Can you mount an art exhibition about race in the age of Trump?

What Trump’s order for the Smithsonian to review its exhibits says about the limits and power of art.

It is one of the most evocative works from the American Civil War: a sculpture of a Black man who had escaped from slavery helping an injured White Union soldier lost in hostile territory. When it was unveiled in 1864, John Rogers’ “The Wounded Scout, a Friend in the Swamp,” was celebrated for its anti-slavery message and patriotic tone. But in 2025, a Smithsonian exhibition, “The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture,” asked visitors to reconsider the message behind the piece. On display, the sculpture is paired with a description that prompts viewers to consider how the work, and others by Rogers “reinforced the long-standing racist social order,” despite its pro-Union and emancipation sentiment. The exhibition’s efforts to challenge enduring ideas about race and American sculpture became a subject of President Donald Trump’s ire earlier this year. In an executive order, he condemned the exhibition for stating that “sculpture has been a powerful tool in promoting scientific racism,” that “race is a human invention” and that the United States has used race “to establish and maintain systems of power, privilege, and disenfranchisement.” “Museums in our Nation’s capital should be places where individuals go to learn — not to be subjected to divisive narratives,” the executive order said. Trump has championed a cultural agenda built around celebrating, as the executive order put it, “shared American values” and “unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity, and human flourishing,” and he has put Vice President JD Vance, who serves on the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents, in charge of stopping government spending on exhibits that don’t align with that agenda.