STEVE INSKEEP, BYLINE: We have a tour of the Smithsonian Institution. The Trump administration made a list of complaints about how the Washington Museum complex portrays American history. So we went to see for ourselves. Without calling ahead, we visited one of the Smithsonian's main buildings, the National Museum of American History. At the entrance, we arranged to meet a historian, Lindsay Chervinsky.
Do you remember the first time you ever went here?
LINDSAY CHERVINSKY: Eighth grade school trip. It was my first time to Washington, D.C., and I absolutely fell in love with the city.
INSKEEP: She went on to become a biographer of John Adams and the head of George Washington's Presidential Library. She still appreciates the Smithsonian.
CHERVINSKY: Well, it's just amazing. To my knowledge, most other nations don't have massive museums set up to their history that are free. And that's fine. These things are expensive, of course, to maintain. But the fact that we as a nation have decided that we are going to bring together so many of our treasures that explain our history, put it in one place and open the doors to the world is remarkable.
INSKEEP: We went looking for one of the signature exhibits in this vast space.
I thought it was around this way, but maybe it's this way that you get to the Star-Spangled Banner?
The Star-Spangled Banner, it turns out, is not on the same floor as a locomotive from 1831. It is up the stairs. Our producer, Adam Bearn, spotted the entrance.
I guess we'll have to look at a map.
ADAM BEARN, BYLINE: The Star-Spangled Banner.
INSKEEP: Where? Do you see that?
BEARN: On this big thing...
INSKEEP: Oh.
BEARN: ...On the wall, straight ahead.
INSKEEP: OK.
CHERVINSKY: (Laughter).
INSKEEP: I guess the giant sign saying Star-Spangled Banner would be the sign of that.
BEARN: That is the clue.
INSKEEP: The immense American flag, which flew over a Baltimore fort during a British bombardment, is in a dim, reverent space, mostly quiet, except for distant sounds of battle...
(SOUNDBITE OF CANNON FIRE)
INSKEEP: ...As we might have heard around Fort McHenry in 1814. Lindsay Chervinsky put her fingers on a bomb fragment that's on display.
CHERVINSKY: They tell you to touch the fragment. That's amazing. I love that.
INSKEEP: Around the corner, we paused in front of the flag, which is laid out almost flat, 30 by 34 feet, the floor space of a restaurant, say, or a three-car garage. We paid our respects quietly and talked about it afterward.
Wow. That was really moving.
CHERVINSKY: It is. You know, as you come around the corner and you see it, it took my breath away. I mean, it's so - it's such a powerful kind of shock to actually see that massive flag up close and personal like that.
INSKEEP: Near the display were extra materials, including a history channel video showing ways Americans have displayed the flag in times of triumph and sorrow - at Robert F. Kennedy's funeral, at the Olympic Games, on the moon.
It's very moving just to see these pictures.
CHERVINSKY: It really is.
INSKEEP: Iwo Jima, voting rights march in 1965.
Also a Klan rally, rows of white-hooded men carrying the flag and a 1989 protest where people burned the flag.
CHERVINSKY: I was struck by - the flag is used to demonstrate either inclusion or exclusion. So people use it to ask for inclusion. So there was a women's suffrage rally. There was, of course, the formerly-enslaved woman who had it pinned to her chest. There are people who are using it to say, I am an American, too, and I belong.
INSKEEP: The immigrant rights rally?
CHERVINSKY: Absolutely, that I belong. I want to be here. And then there were also people who were trying to limit who belongs.
INSKEEP: This video prompted a complaint. The White House shared an article labeling the museum, quote, "wall-to-wall anti-American propaganda," partly because it includes those unflattering uses of the flag. The White House named items in several of the Smithsonian's 21 museums, ranging from the display of Pride flags to a program by a racism scholar.
Some items on the list are not at the Smithsonian. A painting of people crossing a border wall, for example, was part of a temporary exhibit three years ago. In our visit to the History Museum, we did find one exhibit on the list.
OK. So this is...
CHERVINSKY: The Benjamin Franklin exhibit.
INSKEEP: It shows instruments Ben Franklin used to study electricity and includes text referring to his ownership of enslaved people. I read some words the White House dislikes.
Remarkable scientific accomplishments were enabled by the social and economic system he worked within.
Chervinsky, you will recall, runs the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon, where the guides will tell you Washington owned slaves. The Smithsonian text about Franklin struck me as a little clumsy, although Chervinsky defended its substance.
CHERVINSKY: If you start with the end of the story, that's quite boring. And if you start with a purely positive story, that doesn't tell us much. But what they say in this section on Franklin is that his ideas really evolved, and by the end of his life, he was very vocally anti-slavery. He helped people submit petitions to Congress, which caused a whole lot of problems for Congress.
That change over time is such an important story and is actually, I think, the part of the American story that is amazing is that we are capable of changing over time. And so you have to share the beginning in order to get to the end.
INSKEEP: This is a theme of Smithsonian exhibits...
Over here are the ruby red slippers from "The Wizard of Oz."
...Such as the section on popular culture.
CHERVINSKY: This is such an unbelievably happy exhibit. Like, walking in, how can you not just have a smile on your face?
INSKEEP: Amid videos of movies and dance numbers, you see the image of a woman who played men on stage. You see an Irish American boxer from a time when the Irish were struggling for equality, and then a Black boxer from a time when Black people were. In the section on democracy, we struck up a conversation with Michael Blaylock and Jamie Ramirez, tourists from California, who said they wanted more of that sort of content.
MICHAEL BLAYLOCK: It's interesting, the contrast in the telling of history at this museum versus, like, for example, the African American History Museum...
INSKEEP: Which is right down the street.
BLAYLOCK: ...Right down the street, yeah. This feels more - I don't know what the word to use.
JAMIE RAMIREZ: Vague.
(LAUGHTER)
BLAYLOCK: Yeah.
INSKEEP: So far this year, the exhibits haven't changed much. The History Museum did close an exhibit on the future National Museum of the American Latino. It included a painting the White House had criticized, showing a boy watching Fourth of July fireworks over a border wall. But the Smithsonian says no official asked for any change.
Lindsay Chervinsky noticed that they restored an item that was briefly removed - text about President Trump - in a display on impeachments.
CHERVINSKY: Does look like they have covered the whole story here.
INSKEEP: One of the tourists we met, Jessie Stockham of Georgia, is aware of the debate over the Smithsonian.
JESSIE STOCKHAM: I think it makes it more special to come now because things are kind of uncertain about whether the president will change a lot of exhibits to kind of frame a certain agenda. And so I think being able to see things as they are right now is important because we don't know what things will look like in the future.
INSKEEP: For now, this museum, known as America's Attic, remains free and open, a curated cross-section of American life. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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