Recent changes by the Trump administration are affecting how US museums and institutions tell the nation's multicultural history to travellers.

In the last few months, US President Donald Trump has threatened to annex Canada; warned that the US will "go as far as we have to go" to seize Greenland; and imposed tariffs on all nations, effectively initiating a global trade war. But while many of Trump's most dramatic "America first" actions are aimed at other countries, his sweeping new policy changes are also affecting how the US tells its own multicultural story.

Several highly touristed landmarks in the US are already facing significant changes.

On 27 March, Trump signed an executive order titled Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, arguing that there has been "a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation's history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth". The order took specific aim at the Smithsonian Institution, whose 21 museums, 21 libraries and many other research and cultural centres comprise the world's largest museum complex and were visited by nearly 17 million people in 2024.

"Once widely respected as a symbol of American excellence and a global icon of cultural achievement," the order states, "the Smithsonian Institution has, in recent years, come under the influence of divisive, race-centred ideology."

The order threatens to bar congressional funds from institutions that espouse "improper, divisive or anti-American" beliefs. As an example of this, Trump cited programming from the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History & Culture, the only national museum devoted exclusively to documenting African American life, history and culture from slavery to the modern era.

Headquartered on the National Mall in Washington DC, some of the Smithsonian's many museums focus on marginalised communities in the US – including the National Museum of the American Indian,the National Museum of African Art, the National Museum of the American Latino and the embattled National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Many activists and historians have expressed outrage over the order's broader meaning and argued that it is actually a brazen attempt to do what Trump is denouncing: rewrite US history. This begs the question, which version of the US will visitors find?

"It seems like we're headed in the direction where there's even an attempt to deny that the institution of slavery even existed, or that Jim Crow laws and segregation and racial violence against Black communities, Black families, Black individuals even occurred," said Dr Clarissa Myrick-Harris White, a historian and Africana studies professor at the historically Black Morehouse College in a statement to the Associated Press.

This concern was echoed by the American Historical Association, whose 10,000 members represent the world's largest organisation of professional historians. In a statement co-signed by 31 organisations, the association says the executive order "egregiously misrepresents the work of the Smithsonian Institution", which was established by Congress more than 175 years ago for the "increase and diffusion of knowledge".

"The stories that have shaped our past include not only elements........

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