Goldberg: Attack on Polish museum holds lesson for U.S. museums

By Michelle Goldberg / The New York Times

Before Poland’s illiberal Law and Justice party came to power in 2015, the country had been deep in a reckoning over its role in the Holocaust. In 2000, historian Jan Gross published an explosive book, “Neighbors,” about a 1941 massacre in the Nazi-occupied Polish town of Jedwabne, where Poles enthusiastically tortured and murdered up to 1,600 Jews. The book punctured a national myth in which Poles were only either heroes or victims in World War II.

After “Neighbors” came out, Poland’s president, Aleksander Kwasniewski, went to Jedwabne for a ceremony broadcast on Polish television. “For this crime, we should beg the souls of the dead and their families for forgiveness,” he said.

The notion of Polish historical guilt made many conservative Poles furious. Law and Justice capitalized on their anger, running against what its leader called the “pedagogy of shame.” After the party’s 2015 victory, one of its first targets was the Museum of the Second World War, then being built in Gdansk.

The museum was supposed to explore the war’s global context and to emphasize the toll it took on civilians. Among its collection were keys to the homes of Jews murdered in Jedwabne. Before it ever opened, Law and Justice wanted to shut it down for being insufficiently patriotic.

Today in America, this history has an eerie familiarity. Five years ago, many institutions in the United States tried, with varying degrees of seriousness and skill, to come to terms with our country’s legacy of racism. A backlash to this reckoning helped propel Donald Trump back into the White House, where he has taken a whole-of-government approach to wiping out the idea that America has anything to apologize for. As part of this campaign, the administration seeks to force our national museums to conform to its triumphalist version of history.

In March, Trump signed an executive order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” criticizing versions of history that foster “a sense of national shame.” Museums and monuments, it said, should celebrate America’s “extraordinary heritage” and inculcate national pride. This week, the administration announced that it was reviewing displays at eight national museums — including the Museum of American History, the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Smithsonian American Art Museum — and giving them 120 days to bring their content in line with Trump’s vision.

We’re already seeing glimpses of what that looks like. Last month, the National Museum of American History removed references to Trump’s impeachments from an exhibit on the American presidency. Those references were restored last week, but with changes: The exhibit no longer says that Trump made “false statements” about the 2020 election or that he encouraged the mob on Jan. 6.

Amy Sherald, the artist who painted Michelle Obama’s official portrait, canceled an upcoming solo show at the National Portrait Gallery after being told the museum was considering removing her painting of a transgender Statue of Liberty to avoid angering Trump.

The National Portrait Gallery denied this, but the Trump administration declared victory. “The Statue of Liberty is not an abstract canvas for political expression; it is a revered and solemn symbol of freedom, inspiration and national unity that defines the American spirit,” said Lindsey Halligan, a Trump lawyer who is now in charge of getting museums to reflect the administration’s ideology. What Trump and his allies seem to want from our museums is self-glorifying kitsch, the aesthetic lingua franca of all authoritarians.

For Pawel Machcewicz, founding director of the Museum of the Second World War, it’s been unsettling to see American museums subject to the sort of political intimidation he experienced in Poland. “I believed that American democracy had somehow stronger rules,” he told me by phone this week. “It’s older than Polish democracy. I thought the autonomy of research, the autonomy of museums, would be something sacred in the U.S. It turns out that it can also be subverted. So this is a very pessimistic lesson for us.”

But Machcewicz’s story has a lesson for Americans that’s at least cautiously optimistic. Rather than submit to Law and Justice’s attempt to destroy his museum, he battled the administration in court and was able to hang on long enough to open it in 2017. After only two weeks, the government succeeded in ousting him, but the fight over the museum’s fate garnered major national and international attention, dramatizing the autocratic nature of the new Polish regime.

Standing up to his government was costly. Machcewicz said he was subject to two separate criminal investigations, and for a time he left the country. “There is a high, high price to pay for such a resistance, and I am not going to condemn anyone who is not willing to pay such a price,” he said. But for him, it was worth it. After Law and Justice lost the 2023 election, Machcewicz became chair of the board of the museum, and it has been restored to its original design.

That doesn’t mean the contest is over; Law and Justice may well retake power in 2027. But for now, Machcewicz has the peace that comes from doing the right thing. “If I had capitulated, I would have been a completely frustrated man, because I would feel like someone who has betrayed himself,” he said. It’s a message that those who are tempted to try to appease this administration, at our museums or anywhere else, might remember.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times, c.2025.