SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Wherever you live, it's likely that there's a theater or a children's museum near you that is being supported, in part, by the federal government. And if you've ever visited Washington, D.C., you may have been inside one of the free Smithsonian museums or attended a show at The Kennedy Center. Since President Trump took office a couple of months ago, his executive orders relating to gender and DEI, or diversity, equity and inclusion, have had a profound impact on arts and culture. NPR correspondent Elizabeth Blair joins us. Elizabeth, thanks for being with us.
ELIZABETH BLAIR, BYLINE: Thank you, Scott.
SIMON: Give us an overview, please, of all the changes.
BLAIR: The changes are many, and they're ongoing. Let's start with something President Trump said this week at a Women's History Month event at the White House. It has to do with the Smithsonian American Women's History Museum, which doesn't yet have a physical building. New York Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis recently introduced legislation to locate the museum on the National Mall. Here's President Trump.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And she is really working hard on this one. This is a passion for you, and you're working...
NICOLE MALLIOTAKIS: It's a big, beautiful museum.
TRUMP: It's a big, beautiful - she said it's going to be a big, beautiful museum. Well, it has to be. If it's for women, it better be big and beautiful, or we're in trouble, right?
BLAIR: And Trump signed an executive order this week that said, in part, that the Women's History Museum will, quote, "not recognize men as women in any respect."
SIMON: Let's talk about that executive order because, of course, the Smithsonian is a complex of museums. There's Air and Space, American Art, American Indian museums, also the Cooper Hewitt in New York and, for that matter, the National Zoo. So what else does this executive order say?
BLAIR: The order says a lot. Are you ready? It says that the Smithsonian has, quote, "come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology," and that it promoted narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive. It also says that no future federal dollars can be spent on anything that degrades shared American values. It goes on to say that the Department of the Interior should take a look at federal monuments to make sure they don't, quote, "perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history or include any other improper partisan ideology."
And it calls for reinstating monuments. We don't know exactly what that means, but we presume he's talking about monuments that were torn down because some people found them offensive. After the murder of George Floyd, more than 150 Confederate symbols were removed across the United States. And neither the Smithsonian nor the Department of the Interior have responded to a request for comment.
SIMON: President Trump also made big changes to the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, what's known as The Kennedy Center, made himself the chair of the board. Do we know what his vision is?
BLAIR: The Kennedy Center, as you know, has multiple theaters and puts on thousands of performances and events a year. Trump has said the building needs a lot of work but that it has tremendous potential. He has hinted at a few things he'd like to see there, a production of "Cats," for example. He also suggested Elvis Presley should receive a posthumous Kennedy Center honors. He has also said what he doesn't want.
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TRUMP: We're going to make sure that it's good and it's not going to be woke. There's no more woke in this country.
BLAIR: The new leadership recently eliminated The Kennedy Center's Social Impact office, which organized projects and free events for underserved communities.
SIMON: Let's talk about the way President Trump uses that term woke, because it's now become a kind of code for disparaging efforts to make organizations more inclusive. Of course, it's often through art that people learn about different perspectives. How is the President's campaign against wokeness affecting the arts?
BLAIR: It's affecting the thousands of arts groups in every corner of the country that receive money from the National Endowment for the Arts, or the NEA. The ACLU is suing the NEA because the agency had told arts groups that they wouldn't be eligible for funding if they promoted what the Trump administration calls gender ideology, which they say is denying, quote, "the biological reality of sex." ACLU attorney Vera Eidelman says that language violates the First Amendment and also the 1965 law that created the NEA, which says, in part, the agency should encourage freedom of thought.
VERA EIDELMAN: The law that created the NEA made clear that the only standards by which any application was to be judged was artistic excellence and artistic merit. And Congress also made very clear in discussing the creation of the NEA that it specifically was worried about and wanted to make sure that the NEA did not become basically a government propaganda arm.
BLAIR: Just to note here that NPR receives NEA grant money. Once the lawsuit was filed, the NEA removed that language from its guidelines temporarily, but they're making a final determination in mid-April.
SIMON: Elizabeth, there must be so many different answers to this, but what are artists making of these changes?
BLAIR: I talked to Holly Bass, who is a multidisciplinary artist whose work often explores her life as an African American woman. She says lots of artists who have applied for NEA grants or who would like to are confused about language that says you can't do anything related to diversity, equity and inclusion.
HOLLY BASS: I would really love if the language was made more plain. Do you mean that you can only tell the stories of white people? And if that's what you mean, that's what you should say. But as far as I'm concerned, as an artist, I am doing the most American thing possible by telling my American story, the story of my family, the story of my community. And I will continue to do that.
SIMON: Elizabeth Blair, correspondent on the culture desk. Thanks so much.
BLAIR: Thank you, Scott. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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