Another Abstract Public Artwork Faces Trump’s Senseless Ire
The president wants to replace José de Rivera's “Infinity” (1967) outside the National Museum of American History with a statue of George Washington.
In a recent post on Truth Social, President Donald Trump criticized the Smithsonian Institution for its "ideological activism." He urged the National Museum of American History (NMAH) to construct a massive 30-foot statue of George Washington and create a five-year exhibition titled "America’s Greatest Hero." Trump envisioned this towering statue replacing José de Rivera's kinetic sculpture "Infinity" (1967), the United States government's first abstract art commission that has greeted visitors outside the NMAH entrance for nearly six decades.
The artistically inclined sculpture, a stainless steel Möbius strip rotating every eight minutes, irked Trump, who described it as a "strange modernist sculpture" that "tells visitors nothing about America, inspires no one, and honors none of our Great American Heroes." In a bid to rectify the situation, Trump called for the Smithsonian to showcase an existing 11-foot-tall statue of Washington outside the NMAH's Flag Hall for a special Constitution Day celebration on September 17.
Trump's grand proposal aimed to address what he deemed the museum's failure to honor George Washington and the Founding Fathers during "America 250" programming under the previous leadership of Secretary Lonnie Bunch III. He also took jabs at the NMAH's now-defunct Center for Restorative History and its Decolonization Working Group for "focusing attention overwhelmingly on those who have been oppressed."
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