As the Country Turns 250, Why Won’t Its Museums Meet the Moment?
An ARTnews.com commentary about the United States’ upcoming 250th anniversary (the semiquincentennial) criticizes official “America 250” programming for promoting a narrow, celebratory historical narrative and questions why museums are not responding more forcefully. The article describes a nightly, computer-animated 24-minute history projected onto the Washington Monument beginning on New Year’s Eve and repeating every 30 minutes for a week, which it says centers figures like Christopher Columbus and largely excludes non-white perspectives aside from a brief appearance of Sacagawea. It also cites a February report that the National Park Service plans to display a decommissioned equestrian statue of Delaware delegate Caesar Rodney—removed from Wilmington after the 2020 anti-racist protests—on Pennsylvania Avenue in a plaza dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr. The piece further alleges that contractors for the nonpartisan A250 Commission were replaced in 2025 by an events company associated with producers of Donald Trump’s rallies, including the January 6 rally that preceded the Capitol attack.
From This Briefing
This story was covered in Museum Reckonings and the Mega-Gallery Meltdown