While the defunding of public media grabbed headlines in late summer, museums too are struggling in the current political and cultural climate. In early August the Trump administration sent a letter to Smithsonian secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III, announcing it would review the institution’s exhibitions and related material and require it to replace “divisive or ideologically driven language with unifying, historically accurate and constructive descriptions.” The move seriously compromises the Smithsonian’s independence from political interference.
Not long before the letter went out, celebrated portrait artist Amy Sherald, perhaps best known for her portrait of former First Lady Michelle Obama, decided to cancel her fall exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery out of concern that the museum might remove her painting of a transgender Statue of Liberty to avoid possible White House pushback.
Developments like these indicate the charged context of divisiveness and fear of DEI policing surrounding museum exhibitions. We chronicle many of them in the current issue’s Fall Visual Arts Lookahead, which opens with an essay by Brian Hearn about the abundance of regional shows focusing on American Indian artists, their work, their history and the way their culture has been treated in the past.
Surveying the entirety of recent and upcoming offerings at local and regional museums, there emerges another trend that seems to be quietly gaining ground — exhibits exploring the culture, lifestyle and interests of rural America. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art’s spring/summer “Survival of the Fittest” exhibit of wildlife art exposed museumgoers to a genre usually associated with sportsmen and women and rural pastimes.
Sportsmen were the intended audience for the images presented in a smaller exhibit, now at the Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art. Featuring colored stone lithographs by Hudson River School painter Thomas Doughty and others, “The Cabinet of Natural History” showcases bird and animal imagery from the private collection of Montana photographer and curator Lee Silliman, with historical commentary originally published in a monthly serial designed to appeal to sportsmen.
Animal images are popular this season: In November the Momentary in Bentonville, Arkansas, opens “The Greatest Wildlife Photographs,” featuring a dramatic selection of images taken by photographers from National Geographic. Everyone loves animals, no? And perhaps one thing mounting an exhibit like this reflects is that we are tired of fighting.
Fashion is another topic with broad appeal, as evidenced by the popularity of the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art’s ongoing “A Match Made in Heaven” exhibit, pairing pop-inspired paintings by Katherine Bernhardt with over-the-top fashions by Jeremy Scott. The topic of fashion gets a historical look this fall in Wichita, where the Wichita Art Museum is devoting an entire exhibit to the “Little Black Dress at 100.”
And then there is sports, a great uniter if Kansas City’s relationship with the Chiefs is any indication. The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art takes a deep dive into the topic through the eyes of artists and designers in “Get in the Game: Sports, Art, Culture,” an exhibit organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Music lovers can say goodbye to summer at a free Bach Aria Soloists performance Sept. 13 in the Loose Park Rose Garden, a beloved iconic space in Kansas City. Meanwhile, a similarly beloved iconic space in the nation’s capital — The White House Rose Garden, has been paved over to create an entertainment area at the behest of the current occupant of the White House.
The pave-over comes in the wake of multiple presidents who put their stamp on the Garden since it was established in 1913. They include President Harry S. Truman, whose stewardship of the garden with his wife Bess is documented in a new online exhibit presented by the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum. See it at www.trumanlibraryinstitute.org/photo-exhibits/trumans-white-house-rose-garden.
