[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/GettyImages-1203490121.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tTwo former employees say the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington, D.C., altered content on its website and canceled long-planned programming preemptively to avoid angering the Trump administration. Speaking on condition of anonymity, one ex-staffer told Politico<\/em> that museum administrators appeared to be \u201ctrying to proactively fall in line as to not then be forced to change.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe changes come amid a broader effort by President Donald Trump and his administration to control museums through executive orders, singling out institutions within the federally funded Smithsonian Institution, which he accuses of indulging in \u201canti-American ideology.\u201d In a social media post last August, he said museums nationwide are \u201cessentially, the last remaining segment of \u2018WOKE.’\u201d USHMM is an independent museum with no connection to the Smithsonian.<\/p>\n \n\tA USHMM web page titled \u201cTeaching Materials on Nazism and Jim Crow\u201d was removed at some time after August 29, 2025, the last time it was saved on the Internet Archive, Politico<\/em> reports. The page included lesson plans and resources drawing connections between legalized racism in the US and policies under the Nazi regime, along with links to information on the contributions of African American soldiers during the Second World War and \u201cAfro-Germans during the Holocaust.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAlso removed from the museum\u2019s YouTube page\u2014though still available to watch\u2014is a 2018 video showing a conversation between a Holocaust survivor and the daughter of a man lynched in Alabama.<\/p>\n \n\tThe museum had also planned a day-long workshop for college students under the title \u201cFragility of Democracy and the Rise of the Nazis,\u201d but changed the name to \u201cBefore the Holocaust: German Society and the Nazi Rise to Power.\u201d An email obtained by Politico<\/em> shows a senior staffer at USHMM\u2019s Levine Institute of Holocaust Education explaining that the change was needed because of \u201cconcerns regarding how the term fragility may be perceived or interpreted in the current climate.\u201d The museum ultimately canceled the workshop six months into Trump\u2019s second term.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThe decisions here\u2026 from the name change to cutting the program, absolutely seem to be preemptive in order to save face and not cause any disturbances,\u201d another former staffer said, adding that there was concern about \u201cengaging in conversations that might take the participant out of the context of Europe, 1933 to 1945, and into present day.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tTrump last year purged several museum board members appointed by former President Joe Biden\u2014a move Politico<\/em> calls \u201cunprecedented\u201d\u2014and replaced Stuart Eizenstat, a museum co-founder, with Republican lobbyist Jeffrey Miller.<\/p>\n \n\tThe museum sent Politico<\/em> an unsolicited statement while the publication was reporting the story, saying, \u201cThe Trump administration has not requested any changes to the Museum\u2019s content or programming.\u201d Asked to respond to the former employees\u2019 statements, a spokesperson said \u201cthe allegations made by the two former employees that we have retreated from this content are false,\u201d and that \u201cneither the Trump administration nor others ordered changes to the Museum\u2019s content or programming\u201d\u2014notably not the claim the former staffers actually made. The spokesperson did not address why the teaching materials were removed, instead offering links to active pages on the museum\u2019s site covering topics including racism in Germany and the US and Americans and the Holocaust.<\/p>\n \n\tThe museum told professors it had brought on to host the workshops that the events were cut due to funding challenges, according to emails reviewed by Politico<\/em>, which notes the museum saw a $52.4 million increase in net assets that fiscal year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/us-holocaust-museum-canceled-programming-angering-trump-1234780080\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/GettyImages-1203490121.jpg?w=1024″] Two former employees say the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington, D.C., altered content on its website and canceled long-planned programming preemptively to avoid angering the Trump administration. Speaking on condition of anonymity, one ex-staffer told Politico that museum administrators appeared to be \u201ctrying to proactively fall in line as to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1871367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1871367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1871367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1871367\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1871367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1871367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1871367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}