Less than three weeks ago in Philadelphia, Lonnie G. Bunch III, as 14th secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, was surrounded by people who had devoted their careers to preserving Black history at the Association of African American Museums’ 48th annual conference Aug. 19-21.
Then, he said, “I’m doing the best I can,” at a moment when the country’s most powerful museum system was facing extraordinary pressure from the White House over what Americans should be told about their past.
On Tuesday, Bunch announced his retirement from his post and ending his tenure as the first African American secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, a role that requires him to oversee 21 museums, the National Zoo, research centers and more.
“I have spent nearly half of my life working at and being part of the Smithsonian family, and what a privilege it has been,” Bunch wrote, according to Smithsonian Magazine. “There is no place like the Smithsonian—it has been one of the great loves of my life, and I am extraordinarily proud of what we have accomplished together.”
In a statement, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who serves as the Smithsonian’s chancellor, said that 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.” The Smithsonian said Mr. Bunch was expected to depart at the end of the year.
His departure comes after more than a year of escalating pressure from President Donald Trump and his administration over the Smithsonian’s treatment of slavery, race, immigration and other parts of American history. Trump has accused the institution of presenting the country too negatively, while his administration has demanded reviews of museum exhibitions and materials and accused the National Museum of American History of political activism.
Bunch repeatedly defended the Smithsonian without turning his disagreements with the White House into a personal fight with Trump.
“It scares me when people aren’t brave enough to face their history,” Bunch said during a television interview this summer.
The sentence captured much of the philosophy that guided Bunch through four decades in museums. History, in his telling, was never supposed to comfort everyone who encountered it. Nor was it meant to indict the country. Its value came from presenting enough of the truth for Americans to understand both what their nation had accomplished and whom it had failed.
“We try to tell a complicated story that is driven by the best nonpartisan scholarship we have,” Bunch said in another television interview as criticism from the administration intensified.
Bunch vs. Trump
The conflict had been building since Trump’s return to office in 2025. Trump signed an executive order in March of that year accusing the Smithsonian of advancing narratives that portray American and Western values as “inherently harmful and oppressive.” The White House later began reviewing exhibitions and materials at several Smithsonian museums.
By July 2026, the fight was no longer confined to bureaucratic correspondence.
A 162-page White House report accused the National Museum of American History of “extreme political activism” and said the museum had turned history into an instrument to “divide, dispirit and discourage” Americans. Bunch responded in a message to Smithsonian employees that the report was “not a fair characterization” of the museum’s work.
Trump later ordered warning signs placed at the National Museum of American History telling visitors that the museum did not, in his administration’s view, accurately portray the country’s history.
Then, days before Bunch’s departure, the administration increased the pressure again. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and White House Domestic Policy Council Director Vince Haley warned that federal agencies could withdraw cooperation with the Smithsonian under its current leadership, including artifact loans, procurement assistance and discretionary grants.
“It is also concerning that the Smithsonian leadership’s culture of ideological activism has not only corrupted the Institution but has spread across the country and corrupted the American Alliance for Museums- the primary organization and accrediting body for the museum profession-among others,” they wrote in an Aug. 26 letter.
For Bunch, the fight reached the institution whose very existence became inseparable from his name.
When he became founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in July 2005, there was no museum.
There was one employee. No building, no collection, no site, and no substantial pool of money to make the dream real.
Bunch spent the next 11 years changing that.
The museum, which finally opened beside the Washington Monument in September 2016, became one of Washington’s most sought-after destinations. Its collection grew to roughly 40,000 objects, preserving everything from the brutality of slavery and segregation to Black achievement in politics, music, sports, military service, business and culture.
Nearly 13 million people have visited since its opening.
Bunch later described his improbable assignment in the title of his book, “A Fool’s Errand: Creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the Age of Bush, Obama, and Trump.”
“So many experiences throughout my career had prepared me and positioned me for this, the grandest challenge of my life, what some have labeled my calling,” Bunch wrote in the 2019 book, according to an excerpt printed by CBS News.
Bunch’s Long Commitment to Telling ‘Accurate History’
The museum also made Bunch something rare in Washington: a historian whose work crossed presidential administrations and partisan lines.
President George W. Bush appointed him to the Committee for the Preservation of the White House in 2002. President Barack Obama reappointed him in 2010. The African American museum itself resulted from decades of advocacy and ultimately opened with Bush and Obama participating in its dedication.
Three years later, in June 2019, Bunch became the Smithsonian’s 14th secretary. He assumed responsibility for 21 museums, 21 libraries, the National Zoo, research centers and educational operations, while overseeing development of the National Museum of the American Latino and the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum.
His résumé reaches well beyond Washington.
Bunch led the Chicago Historical Society from 2001 to 2005 and previously worked at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, where he rose to associate director for curatorial affairs. Earlier, at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles, he curated exhibitions on Black Olympians and Black life in Los Angeles.
The Belleville, New Jersey, native earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees from American University in Washington, and taught at American University, George Washington University, and the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.
His honors include France’s Legion of Honor, the W.E.B. Du Bois Medal, the Freedom Medal from the Roosevelt Institute, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s National Equal Justice Award and lifetime achievement awards from the American Alliance of Museums and the Association of African American Museums.
Yet the institution that will define his career sits on Constitution Avenue.
Just eight days before Tuesday’s announcement, Bunch published a remembrance of building the African American history museum for its 10th anniversary. He recalled the September 2016 dedication, when four generations of the Bonner family rang a church bell once owned by a Black congregation founded in 1776.
Ruth Bonner, then 99— whose father had been born enslaved— pulled the rope alongside her 7-year-old great-granddaughter.
Bunch wrote that he could still remember looking across the Mall years earlier at the empty patch of land where the museum would eventually rise.
“Ten years on,” he wrote, “I feel the same.”
The battle surrounding the Smithsonian is ultimately about the subject that defined Bunch’s professional life — who gets remembered, what gets displayed and whether the ugliest chapters of American history belong beside its triumphs.
Bunch addressed that question as the United States celebrated its 250th anniversary.
“It’s really important that we have a commitment to telling the complete story of America,” he said. “Our job is to say, how do we tell an accurate history … that challenges America to live up to its ideals?”
A decade earlier, as the African American history museum finally opened, Bunch stood on the National Mall and listened as former President George W. Bush offered a sentence that now follows Bunch out of the institution he led.
“A great nation does not hide its history,” Bush demanded.
Ten years later, Bunch is stepping down, having not only witnessed the success of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, but also served as a barrier-breaker.
“I leave with pride and sadness, gratitude and joy,” he said, “and with enormous confidence in the people who will carry this remarkable institution forward.”
