Smithsonian Institution says it will update exhibit to reflect all impeachments of US presidents following backlash.
The parent organisation of a top-visited history museum in the United States has denied that political pressure played a role in the removal of a display about the impeachments of US President Donald Trump.
The Smithsonian Institution, which runs the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC, said on Saturday that it removed the “temporary” placard for failing to meet the museum’s standards in “appearance, location, timeline, and overall presentation”.
“It was not consistent with other sections in the exhibit and moreover blocked the view of the objects inside its case. For these reasons, we removed the placard,” the institution said in a statement.
“We were not asked by any Administration or other government officials to remove content from the exhibit.”
The Smithsonian Institution, which runs 21 museums and the National Zoo, said the impeachment section of the museum would be updated in the coming weeks to “reflect all impeachment proceedings in our nation’s history”.
The statement comes after The Washington Post on Thursday reported that the museum removed an explicit reference to Trump’s impeachments last month, resulting in its exhibit about impeachment incorrectly stating that “only three presidents have seriously faced removal”.
The Post, citing an unnamed person familiar with the exhibit plans, said the display was taken down following a “content review that the Smithsonian agreed to undertake following pressure from the White House to remove an art museum director”.
The museum’s removal of the display drew swift backlash, with critics of Trump casting the development as the latest capitulation to the whims of an authoritarian president.
“You can run, but you cannot hide from the judgment of history,” Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Friday.
“So, here’s my message to the president: no matter what exhibits you try to distort, the American people will never forget that you were impeached – not once, but twice.”
Trump has, with lightning speed, moved to exert greater control over political, cultural and media institutions as part of his transformative “Make America Great Again” agenda.
In March, the US president signed an executive order to remove “improper ideology” from the Smithsonian Institution’s properties and deny funding for exhibits that “degrade shared American values” or “divide Americans based on race”.
During his first term, Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives twice, in 2019 and 2021, but he was acquitted by the Senate on both occasions.
He was the third US president to be impeached, after Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, and the only US president to be impeached twice.
Former President Richard Nixon faced near-certain impeachment before his resignation in 1974 in the wake of the Watergate scandal.