As much as he loved working at the Smithsonian, during Lonnie G. Bunch’s first stint there, the institution wasn’t serious enough about change. Some time before he left in 1979, he and other Black staff were rudely asked to let their faces be used as molds for mannequins to help tamp down the criticism that there was not enough Black presence at the museum.
When Bunch had landed at the National Air and Space Museum as a freshly minted history Ph.D. from American University, the museum was being rightly criticized for minimizing the contributions of Black service members. He developed programming about Black experience in aviation, including the historic role played by the Tuskegee airmen during WWII. That was the work he had come to do, but being asked to create a face mold, so that the museum could save face, was a turning point.
The 73-year old’s retirement is well-deserved, but the timing is a direct result of the Trump administration’s relentless assault on the institution he has served for decades.
“I didn’t do it,” he said in an interview 15 years ago. “That’s not the way I wanted to be part of a museum.” He eventually left to be a history professor at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth. But he eventually returned to the Smithsonian, left again for four years, and came back for good in 2005.
Bunch was the founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture before he served as the first Black secretary in the Smithsonian’s history. On Monday, he announced his plan to resign at year’s end.
The 73-year old’s retirement is well-deserved, but it comes during the Trump administration’s relentless assault on the institution Bunch has served honorably for decades.
Bunch is more than the first Black person to serve as secretary; he’s also the first historian, and he called the Smithsonian “one of the great loves of my life,” but in an interview with The New York Times, he acknowledged that the last two years “have been stressful.”
How could they not have been? The president of the United States has been consistently attacking the museum, going so far as to have the White House release a 162-page report, titled “Saving America’s Story,” which says in part: “As it stands today, it would benefit most Americans, especially parents bringing their children for a tour, if the Smithsonian’s flagship history museum had a label at every entrance that reads: ‘Warning: the exhibits in this museum were prepared by people who don’t want you to love your country.’”
I had the pleasure of interviewing Bunch just before he was appointed secretary, and the claim he doesn’t love this country is outrageous. He said the Smithsonian is unique because nowhere else can someone understand a culture through so many different historical, cultural, scientific, and artistic portals. That is the true vastness of the Smithsonian that Bunch represents and Trump wants to shrink.
The Smithsonian has come a long way since it sought to use its Black professionals as props. Bunch is a big part of that change.
The Smithsonian has come a long way since it sought to use its Black professionals as props. Bunch is a big part of that change. His greatest achievement is the one that has most attracted the ire of the Trump administration: He has insisted on a more inclusive and complete representation of American history and culture. He spearheaded the development and fundraised for two new museums: the National Museum of the American Latino and the American Women’s History Museum. Conservative critics routinely charge that these museums are divisive and “balkanize” American identity, but Bunch sees them as helping to make better sense of American identity by filling in the gaps.
At the star-studded opening of the African American museum that Bunch led for its first 14 years, President Obama applauded the herculean efforts that went into its creation, and he described its presentation of American history as complicated, messy, and “full of contradictions, as all great stories are.” Trump has blasted that same storytelling for being improper, divisive and race-obsessed.
Trump and other MAGA conservatives have made all sorts of threats, mainly by firing people and pulling funding, to make the Smithsonian promote a MAGA version of history. But understand: Bunch stepped down. Trump did not fire him, because he could not fire him.
The secretary of the Smithsonian, and all its museum directors, answer to its Board of Regents, not the executive branch. The board is made up of nine everyday citizen members, six congressional members (split along party lines), the vice president of the United States and the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. This arrangement is also under threat thanks to Trump’s unprecedented interest in the board through Vice President JD Vance, making it clear he wants to fill any vacancies with more ideological aligned citizen members.
The Smithsonian is meant to operate outside of politics, but honestly, it’s always been in the thick of it. The pressure is just more explicit and widespread now. Bunch’s exit follows other high-profile departures, including that of Kim Sajet, who directed the National Portrait Gallery and resigned after Trump said she should be fired for supporting DEI. Bunch’s exit is yet another a reminder of the risk that losing talented visionaries pose to our treasured cultural institutions.
The Smithsonian is better because Lonnie Bunch spent most of his career there. He innovated and updated it more than any other secretary in recent history. MAGA has a backward obsession with a mythologized past, but Bunch demonstrated that cultural institutions dedicated to telling fuller, messier, more complicated histories play an important role in helping move our country forward.
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