[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/GettyImages-492876144.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI was incredulous. Really?\u201d That was Kim Sajet\u2019s take when her former Smithsonian colleague, Anthea M. Hartig, director of the National Museum of American History, was subjected to hostile questioning during a congressional hearing last week, according to a new interview with The New York Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI could see that it was going to become a real witch hunt,\u201d she continued. \u201cI didn\u2019t wish that on my colleagues and I didn\u2019t wish that on the Smithsonian.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tSajet is nearly a year past her decision to step down as director of the Smithsonian\u2019s National Portrait Gallery after President Donald Trump announced his intention to fire her. She\u2019s in the Midwest instead, having started a new stint as director of the Milwaukee Art Museum in September.<\/p>\n \n\tAbout Sajet and Hartig, the Times<\/em> quoted Steven Conn, a professor at Miami University who focuses on American cultural history, saying: \u201cThere is something unusual about the vitriol that was so personally directed.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tSajet said she objected to the nature of yes\/no questions asked of Hartig. \u201cWouldn\u2019t it be lovely if history was that black and white? There is always nuance,\u201d she said. \u201cBut they don\u2019t want to hear the context. They want the sound bite, they want to get the score.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tShe also defended Hartig\u2019s work, as well as her own: \u201cThe Museum of American History doesn\u2019t make the history\u2014they\u2019re just reporting on what\u2019s happened. That\u2019s what I did as the director of the Portrait Gallery. We didn\u2019t say whether so-and-so\u2019s actions were good or bad. We just said, \u2018This is what they did.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tSajet said she texted Hartig sympathetically after last week\u2019s hearing, and added: \u201cHaving to sit for congressional testimony is not what you expect when you apply for the job.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/kim-sajet-defends-smithsonian-colleague-1234794077\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/GettyImages-492876144.jpg?w=1024″] \u201cI was incredulous. Really?\u201d That was Kim Sajet\u2019s take when her former Smithsonian colleague, Anthea M. Hartig, director of the National Museum of American History, was subjected to hostile questioning during a congressional hearing last week, according to a new interview with The New York Times. \u201cI could see that it was […]<\/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-2071463","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\/2071463","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=2071463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2071463\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2071463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2071463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2071463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}