When President Trump issued an executive order claiming that the Smithsonian Institution had “come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology,” he singled out a sculpture exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington.
The exhibition, called “The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture,” explores how, for more than 200 years, sculpture has both shaped and reflected attitudes about race in the United States.
The president’s order noted, among other things, that the show “promotes the view that race is not a biological reality but a social construct, stating ‘Race is a human invention.’”
In interviews, several scholars questioned why the executive order appeared to take issue with that view, which is now broadly held. Samuel J. Redman, a history professor at University of Massachusetts Amherst who has written about scientific racism, said that “the executive order is troubling and out of step with the current consensus.” He added that pseudoscientific attempts to create a hierarchy of races with white people at the top were seen “in places like Nazi Germany or within the eugenics movement.”
Asked for comment, the White House referred a reporter back to the executive order. Mr. Trump said in his inaugural address that he would stop efforts to “socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life.”
The quotation about race as a human invention appears to come from the wall text in the show, which notes that humans are “99.9 percent genetically the same” and introduces part of a statement on race and racism by the American Association of Biological Anthropologists.
“Race does not provide an accurate representation of human biological variation,” the statement reads. “Humans are not divided biologically into distinct continental types or racial genetic clusters. Instead, the Western concept of race must be understood as a classification system that emerged from, and in support of, European colonialism, oppression, and discrimination.”
“It thus does not have its roots in biological reality, but in policies of discrimination,” the statement says. “Because of that, over the last five centuries, race has become a social reality that structures societies and how we experience the world. In this regard, race is real, as is racism, and both have real biological consequences.”
Mr. Trump’s executive order came after he moved to purge diversity, equity and inclusion measures.
The executive order took issue with a number of other things about the show, including that it noted that societies, including the United States, had “used race to establish and maintain systems of power, privilege, and disenfranchisement” and claimed that “sculpture has been a powerful tool in promoting scientific racism.”
Museum officials declined to comment about the order and the show, which opened just a few days after the presidential election in early November to positive reviews and runs through Sept. 14.
James Smalls, an art historian who advised the curators of the exhibition and wrote for its catalog, said there had been clear examples in the past of sculpture being used to suggest that some races were superior to others.
He pointed to the 1930s bronze sculptures of Malvina Hoffman made for a “Races of Mankind” exhibit at the Field Museum in Chicago that attempted to show “racial types” from around the world. (Hoffman, who died in 1966, was skeptical about the biological notions of race she was hired to illustrate, seeing her subjects as individuals, not types.) “By the time the exhibition was deinstalled more than 30 years later, more than 10 million people had seen it — as well as its misguided message that human physical differences could be categorized into distinct ‘races,’ ” the Field Museum wrote when it brought some back for a 2016 exhibition.
Smalls said it was important to confront this part of history. “What bothers me most about the executive order is that it shuts down the whole conversation, not allowing for any discussion,” he said. “It also imposes that there is one view of American history, and that the country is a history of greatness. No country is great all the time.”
Artists with sculptures in the show questioned the White House’s contention that it was divisive.
Roberto Lugo, a 43-year-old Puerto Rican artist whose sculpture was featured in advertisements for the exhibition, said that the curators wanted to promote connection and understanding.
“My art is not about divisiveness but trying to find my place in the world and connect with others and represent my culture, ancestry and community within the context of American history,” he said of his sculpture, which was made from a cast of his own body, painted in patterns that describe different aspects of his heritage. “I feel like the exhibition was an honest interpretation of people’s lived experiences.”
Nicholas Galanin, a 45-year-old artist whose work is inspired by his Indigenous heritage, contributed a 2016 sculpture to the exhibition called “The Imaginary Indian (Totem Pole),” which includes a wooden totem disappearing into floral wallpaper.
“Museums, monuments, and public institutions should be spaces where these stories are held with care, not suppressed for political convenience,” he said. “When we interrogate systems of power and challenge historical narratives that center whiteness and colonial dominance, we do not divide, we restore balance.”
In an essay for the exhibition’s catalog, Stephanie Stebich, the museum’s director at the time, wrote that “our goal is to encourage visitors to feel invited into a transparent and honest dialogue about the histories of race, racism, and the role of sculpture, art history, and museums in shaping these stories.”
