The Trump administration’s attacks on art institutions could complicate the search for a candidate to fill a high-profile opening at the Hirshhorn Museum.
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, one of a constellation of museums under the Smithsonian Institution, has a vacancy after its current director announced she would step down for a leadership role at New York City’s Guggenheim Museum. But several sources acquainted with the museum world said that as the Hirshhorn looks for its next leader, the recent attacks by the Trump administration on art institutions could frighten away candidates.
“There are a lot of open director positions at SI, that’s the biggest concern,” an employee at another Smithsonian museum told NOTUS, pointing to director openings at the National Portrait Gallery and the National Museum of African American History and Culture, among others. “Historically people want to be directors, but it’s a scary time to be working with the federal government.”
The Trump administration’s history of butting heads with Smithsonian leadership has added pressure to people in those positions, raising questions about how they should navigate leading one of the country’s most popular sets of museums.
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“I think time will tell,” a source familiar with the Smithsonian told NOTUS on if the administration’s actions would create hiring issues for the new director. “We’ve got an election coming up. We’re getting close to the halfway mark of the second term. So I think people will also be looking to the future.”
“The next person that comes in is gonna be looking at, what does the trajectory look like here for the next five or 10 years?” added the source. “Not just the next two years.”
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In 2025, the Hirshhorn had nearly 500,000 visits, according to the Smithsonian’s website. The highly anticipated reopening of the museum’s sculpture garden this fall is expected to drive in more traffic. Despite this, one Hirshhorn employee expects getting future funding from the government will be a challenge.
“Contemporary art is inherently boundary-pushing, so I’m sure we’ll be targeted again at some point,” one current Hirshhorn Museum employee told NOTUS. “We’ve always depended on external funding — grants, donations — for about a third of our budget. But we’ve been threatened several times with having our already low federal funding cut.”
“They’re distracted by the war at the moment, but I’m sure we’ll have to fight for our FY 27 budget allocation, and that Trump will want to do as he’s publicly threatened: slash funding for the new Latino and Women’s museums, close down the Anacostia museum, etc,” the Hirshhorn employee added.
The vacancy at Hirshhorn came up after Melissa Chiu, the current director of the Hirshhorn, announced last week that she would step down from her position in August to take a leadership role at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, a position that she said was “a dream job.” Chiu told The New York Times that the pressure of working in D.C. did not factor into her decision to leave.
“Under any circumstances I would have taken this job, and I feel confident in the legacy that I’m leaving behind at the Hirshhorn,” Chiu told the outlet.
Kate Gibbs, communications director for the museum, declined to address questions about the museum’s pending search for a director.
“The Hirshhorn has momentum. We will cut the ribbon for the revitalized Sculpture Garden in October and present commissioned performances starting next spring,” Gibbs said in a statement to NOTUS. “We have checklists for upcoming exhibitions and plans to expand the art education inside Hirshhorn Art School. Our work is exciting and it continues.”
In August, White House officials sent a letter to the Smithsonian secretary Lonnie Bunch, calling for a “comprehensive internal review” of eight Smithsonian Museums, including the Hirshhorn.
“This initiative aims to ensure alignment with the President’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions,” the letter said.
The review process entailed interviewing curators and senior staff members, examining current and future exhibitions and reviewing museums’ social media content. Museum staff were told to submit documentation to the administration, including catalogs for ongoing exhibitions, “preliminary budgets for upcoming exhibitions” and student and teacher resources related to the displays.
In December, the White House told Bunch that the institution failed to meet the deadline to turn over materials and demanded that the remaining documentation be sent in January. He sent over additional documentation later that month following threats to Smithsonian’s funding.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Donald Russell, a curator and professor at George Mason University, told NOTUS that the administration’s actions are reminiscent of the 1990s, when politicians tried to interfere with federal funding for art exhibitions.
“Certainly this is an extremely unusual political moment. It’s not like the arts were not familiar with this from the culture wars in the ’90s,” Russell said when asked about how the museum’s director search could be affected. “But the level is just so much higher, the level of tension.”
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