen paintings have been returned to a museum in New Mexico after they were missing for more than 40 years, the FBI confirmed on Friday.

The FBI credited its free Stolen Art App launched in 2023 for helping to identify and recover the paintings by artists Victor Higgins and Joseph Henry Sharp.

The two works of art were stolen in March 1985 from the University of New Mexico’s Harwood Museum of Art, located in Taos. The town of approximately 6,400 people is located in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and known for its historic buildings.

The FBI did not say if anyone has been charged in relation to the stolen paintings, only that “cooperation of multiple individuals and other entities contacted during the investigation was critical to the recovery of these paintings,” and that “all investigative leads have been exhausted at this time.”

The museum is holding a special unveiling Friday night for Higgins’ oil painting titled “Aspens,” and Sharp’s “Oklahoma Cheyenne.” Both men were members of the Taos Society of Artists.

“We are thrilled to announce a historic moment for Harwood Museum of Art. After 40 years, two paintings stolen during the infamous 1985 Harwood Heist — works by Victor Higgins and Joseph Henry Sharp — have been officially returned to the museum,” the museum wrote on Facebook.

“The FBI has delivered the recovered artworks to our Collections and Curatorial Departments, marking a major moment of closure and celebration for our community and the legacy of Taos art.”

“We are grateful for the cooperation of all parties involved,” Acting Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Albuquerque Field Office Margaret Girard said in the agency’s statement.

“The recovery of these stolen paintings is a powerful reminder that the FBI continues to commit investigative resources to recover cultural property and return these stolen items to their rightful owners.”

Friday’s event also includes a screening of a documentary about the thefts.

“The evening will feature a special panel of individuals who have been part of this story since the 1980s and a screening of The Thief Collector at 5:30 pm, the riveting documentary that dives into the couple responsible for the 1985 Harwood heist,” reads the museum’s Facebook post.

In addition to the FBI, museum officials credit amateur historical crime researcher Lou Schachter with uncovering the location of the paintings, in the estate of New Mexico school teachers Jerry and Rita Alter.

“Without his sleuthing, this artwork would never be back where it belongs,” Harwood Marketing and Development Associate Sylvia Tawse told the Taos News in an interview.