The National Portrait Gallery removed key details from the caption under the president\u2019s photograph. It still has a story to tell.<\/b>
\n\u201cWhy does he look so angry?\u201d one visitor to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., asked our guide, as if that were a question with an answer. The docent had finally stopped before the black-and-white photograph of a looming, glaring President Trump that dominates the entrance to the final rooms of the \u201cAmerica\u2019s Presidents\u201d exhibit. We had managed not to talk about him for several minutes, swerving left toward the bright, kinetic John F. Kennedy painted by the abstract expressionist Elaine de Kooning and then crossing right to view Kehinde Wiley\u2019s portrait of Barack Obama\u2014a calm, floating, saintlike figure surrounded by leaves and flowers.
But the president with the gorilla posture, knuckles firmly planted on the presidential desk, had to be dealt with. Someone else in our group asked why the Smithsonian had capitulated to Trump. Two days earlier, The had broken the news that the National Portrait Gallery, which is overseen by the Smithsonian Institution, had swapped out an older portrait of Trump for the current one and put up a terse \u201ctombstone\u201d plaque that notes only the photographer\u2019s name, Trump\u2019s date of birth, and his years in office. All of the other presidential portraits in the gallery are accompanied by long assessments of each presidency, its successes and failures. They cite Andrew Johnson\u2019s and Bill Clinton\u2019s impeachments, and the label beside the previous Trump photograph mentioned Trump\u2019s impeachments, too\u2014but the new one, of course, does not. (That other photograph and caption can still be seen on the gallery website.)
Like some demonic trickster of folklore, Trump moves through the world robbing it of speech. The question about the Smithsonian\u2019s capitulation left even our docent, a well-informed man, at a loss for words. He couldn\u2019t address that, he said, but he could tell us a great deal about the desk in the Oval Office that Trump is leaning on: It is called the Resolute Desk because it was made from the oak timbers of the H.M.S. Resolute, a British Arctic-exploration ship.
The National Portrait Gallery spokesperson, noting that the museum had rotated in new Trump portraits before, dismissed the tweaks as routine. But when it comes to Trump and the preservation of historical memory, nothing is routine. The administration began pressuring the Smithsonian for changes almost as soon as Trump returned to office. In March, he signed an executive order demanding that the Smithsonian review its exhibitions for \u201cimproper ideology.\u201d In May, Trump forced out the National Portrait Gallery\u2019s director, Kim Sajet, on grounds of excessive partisanship. (He tried to fire her even though that was not within his power, and she resigned.) At the time, the White House wrote up its objections in a list obtained by The New York Times; one complained about the allusions to his impeachments. In July, the National Museum of American History took references to Trump\u2019s impeachments out of its presidential exhibit. These were restored in August, but in watered-down form. Meanwhile, the National Portrait Gallery has said that it\u2019s planning a larger \u201crefresh\u201d of the \u201cAmerica\u2019s Presidents\u201d exhibit and is exploring putting more tombstone labels there and elsewhere.
Many bad things are happening in America right now, and the suppression of wall text in an art museum, even a quasi-governmental one, is far from the worst of them. Yet both the uninformative label and the new portrait are worth lingering on, for two reasons. First, the fact that Trump\u2019s impeachments were censored, and nothing else at the National Portrait Gallery has been\u2014that we know of\u2014is a reminder that although the administration couches its assaults on American institutions as a campaign against \u201cwokeness,\u201d what the president really cares about is his own reputation.
The first president in the \u201cAmerica\u2019s Presidents\u201d gallery is, of course, George Washington. His portrait was painted in 1796 by the artist Gilbert Stuart, who may be more famous for a different portrait of Washington, which became the face on the $1 bill. With this work, however, Stuart effectively invented the presidential portrait.
Washington\u2019s most presidential feature, though, is his expression. His lips are pressed into a faint grimace, but his eyes are calm and steady, gazing into the distance as if toward the future. This is not another proud autocrat, but an ardent visionary who is tamping himself down so as to model neutrality. He is a republican, which is the point. In a shaky union still divided over the question of federation, he unifies rather than divides; he may have led the nation in war, but here he seeks peace. The circumspect Washington embodies the ideal of government that had recently been put forth in The Federalist Papers: the maintenance of equilibrium through judicious balance. In the state, the balance is one of powers; in the statesman, it is of feelings about power. Here is a president who would know to step down after his second term.
The captions steer us toward interpretations of presidential affect. James Buchanan looks prissy and irresolute, especially after we learn that he \u201cdid little to prevent the first seven Southern states from seceding,\u201d and that the Civil War broke out \u201conly a few weeks after he had left office.\u201d Gerald Ford faces us squarely in the canonical stance of the decent man. He granted amnesty to both Richard Nixon and Vietnam-draft evaders, and is the first to smile\u2014faintly\u2014in his presidential portrait. By the time we get to George W. Bush, the norms of self-presentation have relaxed even further: He sits on a low couch in his shirtsleeves. His uncertain electoral victory and failure to mitigate the effects of Hurricane Katrina make him sound like a lightweight, and his smile verges on pleading.
Only one other president projects anything like Trump\u2019s aggression. That is a seated but powerful Theodore Roosevelt, his gaze fierce and his walrus mustache seeming to emphasize a downward turn of the lips. One hand clutches a riding whip; the other is balled into a fist. \u201cAn outsize personality who preached the benefits of the \u2018strenuous life,\u2019\u201d the caption reads, \u201cwhile also being among the most learned of presidents.\u201d
In the first of this term\u2019s photos, displayed in early 2025 to mark his inauguration, Trump is seated at his desk and turns to look at us. We seem to be standing to his right, almost as his equals, and his left hand rests on the desk. In the second portrait, his dark suit recedes into a dark background, highlighting his loud red tie, but he clasps his hands calmly in front of him. To spot changes in the pitch of Trump\u2019s ever-present bad temper, you have to look at the hands. That he leans into his fists in the portrait that is now hanging in the presidents gallery says everything you need to know. In the absence of curatorial guidance, nothing shields us from his naked belligerence. He invades the space and overpowers the viewer. I thought of ICE occupying blue-state cities. I felt certain that I was supposed to, though later I wondered whether I was supposed to think at all.
The photo informs us, wordlessly, that we have come under the rule of a monarch, and not just a monarch: a would-be tyrant. We don\u2019t know what images, if any, influenced the photographer, Daniel Torok, but somewhere in the background lurks Hans Holbein the Younger\u2019s most famous state portrait, a full-frontal depiction of Henry VIII, who, after he broke with the Catholic Church, became the head of his own church, laying claim to God-given authority.
The original Henry VIII portrait, painted in 1537, formed part of a mural that was lost in a fire, but in most of the copies made over the centuries, the king\u2019s swollen face and massive body overwhelm the frame. A comically large codpiece pokes out between the folds of his skirt. One hand fingers the strap of a hanging dagger, and his eyes fix the viewer with a cold, appraising stare. Henry was egotistical and ruthless, and executed almost everyone who opposed him; the fierce, blunt portrait is said to have terrified his court. I\u2019m sure he liked that.<\/p>\n