Lonnie G. Bunch III announced this week that he will be stepping down after seven years as secretary of the Smithsonian. His departure comes during a period of unprecedented pressure from the Trump administration, which has targeted the beloved American institution and its highly respected leader.
The Smithsonian’s chancellor, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., said in a statement that Mr. Bunch had “pursued excellence in the telling of our nation’s story” and that the Smithsonian had “benefited greatly from his wisdom, vision and leadership.”
Mr. Bunch is expected to retire at the end of the year.
“One of the Great Loves of My Life”
In a letter to Smithsonian staff announcing his retirement, Mr. Bunch, 73, reflected on having spent nearly half of his life working at the Smithsonian, “a reservoir of science, history, art and culture that freely allows the public to find knowledge, understanding, clarity, education, hope and a bit of joy” and “one of the great loves of my life.”
His nearly four decades at the Smithsonian started at the National Air and Space Museum, where he was hired as an education specialist after earning a Ph.D. in American and African American history in 1978.
After six years as founding curator of the California African American Museum in Los Angeles, Mr. Bunch served as the associate director for curatorial affairs at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, where he helped curate the still visible exhibition, “The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden” and acquired the important Greensboro Lunch Counter.
In 2005, Mr. Bunch was appointed as the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, where he worked with Congress, cultivated donors, and won bipartisan support to launch the hugely popular museum on the National Mall in 2016. With 1.6 million visitors, the museum was the Smithsonian’s fourth-most-popular destination last year, according to The New York Times.
“He is someone who understands that Black history is American history,” the Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. told the Times, “and who helped create a space where everyone could come and experience this endlessly fascinating story together.”
In 2019, Mr. Bunch became the first African American and the first historian to be appointed Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, the largest museum, education, and research complex in the world.
Founded by an act of Congress in 1846, the Smithsonian refused to allow Frederick Douglass, the nation’s most prominent abolitionist, to speak at an abolitionist lecture series the institution reluctantly agreed to host during the Civil War.
Mr. Bunch reflected on the institution’s progress at the ceremony installing him as the Smithsonian’s 14th secretary. “Today we are here speaking in a place as an African American, where Frederick Douglass could not speak,” he said, “but we are a different institution.”
Among his many accomplishments as secretary, Mr. Bunch identified two standouts: “showing the world the first image of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way and welcoming two new giant pandas to the National Zoo,” which is part of the Smithsonian.
He also advanced plans and fundraising efforts for two new museums, the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum and the National Museum of the American Latino.
Protecting a Trusted American Institution
During Mr. Bunch’s tenure as secretary, he wrote, 95 million people visited the Smithsonian’s museums. According to recent polling, 37% of Americans have visited a Smithsonian museum.
Today, Americans across the political spectrum rank museums (7.3) just below friends and family and public libraries (tied at 7.4) as the most trustworthy sources of information in the U.S.—significantly higher than the federal government (4.5).
A large majority (84%) of Americans agree that it is very important for museums to accurately represent American history, including highlighting historical struggles and injustices as well as achievements and addressing topics including slavery, racism, and inequality.
And a majority of Americans think the government should not control the content of exhibits in museums, like the Smithsonian, that receive government funding, according to 2025 polling data. “People generally do not want political interference in museum content,” Susie Wilkening, the lead author of a recent study, told Hyperallergic.
But the Trump administration has been doing exactly that, starting last year with an executive order that accused the Smithsonian of promoting “narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive” and called for cutting exhibits or programs that “degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race or promote programs or ideologies inconsistent with federal law.”
In August 2025, Mr. Trump called for a “comprehensive internal review” of Smithsonian museums and ordered them to “celebrate American exceptionalism.” He complained on social media that “the Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL” and focuses too much on “how bad Slavery was.” Americans largely disagreed.
On July 4, the Trump administration issued a report accusing the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History of “extreme political activism.” As USA TODAY reported, historians—and visitors—disagreed with the report’s accusations. The Organization of American Historians, the nation’s largest group of U.S. history scholars, condemned the report as an attempt to “turn back the clock.”
Mr. Bunch defended the museum internally. “At the Smithsonian, our work is driven by scholarship, accuracy and an uncompromising commitment to tell the fullness of America’s story,” he wrote in an email to his staff in July, obtained by NPR.
This week, Mr. Bunch acknowledged that the administration’s relentless attacks have been stressful.
Colleagues, historians, scholars, and artists praised Mr. Bunch’s leadership and expressed concern about the Smithsonian’s future.
“Lonnie Bunch led the Smithsonian with candor, bravery and thoughtfulness” in the face of “a mounting pressure campaign” from the White House, University of Massachusetts Amherst history professor Samuel J. Redman told The New York Times.
“News of his well-earned retirement will be met with many expressions of worry about what the future holds for the Smithsonian,” the American Historical Association’s executive director, Sarah Weicksel, told the Times. “That’s a testament to Bunch’s commitment to protecting the Smithsonian’s independence and Americans’ ability to know the entirety of their past.”
The administration’s efforts to minimize America’s history of racial injustice extend beyond the Smithsonian to the National Park Service, which was ordered to remove signs and exhibits related to slavery; the State Department, which last month took down a painting of four Black people on a flowered background that it described as “aesthetically terrifying”; and the Defense Department, which has restored Confederate names to military bases and recently removed contextual language about a Confederate memorial removed from Arlington National Cemetery in 2023 that portrayed a “nostalgic, mythologized vision of the Confederacy, including highly sanitized depictions of slavery.”
Filmmaker Ava DuVernay called Mr. Bunch’s departure “a profound loss for those who care about America’s history, not its fantasy.” She said in a statement, “He’s been treated shamefully by people who seem more interested in controlling America’s history than understanding it.”
For his part, Mr. Bunch this week emphasized that the Smithsonian must continue to explore the nation’s past in all its complexity. “Americans are an amazingly brave people, who have accomplished so much,” he told The New York Times. “They’ve got to be brave enough to face their own history.”
“To me, that is essential,” he continued. “And I will stand against wind and tide to prevent history from being erased, softened and made palatable. That’s wrong.”