April 14, 2025, 12:42pm

Two weeks ago, the White House signed a spate of executive orders designed to restore “truth and sanity” to cultural institutions. This administration has made no secret of the fact that it’s gunning for the archive, but the latest saber-rattling is about as grim as it could be.

As NPR reported, the ironically named “truth and sanity” directive allows VP Vance, who sits on the board of the Smithsonian, the power to eliminate “improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology” from all federally funded museums.

The order also announces the administration’s plans to stop supporting any programs “that divide Americans by race,” and restore all the toppled Lost Cause memorials that we tore down in the summer of 2020.

Orwellian is overused, but it’s hard not to conjure poor old Winston when faced with an agenda so naked. The plan singled out the Museum of African American History for peddling “revisionist” history. And also included a transphobic threat to the in-progress American Women’s History Museum. This is all to repeat what you probably know—any and all history that celebrates “woke ideology” or the vaguely designated “DEI initiative” is at risk under this administration.

But there is work to do for those of us determined to protect the archive.

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If the recent skirmish at the Kennedy Center is any indication, cultural orgs that depend on federal funding can be unfortunately  quick to capitulate to the Trump agenda.

But as Vanity Fair reports, the Smithsonian is much better positioned to respond to federal intervention because unlike the KC, it’s not technically a federal agency. According to Nate Freeman, as a public-private partnership “the Smithsonian is fire-walled from changing administrations” because Congress appoints their governing regents, who are all expected to serve long terms.

In other words? Since precedent has it that the Smithsonian is not a part of the executive branch, its leaders don’t have to roll over on anything without going to court first. And in fact, groups like the American Library Association are already on the case, responding to ongoing efforts to gut the Institute of Museum and Library Services with plentiful lawsuits.

In the same Vanity Fair piece, Freeman broke down the legal path the administration would need to take to achieve apex evil on the Smithsonian’s board and achieve the (in)sanity agenda. And it’s not a slam dunk by any means. That means it’s a good time to support defensive litigation.

Meanwhile, citizen pressure continues to mean something. We’ve already seen that some cultural bodies are responsive to calls for accountability. Last week, the National Parks Service restored a recently scrubbed page on their website about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. And this February, the Department of Defense restored a page on Jackie Robinson’s military service after people made noise.

So continue to make noise! (And where possible, sue!) But if we assume that this administration will continue its corrective history campaign, it may behoove us to support one more model of cultural preservation: the community archive.

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The Alabama-based Invisible Histories, a nonprofit “South-centered queer archive,” has spent the past seven years collecting at-risk histories. Almost as if they’d anticipated these exact organizing conditions.

Founded in 2018 to “collect, preserve, and promote access to Southern queer history,” the group has lately turned its attention to the preservation of all “digital footprints associated with at-risk LGBTQ+ programs.” Co-founders and executive directors Joshua Burford and Maigen Sullivan aim to provide safe haven for materials “from any closing diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility office in the country.”

To achieve this ambitious aim, their project has sponsored hackathons, and launched an emergency loan program to protect any collection at immediate risk of being “censored, destroyed, or deaccessioned.”

As Oxford American reports, “So far, volunteers have helped preserve roughly twelve hundred websites, downloading close to three thousand photos, flyers, and images before they could be wiped from institutional memories. Amid uncertainty about funding streams for research grants, Invisible Histories is also backing up federally funded research.”

The Advocate reported last week that Invisible Histories will expand their reach across the South soon, and means to establish a permanent physical archive in Charlotte, North Carolina.

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This model is a truly exciting template for culture work, and the Invisible Histories leaders offer a galvanizing reminder: Most of us have the capacity to document and remember.

Moreover, protecting at-risk history has always been an uphill battle.

As Sullivan told Oxford American in this terrific profile, “all the things that are happening on the federal level have been happening, particularly in the Deep South, for a long time now.” We do well to remember the government has tinkered with the record before—that’s why we have those Lost Cause memorials in the first place.

So historians and museum-goers alike, let’s take a page from the people and keep the record—however we can.