The Trump administration has officially denounced a Smithsonian exhibition celebrating the Detroit techno duo Drexciya as part of a broader critique of the museum's programming. The exhibit, titled "From the Deep: In the Wake of Drexciya with Ayana V. Jackson," which ran from March 2023 through April 2024, has been included in a new White House list of objectionable artworks at the prestigious institution.
The exhibition explored the Afrofuturist vision of Drexciya, created by Detroit techno artists James Stinson and Gerald Donald, which imagined an underwater kingdom populated by the descendants of pregnant enslaved women who were thrown overboard or jumped into the ocean during the Middle Passage. The show featured original artworks by New Jersey-based artist Ayana V. Jackson, along with collaborative pieces created with costume designers from Senegal, Nigeria, Ghana, and Angola. Despite receiving critical acclaim upon its launch, the exhibit has now become a target of the Trump administration's cultural agenda.
The White House's criticism was published in an article titled "The President Is Right About The Smithsonian," which targeted multiple exhibitions at the Washington, D.C. museum complex. Among the criticized works were a show celebrating the 50th anniversary of Title IX that expressed support for transgender athletes, a 2020 painting by Rigoberto A. González depicting refugees crossing the South Texas border wall, and an "LGBTQ History" exhibit at the American History Museum. The list of objectionable artworks appears to have been drawn from an article in the conservative magazine The Federalist, which described the American History Museum as displaying "wall-to-wall anti-American propaganda."
The denouncement comes as part of a comprehensive review of the Smithsonian's operations ordered by the Trump administration. Government officials recently sent a letter to Smithsonian director Lonnie Bunch, demanding that the museum submit their current and future plans for exhibitions, social media content, and other programming for approval. The letter gave the Smithsonian 120 days to comply with this "comprehensive review" of its holdings, which is part of a broader push to align cultural institutions with Trump's agenda ahead of the United States' 250th anniversary celebration.
In response to the pressure, the Smithsonian emphasized its commitment to remaining "free from political or partisan influence" in a June statement. However, several artists have already begun responding to the White House's characterization of their work. In July, painter Amy Sherald withdrew an exhibition from the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery due to a dispute over one featured portrait, "Trans Forming Liberty," which depicted a transgender woman in a blue gown holding a torch.
Sherald expressed her concerns about the broader implications of the cultural review to NPR, stating, "We're talking about erasure every day. And so now I feel like every portrait that I make is a counterterrorist attack... to counter some kind of attack on American history and on Black American history and on Black Americans." Her withdrawal highlights the growing tension between artists and the administration's cultural policies.
The targeting of the Drexciya exhibition is particularly significant given the duo's influential role in Detroit's electronic music scene and their innovative exploration of African American history through speculative fiction. Drexciya's concept of an underwater civilization built from the trauma of the Middle Passage has been widely celebrated as a powerful example of Afrofuturist art that reclaims historical narrative through creative reimagining. The exhibition represented a major institutional recognition of electronic music culture and its intersection with contemporary art and social commentary.
