A hostile takeover: one year of the Trump administration’s actions against U.S. museums

Since the start of the second Trump administration, the United States’ museum field has been under a sustained attack from the Executive Office. The administration has exploited the field’s structural and resource dependencies in its attempts to override the field’s independence. This paper will share an overview of the first year of the Trump administration’s actions against museums, with a focus on the National Park Service and the Smithsonian Institution, and describe several discrete strategies the administration is using in its attempts to control the field. It will also include insight into the tactics that those opposed to these moves are using to contest the administration’s actions. It will argue that the Trump administration’s hostility to the museum field’s independence and mission to foster diversity and inclusion is part of a more substantial right-wing attack, and that these actions create significant risk for the U.S. museum field.