In accepting an award at the National Museum of American History, the filmmaker alluded to recent moves by the White House to reshape the Smithsonian’s programming.
The director Ava DuVernay on Thursday added her voice to those defending the Smithsonian Institution following President Trump’s efforts to try to reshape its depiction of American history.
Ms. DuVernay, a prominent Black filmmaker whose works have included “Selma” and “13th,” was receiving the Great Americans Medal in a ceremony at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington.
Speaking at the award ceremony, Ms. DuVernay praised the Smithsonian for being a place of education and inclusivity. “Let me tell you about the families — Black, white, Native, immigrant — who walk through the doors of Smithsonian museums and feel that this country might just make room for them after all,” she said. “That is not indoctrination. That is belonging. That is education. That is democracy.”
Her remarks came in the wake of an executive order by President Trump in March that accused the Smithsonian of promoting “narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive.”
The order, titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” said there had been an “effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.”
In it, President Trump called for an end to spending on exhibitions or programs that “degrade shared American values, divide Americans by race or promote ideologies inconsistent with federal law.”