Citizen Historians Rush to Preserve Smithsonian’s Present Before Tomorrow

22 September 2025

Shelley Smith, a retired public health professional, is one of hundreds of volunteers taking part in an effort to document wall text, objects and images at the Smithsonian.

When President Trump entered his second term he issued an executive order claiming that the Smithsonian Institution promotes "narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive." In mid-August his administration officials followed that up with a directive to Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III demanding a “comprehensive internal review” of eight Smithsonian museums including those for American History, American Art, Natural History and Air & Space. Concerned that changes might follow, a group of historians and everyday citizens mobilized to record exactly what the museums look like now. Their goal is to make a permanent record before any alterations might erase or reshape elements of exhibits they fear will be altered under political pressure.

Two historians in particular helped spark the effort. Jim Millward of Georgetown University said the move by the administration stirred alarm in him. He said that he has studied government censorship of history elsewhere and never expected to confront a threat like that at home. He reached out to Chandra Manning, who shared his concern. Together they proposed a volunteer-led project called “Citizen Historians.” It calls on people to systematically walk through Smithsonian museums room by room exhibit by exhibit, photographing signs and displays, wall text, objects, images, everything they can. The framework is simple: any smartphone will do. What matters is creating a baseline archive that charts how the Smithsonian presents history now.

Hundreds of people answered their call for help. Some are longtime museum volunteers or former employees. Others are visitors who over the years had grown fond of certain galleries and displays. They come from Washington, D.C., Virginia, Maryland and farther afield. A woman named Shelley Smith, retired public health professional, spent time in the National Museum of African American History and Culture documenting the gallery titled “Forces for Change: Mary McLeod Bethune and Black Women’s Activism.” She photographed a small diary Bethune kept on a trip to Europe in 1927 wall images posters and wall text. She said that seeing how many angles and voices the gallery already reveals made her understand how important the work is.

The scope is vast. The Smithsonian includes 21 museums with millions of artifacts including Jackie Robinson’s jersey, prehistoric skeletons, Ming vases, and countless specimens. Citizen Historian volunteers have so far uploaded more than 25,000 photographs and videos. Millward and Manning are seeking a permanent repository for the archive so this historic record won’t vanish if website links break or projects get shut down.

The motivation behind the project is not to freeze exhibits in place or reject all change. Millward insists museums should evolve with new research and more inclusive scholarship. What worries them is change pushed from political office rather than from curators or historians who have deep knowledge of both the artifacts and their contexts. Changes compelled by pressure or ideology rather than evidence risk erasing complexity, softening uncomfortable histories, or downgrading narratives some find inconvenient.

The project recalls earlier efforts. “Save Our Signs” was a movement that gathered photographs of interpretive displays in National Parks after an order from the Trump administration asking visitors to report signs in national parks that were “negative about either past or living Americans.” That effort created a record of what the signs said before any edits took place. Citizen Historians aims to do something similar for the Smithsonian exhibits.

Among the challenges is sheer scale and preservation. Even photographing everything now may miss some small detail. There is also the risk that political interference could reach into how much access volunteers have in certain museums or spaces. The project leaders emphasize transparency and volunteer safety. They also emphasize that this effort depends on public participation. Without visitors who care enough to notice what exhibits say and how they say it historical memory may be at even greater risk.

For many of the volunteers this work feels deeply personal. They see themselves not as museum police but as witnesses. As people who believe that public history what lives on museum walls, what objects are labeled and contextualized matters not only for scholars but for daily life. What a museum chooses to show what it omits shapes how people understand who they are, what their country is, and whose stories count.

So while political winds may shift the priorities of administrations the record that Citizen Historians is building offers a kind of anchor. It reminds us that what is preserved in public memory does not have to depend solely on the decisions of powerful officials. It can also rest in the hands of many small witnesses keeping careful eyes, snapping photographs, saving image files, keeping memory alive.