If they did come, the Citizen Historians were determined to get there first. Curtis unfolded a map of the museum with eight galleries circled in hot pink. “We powwowed last night and realized we could hit four of them,” she explained. “Rather than split up, let’s go together and saturate.”
“Can anybody read that?” Gilgannon whispered, holding her phone up like a flashlight.
“Yeah, ‘Oh say can you see by the dawn’s early light,’ ” Curtis replied.
We were standing in the darkened chamber that houses the Star-Spangled Banner, whose tattered stripes were dimly visible behind glass. The flag was made by Mary Pickersgill, who sewed it with the help of her daughter, two nieces, and an “African-American indentured servant” named Grace Wisher. Curtis frowned. “Do we really think she was an ‘indentured servant’?” she asked, wondering if the label had originally read “slave.” Gilgannon sighed: “I hate how they put it in your head that you’re gonna get tricked.”
The White House report contends that N.M.A.H. has abandoned patriotism and erased the Founding Fathers in service of an “anti-white agenda” that seeks to “divide, dispirit, and discourage our citizens.” But a quick search of the collections database revealed that nearly a hundred objects associated with George Washington and the Revolutionary War—including Washington’s uniform, his battle sword, and his dinner plates—were on display. From the Star-Spangled Banner, we made our way to Horatio Greenough’s 1841 sculpture of a shirtless, sword-bearing Washington, its caption explaining how the sculptor had captured his “highest and noblest virtues.” Greenbush, the tour guide, was amused by his neoclassically bare chest. “He would have been mortified, I’m sure.”
Behind Washington was “Many Voices, One Nation,” an exhibition about the struggle of disparate peoples to forge an American identity. A video collage showcasing America’s diversity played on loop near the entrance; Gilgannon, whose family comes from Belgium, said, “My mother’s in there.” The four women fanned out to photograph the objects on display: an Irish brooch, a Chinese-American shop sign, a collection of accessories abandoned by migrants in the Sonoran Desert. The report frames the show as “pro-illegal alien activism,” but hadn’t mentioned its Border Patrol uniform, whose caption praised the agent’s twenty-two years of service. Later, we gawked at the lavishly decorated 1963 Chevy Impala in “Corazón y vida,” another exhibit derided as a paean to “foreign” peoples—the Chicanos of Southern California, who started building “lowriders” with elaborate hydraulic systems in the nineteen-forties. “I think I’d be scared when it lifts up,” Curtis said, inspecting the undercarriage. “We went to see ‘The Odyssey’ in 4DX a few weeks ago and I was screaming!”
On the top floor was “American Democracy,” a sweeping exhibition about self-governance. Near the entrance was the desk where Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence. Farther in was paraphernalia from a quarter millennium of Presidential campaigns, including Trump’s. (There was even a MAGA hat.) The exhibition culminated in a display of protest signs. The report characterizes them as “almost all for various progressive causes,” and I quickly spotted slogans familiar from Black Lives Matter and the campaign for marriage equality. But equally prominent were “Secure Our Borders,” “Stop Abortion Now,” and projected footage from a Tea Party rally—all unmentioned. Gilgannon took a picture of one from the D.C.-statehood movement. “They practice and promote joy,” she explained. “At first, I thought, What’s this crazy woo-woo? But that’s what’s going to bond us together when we have to, like, fight the National Guard.”
