After intensifying its critique of how the Smithsonian presents American history, the Trump administration has decided to stage a museum exhibition of its own.
In the last month, the White House has accused the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History of presenting an ideologically biased and negative view of U.S. history. President Trump even signed an executive order requiring that signs be placed outside the museum, to encourage visitors to go elsewhere for “accurate information regarding America’s history.”
Offering an alternative view of national identity, the State Department has organized “Passport to Patriotism: 250 Years of Diplomacy,” which opened on Thursday at the Art Museum of the Americas, steps from the White House. The show includes 68 versions of the American flag, including one made with 44,500 toy soldiers, as well as realistic images of the founding fathers generated by artificial intelligence and a wedding dress inspired by Betsy Ross. The artist Pablo Barba also contributed classical-style paintings of three women symbolizing the virtues of valor, purity and justice.
According to four people involved in the show, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions from the administration, no historians or professional curators collaborated on the exhibition, which also features artworks by friends of the planners and by two artists who serve on the board of a nonprofit, the American Arts Conservancy, that helped organize the show. Several museum experts said they worried that officials had ignored ethics rules meant to safeguard institutions from political influence and conflicts of interest.
“The government is calling the shots,” said Sally Yerkovich, a Columbia University professor who recently led revisions to the ethics code of the International Council of Museums. “The public trusts museums because they are independent sources of information.”
Tommy Pigott, a spokesman for the State Department, said that its “career and civil service officers, who have served under several presidents apolitically, work on this team and are art professionals with curatorial expertise. We don’t need professional revisionists to dictate our nation’s history to us; we all know what our flag stands for, who our founding fathers are, and the exhibition will speak for itself.”
One of its organizers, Erin Scavino, who leads the State Department’s Art in Embassies program, has described the exhibition as a signature part of the president’s celebration of the country’s 250th anniversary, adding that she has a mandate to “make visual arts great.” She said the exhibition was intended to honor the achievements of the United States. “This exhibition isn’t one that’s going to make you think about horribly dark things or things that have been a blemish on the face of America,” Ms. Scavino told Axios.
The State Department has advertised the show on its website with an A.I.-generated video of the museum and a promise of a “once-in-a-lifetime exhibition.”
Ms. Scavino collaborated on the exhibition with Jenni Parido, a friend she previously tapped to serve as the commissioner of the U.S. Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale, which opened in May. That was the last time the Trump administration tried its hand at cultural diplomacy. Much of the art world gave the sculptures by Alma Allen the cold shoulder, saying the pavilion’s exhibition was “insubstantial” and “pretentious.”
The State Department also took heat for bypassing its own selection rules to choose the friend of a White House insider to organize the pavilion, despite Ms. Parido’s having more experience in pet food than art curation. (The State Department insisted that it had mounted a rigorous selection process.) When the officials toasted the exhibition at a private reception, Mr. Allen wasn’t there — he and the pavilion’s curator, Jeffrey Uslip, were no longer on speaking terms.
Whether those same officials can gain a hometown advantage in Washington remains to be seen. “Passport to Patriotism” runs through Oct. 18, in a museum managed by a nonprofit that receives substantial funding through the State Department. The Art Museum of the Americas gained notice last year after its leaders canceled programming featuring Black and queer artists. Curators said those exhibitions would have contradicted Mr. Trump’s executive order that banned diversity and inclusion programs from federally funded groups.
Many artists included in the new exhibition have personal connections to Ms. Scavino, who in 2005 was a contestant on “The Apprentice,” the NBC reality show that Mr. Trump hosted. She has remained in the president’s orbit, marrying Dan Scavino, a White House deputy chief of staff, this year.
Ms. Scavino has included in the exhibition a silk wedding gown by a fashion designer, Kate Wasserbach Moore, whom she discovered while searching for her own wedding dress. She asked Ms. Moore to “create a dress that looks like something one of the wives of our founding fathers would have worn,” as she put it to Fox News. The designer told The New York Times that she planned on donating it to the Art in Embassies’ permanent collection. (Ms. Scavino ultimately wore a dress by another designer for her ceremony.)
Another artist in the exhibition, Romero Britto, is a Brazilian entrepreneur who attended Ms. Scavino’s wedding and gave the couple a custom portrait. (The artist sells his paintings for up to $1 million on his website.) His illustrations are prominently displayed in the museum and on the State Department’s website, and Mr. Britto said he also designed banners for the Department of Health and Human Services.
“Some people create art that is a little dark. That is not my mission,” he said in an interview, adding that he offered paintings to previous administrations. “I want to create positive art and a hopeful message.”
The artist Fer Da Silva, another friend of the organizers, projects a similar message of love with his heart-shaped paintings. On social media, he highlighted one of his works that was going to the exhibition and said his participation would increase its value.
“It is going to be exhibited in one of the most important museums in Washington, D.C., and that changes everything,” Mr. Da Silva said in an Instagram video.
In a statement, Ms. Parido, who founded the American Arts Conservancy, said that “from the outset, the curatorial framework emphasized work that is family-friendly, accessible to visitors of all ages, unifying in spirit and nonpartisan. Artists and artworks were selected based on their connection to those themes, their suitability for a broad public audience and their contribution to a cohesive visitor experience.”
Ms. Yerkovich, the ethics expert, said museums made great efforts to demonstrate their authority and independence. “The processing of curating a show is supposed to be done with certain artistic standards,” she explained. “It begins to look suspicious if a lot of the artwork happens to be from friends of the curator. You begin to wonder what kinds of judgments were made.”
Museums often face criticism when favoritism appears to be in play. The artist Rashid Johnson, a board member of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, and the producer Swizz Beatz, a trustee at the Brooklyn Museum, both stepped down from their positions before their museums produced shows that featured their artworks, to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.
The two artists in “Passport to Patriotism” who also serve on the board of the American Arts Conservancy, an organizer of the show, are Brendan Murphy and Brandon Ralph. (The American Arts Conservancy also planned the Venice Biennale exhibition.)
Mr. Murphy, a former professional basketball player, is displaying a shiny astronaut sculpture called “Serve the Flag.” (The artwork was not yet installed during a reporter’s visit on Thursday.) Mr. Ralph, a photographer and an advertising executive, has created realistic images of the founding fathers using artificial intelligence.
“I thought it would be an interesting opportunity to be part of these groups and have conversations to bring people together to talk about different views on America,” Mr. Ralph said in an interview, adding that his involvement began as a curator of the show before he stepped back to participate as an artist.
In April, the Art Museum of the Americas said that a former director of the International Center of Photography, Mark Lubell, would curate the exhibition. One of the people involved in the show, who is familiar with the conversation, said Mr. Lubell declined to work on the exhibition after he was told that participating artists would be screened for their political views. Mr. Lubell declined to comment.
The State Department and the exhibition’s organizers did not respond to questions about whether artists’ political views had been considered.
But one artwork included in the exhibition was a glittering red jacket by the fashion designer Deborah Yanna, founder of “Make America Sparkle Again.” Exhibition materials describe the artist as having been selected by President Trump as a national delegate for the state of Iowa in 2024. During rallies or political events, Ms. Yanna would wear jackets like these, described as “sequined, bold and patriotic.”
