Worse than woke, Smithsonian art is bad

There’s a common myth in American culture that only the left is capable of producing great art.

Right-wing art must be formulaic and preachy because it values established norms, while only transgressive leftism can reach new frontiers of form – or so we’re told. But what happens when the left’s own norms become dominantly rigid?

Well, you wind up with the 20 exhibits that the Trump administration now rightly aims to purge from the Smithsonian’s sprawling array of museums, along with many other abuses.

Since his inauguration, Trump has worked to rid wokeness from our cultural institutions through executive order, prompting leftist outrage against a so-called “attack” on the arts. Yet the exhibits singled out in a White House statement earlier this week are so cartoonishly absurd, overtly political, and downright bad that one has to wonder how they’re even considered art – let alone worthy of consideration in our capitol’s preeminent gallery collection?

One painting in the National Portrait Gallery shows an immigrant family climbing a ladder over Trump’s border wall. Hints of Soviet realism are glossed over by a contemporary AI aesthetic. Hey Grok, generate an image of white guilt.

Another shows a black man in a pink wig and blue slip dress posed as the Statue of Liberty. Put it outside a campy West Village gay bar, sure – but not in the Smithsonian.

Still another shows an Afro-Latina with butterflies stuck in her afro, along with the words “My Dreams Are Not Illegal.” The digitally rendered pop-style feels like something you’d find in TJ Maxx.

Yet no lefty collection would be complete without a sketch series that “examines the career” of Dr. Fauci. Although your average Science Believer might find these depictions of Saint Fauci better suited for the Vatican.

Perhaps worse than the art itself are the didactic placards often attached to even classic works.

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Latino uses quotes from avowed communists like Angela Davis to frame American history as rooted in “colonization.” The American History Museum claimed Pilgrims are a “myth” and reframed Benjamin Franklin’s legacy as “almost solely” about slavery. Even the American Women’s History Museum declared itself “inclusive” of men who claim to be women.

The common strain in all these exhibits is best captured by the Smithsonian’s now infamous 2021 campaign against “white dominant culture” – the “ways white people and their traditions, attitudes, and ways of life have been normalized over time” at the expense of everyone else. Everything from “the nuclear family” to “work ethic” and even objective metrics like “intellect” are said to lead to the oppression of women and minorities.

The Smithsonian now seemingly exists to dismantle it all: we are a nation of the oppressed, which must become a nation for the oppressed – and that’s all there is to it.

It’s laughable to frame dismantling exhibits like these as a generic “attack” on the arts given the state of the arts today. But left with no other choice, liberals are forced to defend this garbage as art, naive to the fact everything they once said about conservative art now applies to their own cultural output.

To be fair, the right has produced some pretty bad art in recent decades. How many preachy Lifetime-quality movies do we really need on the horrors of abortion? We get it. But the fringe segment of tacky, conformist con-art pales in comparison to the national arts establishment.

An artist (or writer, or poet, or filmmaker) cannot win esteem within mainstream cultural institutions – nearly all of which operate like the Smithsonian – on his merits alone. So in order to find success, artists conform to the dominant cultural tendency whether they agree with it or not, all seeking to out-do each other in a race to the bottom of anti-Americanism. As this continues apace, the institutions must accept ever-worse art, throwing away their own legacy and prestige on the altar of political correctness. Far from filtering for talent or vision, this selection process actually incentivizes lazy art: after all, the ideological check-box is all that matters.

This is how we wind up with embarrassingly bad art in the Smithsonian – but it can’t go on forever.

“The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.”

The real cutting edge of modern art lies in the very bright and different future that Trump imagines. But those visionary artists who discover it will have little need for the failed gatekeepers of the Smithsonian.