This strikes me as a peaceful way to push back against an administration that you disagree with: the Citizen Historians are photographing and documenting all of the current Smithsonian exhibitions, in case political pressure removes some of them and wipes the historical record of their existence. I've been fairly critical on this page of people without historical training who call themselves historians. (David Barton, I'm looking at you.) But the Citizen Historians are volunteers who are simply creating a record that can survive the possibility of future purges. What do you think of this effort? From Brian Boucher's piece on Artnet.com: ** When Donald Trump published an August 12 letter addressed to the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, informing him of “a comprehensive internal review” of the shows and explanatory materials at the network of national museums, something snapped for historian James Millward. It was just a month after the president, on the pretext of a “public safety emergency” (and despite a historic low crime rate), had deployed the National Guard to the streets of Washington. D.C., where Millward is a history professor at Georgetown University. Many who opposed the president were desperate for something they could do to demonstrate their resistance, Millward said in a phone conversation... Thus was born the idea for Citizen Historians for the Smithsonian, which has recruited hundreds of volunteers to document every gallery, every object, and every wall label at the Smithsonian Institution’s museums as a safeguard against politically motivated erasure or censorship. That’s not an idle worry. Trump has singled out Smithsonian museums for criticism, posting in August on his Truth Social platform that he was ordering a review of museums’ displays, partly because, in his view, they have focused too much on “how bad Slavery was.” That same month, the National Museum of American History removed a placard describing Trump’s two impeachments, before reinstating it following an outcry. Earlier still, Amy Sherald pulled her solo show, “American Sublime,” from its stop at the National Portrait Gallery, citing censorship concerns... “There’s a common approach of authoritarian governments to history,” he said. “I’m aware of efforts to shape the narrative—because culture wars are also narrative wars—in the media and social media. But institutions are also very much used by authoritarian powers to try to influence the world. One pushes back as one can...” Millward teamed up with his colleague Chandra Manning, who teaches U.S. history and is director of the Georgetown Institute for Global History...Manning alerted him to Save Our Signs, a volunteer initiative by the Data Rescue Project that called on volunteers to preserve didactics at the country’s National Parks after the Secretary of the Interior called for Americans to report signs that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.” ...“The changes that scare me are changes of erasure, of editing out, of exclusion,” [Manning] said, or attempts “to substitute a narrative of uniformity and homage, and create a past that never existed and use that as a template for the present. If you can edit people and conflict and groups out of the past, that justifies editing them out of the present. If you can do that for one group, you can do it for anybody. Right now, it’s risky for everyone that doesn’t align with the president’s priorities, but it’s really risky for everyone.” ** Read more at these links: news.artnet.com/art-world/ci… citizenhistorians.org/ thehoya.com/news/city-news/c…