Latest news with #RestoringTruthandSanity
Euronews
15 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Euronews
New York museums bring major art to JFK airport's new terminal
When John F. Kennedy International Airport unveils its new $4.2 billion Terminal 6, visitors won't just be greeted by sleek gates and high-tech screens – they'll walk straight into a mini New York arts district. As reported by Artnet, four of the city's most renowned cultural institutions – the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History, and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts – are teaming up to showcase major installations inside the terminal. The artworks, all on loan from each institution's permanent collection, will be displayed in the international arrivals corridor. It's part of a wider effort to make Terminal 6 not just a place to pass through – but a cultural experience in its own right. 'Thanks to the collaboration with four of New York's premier cultural institutions, Terminal 6 will offer arriving visitors from around the world a unique New York experience before they leave the terminal,' said Port Authority executive director Rick Cotton. In addition to these pieces, the terminal will feature 19 permanent, site-specific installations curated by Public Art Fund, plus a rotating display of local work selected by Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning. Lincoln Center is contributing a 140-foot mural celebrating its work across music, dance, theatre and opera. MoMA has partnered with artist Yoko Ono on a piece inspired by her 2019 work PEACE is POWER. The American Museum of Natural History will create a display drawing from its scientific collections, while the Met's installation nods to its diverse collection, showcasing 5,000 years of global art. 'We're honoured to collaborate with such prestigious institutions – icons in the global arts community and deeply rooted in the spirit of New York City,' said Steve Thody, CEO of JFK Millennium Partners, which is leading the project with the Port Authority. 'Each installation will reflect and celebrate the vibrant cultural heartbeat of New York as we welcome the world to JFK and beyond.' Architect Stanis Smith is leading the Terminal 6 design, which will also include 'state-of-the-art architecture, cutting-edge technology and iconic, [and] locally inspired dining and shopping,' according to Cotton. The 1.2 million-square-foot terminal will feature 10 gates and is expected to create around 4,000 jobs. Airlines including JetBlue, Lufthansa, Swiss, ANA, Avianca, and Cathay Pacific will operate from the terminal. The first six gates are set to open later this year, with full completion expected by 2028. While JFK's new terminal celebrates New York's artistic spirit, the wider US cultural landscape faces increasing political scrutiny. A letter sent by the White House last week ordered several US museums to align their content with Donald Trump's interpretation of American history. The move follows Trump's signing of an executive order in March titled 'Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,' which accused the Smithsonian of coming under the influence of a 'divisive, race-centered ideology' and called upon it to 'remove improper ideology' from the institution's museums. In February, Trump removed the Kennedy Center's Board of Trustees and replaced them with his supporters. He even named himself chairman and vowed to end events featuring performers in drag, indicating he would take on a larger role in dictating the institution's programming schedule.
Newsweek
3 days ago
- Politics
- Newsweek
Mary Trump Warns Uncle's Latest Moves Pose 'Unique Threat' to US Future
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Mary Trump, the estranged niece of President Donald Trump, warned this week that his approach to federal cultural institutions poses a "unique threat" to the future of the United States. Newsweek reached out to the White House for comment via email. Why It Matters Trump this week launched a review of some Smithsonian Institution museums in Washington, D.C., to "ensure alignment with the President's directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions." It follows an executive order titled "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History" signed in March that would eliminate "improper ideology" across the Smithsonian. Critics have said the order could break the independence of these museums from partisan interests. What To Know Mary Trump, who has remained a vocal critic of her uncle's policies, raised alarms about the move in a new Substack post published on Thursday. "It is part of an overarching plan," she wrote. "But this one, I think, carries a unique threat to our futures as an advanced country that cares about such things. We also need to remind people that the arts are the most important mirror of—and way into understanding—a society and a culture." She questioned whether this is "just another assault on expertise" like others waged on the scientific and medical communities, saying it is "not an isolated incident," while adding that she believes the Trump administration aims to transform the Smithsonian museums "into agencies of propaganda." Mary Trump attends the Hay Festival in Hay-on-Wye, Wales, on May 26. Mary Trump attends the Hay Festival in Hay-on-Wye, Wales, on May 26."The idea that anybody—including Donald—thinks that he, of all people, has any business going anywhere near our cultural institutions, that he of all people has the right to interfere in our ability to learn about ourselves and other people, is quite frankly grotesque to me," she wrote. The White House, in a letter to Smithsonian Institution Secretary Lonnie Bunch, wrote that the review would be "rooted in respect for the Smithsonian's vital mission and its extraordinary contributions." The review would focus on public-facing content, curatorial process, exhibition planning, collection use and narrative standards, according to the letter. Initially, the review will focus on the National Museum of American History; National Museum of Natural History; National Museum of African American History and Culture; National Museum of the American Indian; National Air and Space Museum; Smithsonian American Art Museum; National Portrait Gallery; and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. "Our goal is not to interfere with the day-to-day operations of curators or staff, but rather to support a broader vision of excellence that highlights historically accurate, uplifting, and inclusive portrayals of America's heritage," the letter reads. What People Are Saying The White House wrote in a letter to Bunch: "We view this process as a collaborative and forward-looking opportunity—one that empowers museum staff to embrace a revitalized curatorial vision rooted in the strength, breadth, and achievements of the American story. By focusing on Americanism—the people, principles, and progress that define our nation—we can work together to renew the Smithsonian's role as the world's leading museum institution." Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff, wrote in a post to X: "The Smithsonian is supposed to be a global symbol of American strength, culture and prestige. A place for families and children to celebrate American history and greatness. Instead, the exhibits have clearly been taken over by leftwing activists who have used the Smithsonian as yet one platform to endlessly bash America and rewrite / erase our magnificent story. These activists have obscenely defaced this beloved institution. The Trump Administration will proudly and diligently restore the patriotic glory of America and ensure the Smithsonian is a place that once more inspires love and devotion to this nation, especially among our youngest citizens." Minnesota Governor Tim Walz wrote to X: "If you're trying to erase history, you're on the wrong side of it." U.S. Representative Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts wrote in a statement: "It is the impartial role and responsibility of the Smithsonian museums to ensure a full, accurate, and resonant telling of American history – and Trump has no right to censor our history, ignore the systemic oppression of marginalized people, and attack our intellectual freedom. Much like his disgraceful rollbacks of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and his campaign to ban books, this action is yet another attempt to whitewash our shared history and replace the challenges and triumphs of women, people of color, and Native Americans with false narratives forged with white supremacist ideology." What Happens Next The White House's letter includes an implementation timeline. Within 120 days, the museums should "begin implementing content corrections where necessary, replacing divisive or ideologically driven language with unifying, historically accurate, and constructive descriptions across placards, wall didactics, digital displays, and other public-facing materials."
Washington Post
21-04-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
She told Trump the Smithsonian needs changing. He's ordered her to do it.
There is only one person mentioned by name in President Donald Trump's March 27 executive order titled 'Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.' That's the order that seeks to 'restore the Smithsonian Institution to its rightful place as a symbol of inspiration and American greatness' through removing mentions of historical racism. And the name in the order will probably not ring a bell.
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Are Florida's Confederate statues coming back? Trump orders restoration of monuments
Will we see Confederate statues returned to Florida's parks? On Thursday, President Donald Trump ordered federal officials, including the Secretary of the Interior, to take steps to reinstate any public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties that were removed to "perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology." It is unclear how much power the Secretary of the Interior can exert over city- or county-controlled parks or public squares or state-controlled buildings. In 2020, then-Secretary David Bernhardt threatened to withhold funding from any state or local governments that did not adequately protect their monuments after Trump signed an order during his first term calling for lengthy prison terms for anyone vandalizing or destroying one. But the move may enbolden opponents of recent removals to demand they be restored. In the last five years, around a dozen statues, monuments and plaques in Florida honoring Confederate leaders or soldiers have been removed or moved to a less prominent location, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center's "Whose Heritage?" map. Florida counties also have renamed numerous schools, parks and streets, often after contentious arguments among community leaders and residents. The movement to de-emphasize Confederate soldiers has been growing for years, especially since the 2015 mass shooting in a Black South Carolina church and the violent white nationalist rally protesting the removal of Confederate statues in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, but it kicked into high gear after the George Floyd murder in 2020, along with other high-profile killings of Black people by law enforcement, led to nationwide Black Lives Matter protests and demands for justice. More than 90 Confederate monuments and 167 symbols were taken down across the country in 2020 after Floyd's death, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Congress passed a law over then-President Trump's veto to rename nine army posts and potentially hundreds of military bases named for Confederate heroes, something current Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is gradually reversing. Not that Benning: Hegseth renames Fort Moore, but not for Confederate general, he says Trump's new executive order, named "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History," specifies changes to monuments et al made after January 1, 2020. The order also puts Vice President JD Vance in charge of scouring the Smithsonian Institution and the National Zoo to "remove improper ideology," part of the Trump administration's war against DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs in the federal government that has resulted in the gutting of federal websites and the deletion of any mention of people of color or women who excelled despite oppression. Florida has seen its own efforts to control the narrative of history. Gov. Ron DeSantis has made waging war against DEI initiatives a cornerstone of his legacy, and the state changed its standards on Black history in ways that critics say whitewashed history and Florida's role in the Civil War. A 2024 bill to store all removed Confederate monuments in Florida died in committee. Many people oppose removing Confederate memorials, arguing that history should not be denied, no matter how complicated; that they are an essential part of the Southern heritage; that it starts a slippery slope to the removal of monuments of any currently problematic person; and that Confederate memorials can be used as educational tools to fight racism. But opponents see the statues and building names as both glorification of the people who declared war on the United States for the right to keep enslaving Black people and as ongoing intimidation against people of color. Most of the statues went up between the 1890s and 1950s, long after the Civil War ended, during the era of Jim Crow segregation when white supremacists were creating a false narrative about the true motives of the Confederacy (the "Lost Cause"). Where previously Confederate monuments tended to be in cemeteries, these were put out in public squares and in front of state buildings. There was another surge of Confederacy tribute years later as an outraged backlash to the civil rights movement and the Brown v. Board of Education decision: Some schools and streets were renamed to honor Confederate leaders, Georgia added the Confederate battle flag to its state flag, and South Carolina added it to their capitol building in Columbia. According to the third edition of the Southern Poverty Law Center's report "Whose Heritage? Public Symbols of the Confederacy," as of February 2022, there were 75 Confederate memorials still present in Florida. That's one building, two parks, six counties or cities, 14 schools, four school districts, 16 roads, 19 monuments and 13 others (such as notable plaques and cemeteries). Since 2015, when the first "Whose Heritage?" report was published, 30 different Confederate memorials in Florida have been removed or renamed. Whose Heritage? Map: Search this interactive map of Confederate monuments in the U.S. and their status In 2020, the city of Jacksonville took down a Confederate soldier statue in the heart of downtown and renamed Confederate Park to Springfield Park in the Springfield neighborhood. However, the "Tribute to the Women of the Southern Confederacy" in Springfield Park remains as debates rage on over whether to remove it and what to do with it if they do. Three years later, Mayor Donna Deegan ordered the removal of the last remaining piece of a 125-year-old Confederate monument in the heart of downtown Jacksonville across the street from the front entrance of Jacksonville City Hall. The city council is currently considering action over whether she had the legal authority to do so. The marker at the end of Stonewall Jackson Memorial Highway in St. Petersburg was removed. A bust of Robert E. Lee in Fort Myers was taken down and sent to a museum, although a group is fighting to bring it back. A Florida appeals court ruled that a Confederate statue in Madison County can be removed, but its immediate future is unknown. An Orlando-area attorney and Quincy native led the fight to bring down a Confederate monument in Gadsden County that had been in front of the county courthouse for 136 years. St. Augustine decided to remove the city's Confederate memorial from the Plaza, where it had stood for more than 140 years, and a memorial was removed from a park west of the Plaza. In 2017, Daytona Beach city officials stripped a riverfront war memorial of three plaques commemorating Confederate soldiers and moved them to a museum. After George Floyd's murder, the sign in front of the ancient live oak in Port Orange called the "Confederate Oak" was quietly removed. A Confederate monument in front of the Marion County Judicial Center in Ocala was moved to a veterans park in 2010. A statue of former Tallahassee mayor Francis Eppes has been relocated multiple times on and off the Florida State University campus over controversies that he owned enslaved people. There have been efforts to rename FSU's B.K. Roberts College of Law over Roberts' role in denying a Black man's admittance to the University of Florida law school. In 2020, Pensacola officials took down the monument of an 8-foot statue of a Confederate soldier, along with the 50-foot granite pedestal that sat in Florida Square for 129 years. The city won a lawsuit challenging its removal. A Confederate statue called "Johnny Reb" was moved from an Orlando park near Lake Eola in 2017 to a historic cemetery where 37 Confederate soldiers are buried. A time capsule was discovered underneath, containing newspapers, a Confederate flag and Confederate States of America dollar bills, among other items. In Lakeland, a 109-year-old statue of a Confederate soldier was removed from the center of Munn Park in 2019 and moved to Veterans Park. A group advocating for preserving Confederate monuments sued the city. Nearby and two years later, a Confederate marker outside the old courthouse in downtown Bartow was moved to Oak Hill Cemetery. A Confederate monument was removed from downtown Bradenton in 2017 after a great deal of controversy during the process. And while it's not in Florida, a historical milestone was reached when one of two statues representing the Sunshine State in the U.S. Capitol building's Statuary Hall in D.C., which honored Confederate Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith, was replaced with one celebrating Mary McLeod Bethune, founder of Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach and a prominent Black leader. The Bethune statue is the first representing a Black person, male or female, in the state collection inside Statuary Hall. Until 2020, Roberto Clemente Middle School near Orlando was named for Stonewall Jackson, while Robert E. Lee Middle School was renamed College Park Middle. The Alachua County School Board voted unanimously to rename J.J. Finley Elementary School, named for a Confederate general, to honor a prominent Black physicist in World War II, Carolyn Beatrice Parker. The Kirby-Smith Center was quietly renamed in 2017, to be renamed the Alachua County Public Schools District Office. Lee Elementary in Tampa is now Tampa Heights Elementary. Robert E. Lee Middle in Miami was changed to Jose De Diego Middle. The Jacksonville area saw a wave of name changes in 2021 that moved sharply away from Confederate leaders: Springfield Academy was once known as Kirby-Smith Middle School, Westside Middle was previously J.E.B. Stuart Middle School, Charger Academy used to be Jefferson Davis Middle, Nathan B. Forrest High became Westside High, and Riverside High was once named for Robert E. Lee. The former Joseph Finegan Elementary School in Atlantic Beach became simply Anchor Academy, and Stonewall Jackson Elementary is now Hidden Oaks. Eighty-two public schools across the United States have chosen to drop their namesakes since 2020, according to a USA TODAY analysis of federal data. In 2020, the city of Jacksonville renamed Hemming Park, named after Charles C. Hemming, who fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War and donated a statue of a Confederate soldier to the city. It's now James Weldon Johnson Park, after poet, diplomat, attorney and civil rights leader James Weldon Johnson. Johnson, with his brother, also composed "Lift Every Voice and Sing," which became known as the Black national anthem. In Pensacola, Lee Square became Florida Square. In 2023, the Pensacola Police Department unveiled a new design that removed the Confederate flag from police badges and patches. Four streets in the Hollywood/Pembroke Pines area — Lee Street, Forrest Street, Forrest Drive and Hood Street — were all renamed in 2017. In 2016 the Florida Senate chamber was renovated and a 10-foot-by-16-foot mural depicting a Confederate general and flag was removed and moved to a nearby bank. The year before, the Florida Senate agreed to strip the Confederate battle flag from its official seal. The Confederate flag flew at the Florida state Capitol from 1978 to 2001, when then-Gov. Jeb Bush had it removed. 'My position on how to address the Confederate flag issue is clear: In Florida, we acted, moving the flag from the state grounds to a museum where it belonged,' Bush said in a statement at the time. This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Confederate monuments in Florida: Will Trump's order bring them back?
