President Donald Trump on Friday urged the Smithsonian Institution to honor George Washington at its National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. Trump asked the history museum to erect a new 30-foot “Washington Colossus” to replace the “Infinity,”
Page B1From§Eachthe wee small hours edition — 12 September 2026
Smithsonian director announces retirement amid 'ideological activism' clash, Trump demands 30-foot Washington statue days later.
As it ran on the front
Independence, an institution, died this month in Washington, D.C., after a short illness brought on by a letter. In it, reported September 3, the Interior Secretary informed the Smithsonian's federal partners that the museum complex — the largest in the world — had developed a culture of ideological activism, and asked them to stop helping. Federal agencies, it turned out, had been doing quite a lot of the actual work.
The illness moved fast, as these things do once someone decides they should. On September 8, Secretary Lonnie Bunch III — 73, the Smithsonian's first Black leader, founder of its museum of African American history — announced he would step down, a retirement this desk is old enough to recognize as a resignation wearing its Sunday clothes. Four days later, on September 12, the President supplied the epitaph himself: the abstract steel sculpture rotating at the history museum's front door, a piece called "Infinity," inspires no one, he said, and should come down in favor of a thirty-foot "Washington Colossus," timed handsomely to the first president's three-hundredth birthday.…
…(cont) This desk has buried streaks, norms, and the occasional acronym, but it is a rare week that lets you watch the replacement get ordered before the funeral's over. The pattern, for those keeping a scorecard: Meridian Hill Park's statues and fountains got their gold plating first; an arch went up in the President's honor; New Mexico got floated, briefly, for a rename. Beautification, the releases call it, and beautification is a fine word, flat and civic, right up until you notice what it's beautifying over.
The Smithsonian is survived by its collections, its scholars, and one abstract sculpture presumably still rotating, uninspired and unbothered, as this column goes to press. It is preceded in death by its own director's tenure, and by the letter that made his retirement less a choice than a formality. Whether thirty feet of bronze inspires anyone remains, per the record, untested; malarkey, historically, does not scale by the foot.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks that mourners write their member of Congress and ask a plain question: who signs off on what a museum is allowed to say about the country that owns it.
“They send a letter telling federal agencies to stop lending a hand, and five days later the director announces his retirement — that's not a coincidence, that's a squeeze play with a press release. Then the fix for the empty office isn't a search committee, it's a thirty-foot statue, like the whole problem with a museum about the country was that it wasn't shiny enough. Watch what gets starved quiet and what gets built loud, because that's the actual budget, not the one they read out loud.”
“Look, nobody fired anybody — Secretary Bunch announced his own retirement, the timing is just the calendar being the calendar. And is it really controversial to want the nation's founding father honored for his three-hundredth birthday instead of a — what is it, a rotating steel thing? Did I just call the Smithsonian's own sculpture a rotating steel thing? That's not my talking point, that's their placard.”
The receipts
After Trump promised taxpayers would not pay "one dime" for the ballroom, Republicans proposed $1 billion in taxpayer funds for it. Congress rejected the ask. NBC News, May 2026
Trump demands Smithsonian replace ‘strange modernist’ sculpture that ‘inspires no one’ with 30-foot-tall ‘Washington Colossus’The sculpture switch is one several moves Trump proposed as part of an effort to better honor the nation's first president ahead of his 300th birthday.
· Smithsonian leader Lonnie Bunch to retire as Trump targets institution from the morgue, 8 Sep 2026
· Trump administration warns agencies could stop helping Smithsonian from the morgue, 3 Sep 2026
· Trump teases idea of changing New Mexico to ‘New America’ from the morgue, 6 Sep 2026
· Trump announces renovation of Meridian Hill Park statues, pools, and fountains from the morgue, 7 Sep 2026
· Trump posts updates about his DC ‘beautification’ projects from the morgue, 7 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.