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A visitor looks at art at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art on March 28, 2025, in Washington, D.C.
The show, planned to coincide with this year's WorldPride, was postponed due to budget constraints, not Donald Trump's policies, a spokeswoman says.
The Smithsonian National Museum of African Art has postponed an exhibition of works by LGBTQ+ African Artists, which was originally scheduled to open in late May to coincide with WorldPride, being held in Washington, D.C., this year.
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Officials at the museum, which is in D.C., said the rescheduling was due to budget constraints and not because of Donald Trump’s orders banning federal funding for so-called woke content, The Washington Post reports.
“This exhibition was on a very ambitious schedule to meet WorldPride and we did not have enough time to secure all the private sector funds we had hoped to due to shifts in the fundraising environment,” museum spokeswoman Jennifer Mitchell told the Post.
“In late April, the show’s opening date was removed from the museum’s and the Smithsonian’s websites and replaced with ‘2025 – TBD,’” the paper reports. Now it is listed as opening in the early winter of 2026. August 20, 2026, remains the exhibition’s closing date, and therefore “work that initially would have been on display for a year and three months will now be on display for no more than eight months,” according to the Post.
A former museum researcher, speaking anonymously, told the Post that preparations for the show were well under way, with artwork on loan and the space being readied.
The exhibition is titled “Here: Pride and Belonging in African Art.” Artists to be featured in the show include Toyin Ojih Odutola, Zanele Muholi, Paul Emmanuel, Sabelo Mlangeni, and Meriem Bennani.
“Artists across Africa and the diaspora whose artworks connect to their identities and experiences as LGBTQ+ people are featured as the first continental and diasporic survey of its scale and scope outside of Africa,” the museum’s website says. “The show assembles artists whose work has implicitly or explicitly challenged local and global legacies of homophobia and bigotry, offering imaginings of alternative futures as well as celebrations of intimacy, faith, family and joy.”
Trump issued an executive order March 27 titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” It said the federal government will “restore the Smithsonian Institution to its rightful place as a symbol of inspiration and American greatness” by banning “expenditure on exhibits or programs that degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race, or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with Federal law and policy.”
Kevin Gover, undersecretary for museums and culture at the Smithsonian, had already reviewed the exhibition’s content, and the call for postponement did not come from Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch III or the museum’s board of regents, Mitchell told the Post. Instead, it was “an internal museum decision made by our leadership team,” she said.
The board of regents includes Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, Vice President JD Vance, three U.S. senators and three U.S. representatives — a mix of Democrats and Republicans — and nine members of the public.
The executive order directed Vance “to effectuate the policies of this order through his role.” In a memo to staff, Bunch “acknowledged the executive order while emphasizing the institution’s commitment to scholarly independence,” according to Diverse Education.
“We will continue to showcase world-class exhibits, collections, and objects, rooted in expertise and accuracy,” he wrote. “We will continue to employ our internal review processes which keep us accountable to the public. When we err, we adjust, pivot, and learn as needed.”
Trump’s order also directed the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum to remove any reference to transgender women, as he has decreed that the federal government recognizes only male and female genders as assigned at birth.
In further fallout from the administration’s war on diversity, WorldPride organizers relocated multiple events that were to be held at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. In February, Trump fired the center’s president and all its board members, proclaimed himself chairman, installed loyalists on the board, and named longtime ally Richard Grenell executive director.
