The Smithsonian consists of eight museums in Washington, D.C., including the National Museum of American History, the National Museum of African American History, and the National Museum of the American Indian. In a letter to the Smithsonian, the Trump administration outlined the steps it expects the organization to take so that the exhibitions place greater emphasis on “Americanism.”

When you read about Trump’s demands to U.S. museums, what is your first professional reaction?
- What we need to understand is that behind the language of the letter—which talks about the need ‘to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive and partisan narratives’, and so on—is the intention to bring these museums to heel, and to turn them into storefronts for White supermicist ideas and narratives. In this sense I think that Professor Christain Rostbøll from University of Copenhagen is certainly correct to suggests to dr.dk that these developments are ‘dangerous for democracy’ and I think that his characterization of this as a ‘standardization’ of American culture and history cuts to the heart of the matter. However, I would put this slightly differently myself because I’m not sure that a notion of standarization does enough to convey just how far-reaching and threatening these developments are. What we are seeing happen in the US is a sustained attack on democratic institutions and on the whole idea of evidence based truth and history

How have political powers historically influenced museums and archaeological storytelling?
-Politicians and people in power have more-or-less always tried to intervene into how the past is interpreted and understood. This is because of the enormous power that comes from controlling the past and using it for narrowly political ends. Before power, before political change of any kind, before freedom, before the opposite of freedom (subjection or abnegation), there is imagination. We first need to imagine a different future before we can bring it into being. A major source for imagination—probably the major source for imagination—are images and narratives from the past, both our individual past and our collective past as a society. In this very immediate and material sense, understandings of the past shape the present and determine the possibilities of the future. This is why the interpretation of the past is always a battleground for competing interests in the present. This is also why it is so important that public instititutions like universities and museums that work to reconstruct and interpret the past, should be able to do so free from political directives.

Why should we trust researchers and academics to interpret the past, rather than politicians?
-Because these two groups have different accountabilities and answer to different imperatives. The accountability of politicians is towards their politial party, towards holding and keeping power, and—hopefully—towards their constituency. Their motivations are almost always short-term, transactional and strategic—because, in a way, they have to be. The accountability of academics and researchers is different. Without wanting to sound too grand, our accountability is towards the truth. Disciplines like History and Archaeology have a whole series of protocols and checks and balances that help us to adhere to this responsibility: the requirement that interpretations should be evidence based, the system of peer review, the protocols around debating and defending published research, and so on. This is why, in practice, academics and researchers have two sets of allegiances. Their one allegiance is to the university or museum and to the society of which they are a part. But their second allegiance is towards the discipline, which is constituted as a transnational network of researchers and institutions, and which holds them to the requirement of evidence based interpretation.

Why is it problematic for democracy when politicians try to decide how history is told?
-For democracy to prosper and be strong you need a plurality of voices, and the public sphere needs to be constituted as a space in which many different ideas and positions can be aired and tested. You do not make a strong democracy by making everyone toe the line. You also need to have faith in the institutions that help us to adjudicate between these different voices and claims—for example, by assessing their truth value, or by presenting them in the form of exhibitions. What Trump is currently doing as part of a far-reaching and radical reconfiguration of US society and culture is to enforce what we might call a ‘singularity’. In terms of this singularity, there is only one correct way to be an ‘American’ (his way); there is only one correct way to be an American woman (submissive, in the shadow of her husband); there is only one correct version of American history (exceptionalist, triumphalist); there is only one correct set of values (conservative, bigoted, anti-intellectual); there is only one correct understanding of gender and sexuality (binary, heteronormative); and so on. Enforcing this singularity means undoing many of the gains of recent US history, and hollowing-out and attacking the institutions that have made these gains possible. 

Could something similar happen in Denmark?
-As to whether the same thing could happen in Denmark: one of the first things that we learn in theories of globalization and modernity is that the world is an interconnected place, and no corner of the world stands outside of the currents of history. If events in the US teach us anything, it is that a pluralistic democracy is a fragile and precious thing; it needs, as it were, to be worked at and cherished.

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Contact

Nick Shepherd, Associate Professor
Department of Archeology and Heritage Studies
School of Culture and Society
Aarhus University
Mail: ns@cas.au.dk
Tlf. + 45 8715 1402

More information:
Read  Rethinking Heritage in Precarious Times (Routledge 2023).