Lonnie Bunch is stepping down as Trump targets how the Smithsonian tells Black history
Lonnie G. Bunch III, the 14th secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution.
(ABNN) - Lonnie G. Bunch III, the first African American and first historian to serve as secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, is stepping down.
It comes as the Trump administration continues to clamp down on how the Smithsonian tells the story of race and Black history. In an executive order, Trump accused the institution of promoting what he called a “divisive, race-centered ideology.”
The order specifically cited content at the National Museum of African American History and Culture and a Smithsonian American Art Museum exhibition examining race, power and disenfranchisement. Trump directed Vice President JD Vance to work to remove what the administration calls “improper ideology” from Smithsonian museums.
Lonnie Bunch, then a curator at the California Afro-American Museum, holds a photograph of pioneering Black aviator Bessie Coleman on July 3, 1986. Photo by Lacy Atkins/Los Angeles Times, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
Bunch has served as secretary since 2019. In 2005, he became the founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. He first joined the Smithsonian in 1978.
“It is time for my next chapter, a chapter that will allow me to continue to protect the integrity of the Smithsonian and to champion the importance of a history that illuminates and celebrates the complex story of our nation,” Bunch said in a statement.
Then-President George W. Bush, a Republican, appointed Bunch to the Committee for the Preservation of the White House in 2. President Barack Obama, a Democrat, reappointed him in 2010.
President Joe Biden and Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III, right, receive a briefing on artifacts in the National Museum of Slavery’s collection in Belas, Angola, on Dec. 3, 2024. Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz.
As the Smithsonian’s leader, Bunch oversaw 21 museums, 20 libraries, the National Zoo, research centers and education units.
“I have spent nearly half of my life working at and being part of the Smithsonian family, and what a privilege it has been,” Bunch said.
“There is no place like the Smithsonian - it has been one of the great loves of my life, and I am extraordinarily proud of what we have accomplished together. I leave with pride and sadness, gratitude and joy, and with enormous confidence in the people who will carry this remarkable institution forward.”
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