National African American Museum Faces Uncertainty Without Its Leader

In the eight years since it opened on the National Mall, the National Museum of African American History and Culture has become one of the glittering jewels of the Smithsonian Institution.

With award-winning architecture, a three-tiered shape evoking a traditional Yoruban crown, and installations portraying the struggles and triumphs of African Americans, the museum registered its 10 millionth visitor in 2023, and is one of the Smithsonian’s most popular museums.

But now it is in the cross-hairs of President Trump, who issued an executive order in March that seeks to address what he described as the Smithsonian’s promotion of “narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive,” singling out the African American museum as a particular offender.

The president’s order has left the museum trying to navigate its most challenging political environment at a moment when it finds itself without a permanent leader. Its director, Kevin Young, was on leave when the order was issued and left soon afterward.

Some see the museum as threatened.

Several hundred protesters marched to the museum on Saturday, demanding that Black history and the museums that explore it be protected from interference. Some of the protesters brandished homemade signs, like one with the museum’s initials — “I ♥ NMAAHC” — while others wore badges that said “I Take My History Black.”

“So much of Black history was lost and was recaptured,” said Beatrice Turpin-Peek, 59, from Maryland, who joined the march. “To hear that it’s under attack — it’s just heartbreaking.”

Mr. Young, 54, a highly regarded poet and essayist who took the job in 2021, told the museum staff that he was leaving after four years to focus on writing. But the timing surrounding his resignation fueled questions.

People familiar with the circumstances said in recent interviews that Mr. Young’s departure was negotiated after some Smithsonian officials began to question whether he was a good fit for the job.

Directing the African American museum, which has some 230 employees and welcomes more than a million visitors each year, was more complex than Mr. Young’s former role leading the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a division of the New York Public Library, which has 80 employees and is focused mainly on research.

He also took on the Washington job while juggling his writing career (he has written or edited four books since 2021) and continuing as poetry editor of The New Yorker, a position he has held since 2017.

Mr. Young declined to be interviewed. But in an email announcing his departure to staff last month he cited several achievements during his tenure, including opening seven major exhibitions and completing a $350 million fund-raising campaign. He described leading the museum as “a role I have fully embraced.”

“I am looking forward to the next phase of life,” he continued, “including returning to writing full time after two decades in museums and libraries, and am happy to say I do so with the encouragement of my family and friends.”

While at the Schomburg, Mr. Young, a graduate of Harvard and Brown, and a former curator and professor of literature at Emory University, presided over major acquisitions including the archives of Harry Belafonte, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, and the rap impresario Fab 5 Freddy. Lonnie G. Bunch III, the African American museum’s founding director and now the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, in describing his rationale for selecting Mr. Young to succeed him in 2020, spoke of Mr. Young’s passion for making Black history accessible.

The Smithsonian’s tax filing for the year that ended in September 2022, the most recent available, lists the value of Mr. Young’s salary and benefits package at $456,275.

In March, before the president’s executive order, Mr. Young went on an indefinite personal leave. He announced his permanent departure in the email to staff three weeks later.

Shanita Brackett, the museum’s associate director of operations, who is highly regarded by many in museum management circles, was appointed interim director. She has worked at the museum since 2016 and once served as the acting director of the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum.

Museum officials did not respond to requests to interview Ms. Brackett, in keeping with what has been the Smithsonian’s efforts to keep a low profile in the wake of Mr. Trump’s order. Several members of the African American museum board declined to comment or did not respond to queries.

Vedet Coleman-Robinson the chief executive of the Association of African American Museums, which helped organize the rally, said that she did not think the departure of Mr. Young had left the museum in a particularly vulnerable position.

“The work still gets done,” she said. “The mission still gets done as long as that team is there doing really good work. They will be fine.”

The stark ambitions and abrupt pursuit of Mr. Trump’s agenda in his second term as president underlie much of the concern that spurred Saturday’s march as a show of support for the museum.

“Our opponents are trying to erase Black history, Black voices and Black lives,” said Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, a law professor and executive director of the African American Policy Forum, who is helping to lead the effort to protect the museum.

Though the African American museum celebrates the achievements of Black Americans, some worry that its exploration of the horrors of slavery and discrimination make it vulnerable to a White House whose executive order suggests that the Smithsonian has “come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology.”

Michael M. Kaiser, chairman of the DeVos Institute of Arts Management and former president of the Kennedy Center in Washington, cited such a concern in a recent interview. “It’s a whole museum on a topic that the president doesn’t seem to want dealt with by the Smithsonian,” he said.

The only specific mention of the African American museum in the Trump executive order criticized a graphic about “whiteness and white culture” posted on its website in May 2020, before Mr. Young’s arrival at the museum. The graphic referred to “the Protestant work ethic,” “rugged individualism” and “the nuclear family” as aspects of white culture that people of color had “internalized.”

The graphic, part of the museum’s new “Talking About Race” portal, was criticized by Donald Trump Jr. and other conservatives, and was removed six weeks after its posting. Since late January, when President Trump issued an executive order banning diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the federal government, much of the rest of the material in the portal — now called “Teaching and Learning” — has also been removed.

Asked about the change, the museum said in a statement that it was integrating the portal content elsewhere on its website as “part of our ongoing efforts to enhance the digital experience.”

There is no evidence that recent programming at the museum played any role in the concerns raised by the White House. Under Mr. Young, the museum opened culturally focused temporary exhibitions, including ones on Afrofuturism and Black design. Last December it opened “In Slavery’s Wake,” a major exhibition about the legacy of the global slave trade that will travel to museums in Europe, Africa and South America.

The exhibition “Afrofuturism: A History of Black Futures” was in keeping with the erudite remix sensibility of Mr. Young’s writing as it hopscotched across genres and periods. The show combined artifacts like an original T’Challa costume from the movie “Black Panther,” a flight suit worn by Trayvon Martin at an aviation camp and material relating to the enslaved poet Phillis Wheatley, who in 1774 became the first American of African descent to publish a book.

Ms. Coleman-Robinson said that exhibition was a particular achievement of Mr. Young’s. “He did some really good work with his team,” she said.

One current exhibition, “Reckoning: Protest. Defiance. Resilience,” which opened in 2021, focuses on the relationship between art and Black protest, including the Black Lives Matter movement. Mr. Trump has called that phrase a “symbol of hate.”

In the wake of the executive order, inaccurate reports surfaced. A portion of the Woolworth’s lunch counter was said to have been removed from the African American museum. (Portions of the lunch counter are in the National Museum of American History and the African American museum and have not been removed.)

A minister and civil rights activist from San Francisco also suggested that two artifacts he had lent to the African American museum had been returned prematurely. (The Smithsonian said the objects were being returned simply because of the routine expiration of the loan agreement.) One museum visitor complained in a news account that Nat Turner’s Bible had been taken off display. (The Smithsonian said this had happened in 2020 for conservation reasons.)

Smithsonian officials have not publicly expressed concern over the vulnerability of the African American museum, which opened with broad bipartisan support. Mr. Bunch, as its founding director, has a personal investment in the future of the institution, where attendance — now 1.6 million visitors a year — remains a strong indicator of its popular appeal and support.

But those who attended Saturday’s rally said they had already heard enough about the White House agenda to make them concerned.

“There is a lot at stake right now,” said Tyler Brown-Dewese, 21, from New York, a student at American University. “America is at stake. The core values of the American constitution. We are seeing blatant attacks on African American history.”