The Smithsonian May Put its Latino Museum in a Building it Already Owns, Riling Conservatives

The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Latino may make its home in the Arts and Industries Building, which the organization already owns, rather than in a purpose-built one, reports the New York Times, which says the decision may be made at a board meeting to take place August 31. The Smithsonian confirmed the meeting to the newspaper but declined to comment further. 

The 1881 building is on the National Mall, sited between the Smithsonian’s Castle and the Hirshhorn Museum.

The board previously resolved to erect new buildings for the Latino Museum and the American Women’s History Museum, passing over Arts and Industries. The new buildings would have required congressional approval, since the proposed sites are owned by the National Park Service. The Republican-dominated Congress is generally supportive of President Donald Trump, who has, in his second term, issued numerous searing critiques of the Smithsonian, including in a 2025 executive order accusing it of promoting “improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology.” The Smithsonian, a network of museums and research centers, largely relies on federal funding.

A site near the Tidal Basin across from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum had been considered for the Latino museum, but the House of Representatives voted down a bill to move those plans forward in May. At issue were sections of the bill that would have given Trump and his allies “more influence,” reports the Times, including demands that the museum focus only on “biological women.” The Latino Museum’s leadership raised similar concerns when the site was floated as a home, citing its proximity to the water table and the fact that it does not face the Mall.

Republican legislators and conservative commentators have criticized the project, with Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Trump-aligned Heritage Foundation, framing the proposed Arts and Industries siting as an attempt to bypass congressional approval. “The Smithsonian Institution is trying to use a loophole to sneak in a building for a yet-to-be-built controversial museum that remains homeless,” wrote Gonzalez in a strident editorial in the Washington Examiner on Thursday. He added, “It is an act of desperation by a museum complex beset with accusations of bias.”

Gonzalez appeared at a contentious July congressional hearing in which the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History director, Anthea Hartig, was grilled on matters of diversity, equity, and inclusion in its programming. Gonzalez called the institution’s philosophy Marxist and called for the Smithsonian’s leaders to be fired. In his Examiner editorial, he claims that the Latino museum “has made it crystal clear that if Congress ever allows it to come into being, it too will be a hothouse for radical activism.”

Congress authorized the creation of the Latino museum and the women’s museum in 2020 as part of a $2.3 trillion year-end spending bill. Supporters had called for such a museum for about 25 years. Jorge Zamanillo was named director in 2022. The project seemed endangered momentarily in 2023, when the House Appropriations Committee approved a budget that banned the federal government from spending any taxpayer money on the project, but by the following year, ARTnews would report that the institution had cleared important hurdles, building a core team, establishing a well-connected board, and raised $70 million of the projected $500 million in private funds needed to match the $500 million in public funds offered to construct a building and establish an endowment.



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