The museum on the National Mall that is devoted to preserving and presenting the nation’s archives is under fire for allegedly declining to display documents relating to dark episodes in U.S. history, apparently to avoid inflaming opinions among those on the political right.
The National Archives Museum, under the leadership of U.S. Archivist Colleen Shogan and her top advisers at the National Archives and Records Administration, has allegedly modified planned and existing exhibits involving subjects like the government’s treatment of Native Americans and the history of birth control medication in favor of more anodyne subjects, according to numerous anonymous staffers speaking to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story.
The museum is planning a $40 million overhaul ahead of the 2026 anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
“Visitors shouldn’t feel confronted, they should feel welcomed,” a senior official told employees according to the Journal.
Shogan and her advisors reportedly were concerned that planned exhibits might anger Republicans, who have partial oversight over the museum’s budgets, or a potential second Trump administration.
Colleen Shogan delivers remarks during her swearing-in ceremony to be 11th Archivist of the United States, at the National Archives Museum in Washington, DC, on September 11, 2023. Photo: Mandel Ngan / AFP.
The museum welcomes millions of visitors annually, and the archives are home to some 13.5 billion pieces of paper, 41 million photographs, and more than 33 billion electronic records, among many other artifacts.
In a reply to the Wall Street Journal published on the organization’s blog, Shogan criticized the paper’s “misinformed perspective” but did not refute any of the acts alleged in its reporting. Asked by Artnet News to refute individual allegations by staffers, a press rep instead offered a website including renderings and descriptions of the planned galleries.
One exhibit at the museum involves a photo booth in which visitors can have their own image superimposed next to images of historic figures. Reportedly removed from this display were images of civil rights crusader Martin Luther King Jr., labor union activist Dolores Huerta, and the first Native American woman to join the Marine Corps, Minnie Spotted-Wolf. Senior aides to Shogan ordered these images removed and replaced with non-controversial shots of Republican presidents, including Richard Nixon greeting Elvis Presley, and Ronald Reagan with baseball star Cal Ripken Jr., according to the Journal.
An exhibit concerning the Westward expansion by the U.S. government reportedly met with criticism from Shogan, who allegedly asked, “Why is it so much about Indians?” Among the artifacts removed were treaties by which Native Americans handed over land to the government.
A rendering of the planned “Your Archives in Action” gallery at the National Archives Museum. Courtesy of the Museum.
Some modifications touched on some of the most hot-button subjects of our day. Shogan reportedly ordered that employees remove information about contraceptive medicine from a section on patents and replace it with a patent for the bump stock, a controversial device that allows semiautomatic weapons to fire at higher rates of speed and was employed in the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas which killed 58 people, making it the most deadly mass shooting in American history.
Dorothea Lange’s photographs of Japanese Americans in WWII internment camps, according to staff, were cut for being “too negative and controversial.”
The Journal reported that a veteran employee filed a federal whistleblower complaint over the summer, alleging censorship and abuse of power by Shogan, but the U.S. Office of Special Counsel concluded that it could not pursue the complaint due to insufficient firsthand knowledge by the employee. There has been an exodus of at last six employees in recent months, according to the paper.
A Biden appointee, Shogan was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in a 52 to 45 vote in 2023, but only after contentious hearings. Republican senator Josh Hawley of Missouri argued that social media posts by Shogan criticizing Trump and Texas Republican senator Ted Cruz, as well as an article she penned, “Anti-Intellectualism in the Modern Presidency: A Republican Populism,” put her impartiality in question.
After studying at Boston College and Yale University, Shogan worked as a legislative assistant in the U.S. Senate and then as an assistant and deputy director at the Congressional Research Service. She then oversaw visitor services at the Library of Congress.
The Archives came into a historic spotlight in 2022, when classified and top secret documents turned up among boxes that staffers removed from former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. The agency referred the matter to the Department of Justice, leading to Trump’s indictment on federal charges. A Trump-appointed judge, U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon, dismissed that case in July, saying that the appointment of Special Counsel Jack Smith to bring the case was unconstitutional. Smith has appealed Cannon’s ruling.