How do you navigate those challenges while also thinking about how those events are going to be recorded in history?

Well, I think, first of all, I've got to remember sometimes to say no.

I love this job.

And there's no doubt that this has been a challenging seven years.

So I think part of what we wanted to do was really approach it on two levels.

One is, how do you protect the Smithsonian? How does the Smithsonian protect its staff during a pandemic? How does the Smithsonian continue to serve the public when its museums were closed? So it's really thinking creatively about how to make sure we serve the public.

And then it's important to recognize that part of the job of a museum is to collect today for tomorrow's.

How do you encourage people to appreciate history and to understand the significance of museums?

Does your decision to retire have anything to do with the pressure campaign, some would say the attacks from the White House?

No, not really.

And in fact, the challenges that we've experienced are one of the reasons I stayed so long.

And that there's a part of me that says I should stay forever.

To protect the Smithsonian, but also to protect history, as well as sort of dealing with mischaracterizations of the Smithsonian as this place owned by left-wing radicals who want to destroy America.

Does that personally offend you?

Anybody that knows me personally knows my love of this nation.

I'm the son of somebody who was a World War II veteran who, you know, I can remember every Memorial Day, going to parades.

And there you have co-curated basically the centerpiece of the exhibit for the 250th called American Aspirations, What did you set out to do there? Apparently you chronicle through more than 30 objects taken from the Smithsonian collection.

What I wanted to do was to say that America is as much an ideal as it is a place.

And that many of those ideals really can be traced to Jefferson's words in the Declaration of Independence.

That for me, the Declaration of Independence challenges us to be a nation in pursuit.

in pursuit of fairness, in pursuit of opportunity, in pursuit of sort of new horizons.

So what I wanted to do was to take Jefferson's ideas to say it's important to celebrate and understand those words because really for 250 years people have done everything they can to make those words concrete, to make those words accessible, to make those words meaningful to everybody in America.

So I wanted to look at that by saying, here are certain aspirations, aspirations of fairness, of hope.

respond?

So what does values-based leadership look like now?

I think it means, first of all, an evaluation, almost an updating of the values to make sure sort of almost every year that this is really where you need to go as an organization.

It strikes me that it's crucially important to make sure that we have humane and human-centered values, and that's always gotta be there regardless of where we are.

That we've gotta work effectively and take care of the people that we work with.

But also recognizing that our value is as an educational entity, that it's not just sort of saying, "Here are important things, come see it," but to work effectively to make sure that the public can dip into the museum as a reservoir of education, of understanding, of clarity.

And I think that notion of making sure that you are externally focused, recognizing that you have an obligation to help people, um, find understanding, to basically deal with the greater good, is one of, I would argue, um, the important values.

I think another value that I've touched on is this notion of embracing ambiguity.

So I guess what I'd like to ask is, in your opinion, how willing are museum leaders to share authority, not just symbolically, but also structurally?

called up Chuck Berry?

I want one of the guitars that you wrote Maybelline on.

And he said, okay, but if you want a guitar, you got to take my car.

And I was like, I don't care about a car and I didn't want it.

And so I was like, fine.

And, but we have gifted staff who basically knew that this was so important to Chuck Berry to sort of middle-class respectability, all of that.

And so they collected it and convinced me that it should be on display.

What does he fundamentally misunderstand about the work the Smithsonian does?

called up Chuck Berry?

I want one of the guitars that you wrote Maybelline on.

And he said, okay, but if you want a guitar, you got to take my car.

And I was like, I don't care about a car and I didn't want it.

And so I was like, fine.

And, but we have gifted staff who basically knew that this was so important to Chuck Berry to sort of middle-class respectability, all of that.

And so they collected it and convinced me that it should be on display.

What does he fundamentally misunderstand about the work the Smithsonian does?

called up Chuck Berry?

I want one of the guitars that you wrote Maybelline on.

And he said, okay, but if you want a guitar, you got to take my car.

And I was like, I don't care about a car and I didn't want it.

And so I was like, fine.

And, but we have gifted staff who basically knew that this was so important to Chuck Berry to sort of middle-class respectability, all of that.

And so they collected it and convinced me that it should be on display.

What does he fundamentally misunderstand about the work the Smithsonian does?

called up Chuck Berry?

I want one of the guitars that you wrote Maybelline on.

And he said, okay, but if you want a guitar, you got to take my car.

And I was like, I don't care about a car and I didn't want it.

And so I was like, fine.

And, but we have gifted staff who basically knew that this was so important to Chuck Berry to sort of middle-class respectability, all of that.

And so they collected it and convinced me that it should be on display.

What does he fundamentally misunderstand about the work the Smithsonian does?

This was an entirely different approach than how the first director of the Metropolitan Museum looted artifacts from archaeological sites, or how the British Museum stocked itself with plunder from Britain's empire building.

The British Museum, in some ways, is a colonial creation, that so much of what it collected initially were things that would help them celebrate British identity, some from internal, others from, you know, India, Africa, other places where the British colonized.

The difference with the African American Museum is, first of all, this was going to be a museum that shared authority and was shaped by community.

Not only did we collect material, but in essence, we collected people's stories.

The goal was that the artifacts were really the way to give people a sense of ownership.

By doing artifacts that sometimes seem common, like an old 19th century iron or a wash pot, suddenly people could see that they were shaped by this history, and they could tell the stories of their own parents or grandparents.

This experience of creating a museum from scratch led Lonnie Bunch to think more broadly about how any museum builds its collection, and this led to a new institution-wide collections policy at the Smithsonian.

I asked a group of curators in 2021 to think about an ethical returns policy, to really think about what should we do with material that is problematic.

Quote, "The Smithsonian is out of control," in caps, "where everything discussed is how horrible our country is, how bad slavery was." Respond.

Well, I think that first of all, if you go through the Smithsonian, as I do almost every day, and you look at the stories we tell, it is a complex story, but it's a story that celebrates America in many ways, but also argues that there's nothing wrong with helping a nation realize that it's a work in progress, that people have struggled to end slavery, struggled to make sure there was fairness in terms of issues of gender.

So for me, it really is not saying we're trying to criticize America or say what a horrible place.

We're just simply saying, you celebrate America because in some ways America has grappled with some of the greatest challenges it's faced, and that for me, what's important is I believe that Americans are this amazingly brave people who, you know, defeated Nazism and the like, and it scares me when people aren't brave enough to face their history.

And in some ways you have to face it anyway.

Um, you know, there's no way of running away from the impact of immigration or the impact of labor issues.

So for me it's really an opportunity to basically say, let us understand America.

There was an executive order by President Trump accusing the Smithsonian of promoting, quote, "narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive." And it's called for an end to your, your spending on programs and exhibitions that, quote, "degrade shared American values, divide Americans by race, or promote ideologies inconsistent with federal law." Is that what you do, Secretary Lonnie Bunch?

What were those challenges? How did you face them?

Yeah, I spent years interviewing people around the world.

Trying to figure out what they knew, what they wanted, and I was really shaped by, um, an experience I had early in my career.

Um, there was a man named Princey Jenkins who was a sharecropper in South Carolina, and I spent time with him because he helped me understand slavery and a slave cabin, et cetera.

But he said to me after a day, he said, "I'm not sure what a historian is, but maybe if you're good, your job is to help people remember not just what they want to remember but what they need to remember." And so that notion of trying to find that balance of giving people the celebratory things they want, but also giving them the challenge of slavery and segregation and helping people understand that the strength of a nation is people crossing boundaries to help each other.

So it really was understanding what people wanted.

And what was funny is the number one thing people wanted to know about was slavery, and the number one thing they didn't want to know about was slavery.

How does the Smithsonian fit into this moment and help the country move through this moment?

How does the Smithsonian fit into this moment and help the country move through this moment?

I think the Smithsonian, in some ways, is the glue that helps hold the nation together, right? You look at who visits the Smithsonian.

Everybody.

Red states, blue states, whatever your politics, you come to the Smithsonian.

Why? Because you wanna understand who you are, right? It's about celebrating but also understanding.

And in some ways, what I think the country could use, what the Smithsonian provides is, we spend, as many Americans, we look for simple answers to complex questions.

The Smithsonian gives you ambiguity.

Talk about why this is so important.

What did you set out to do there? You, there, uh, apparently you chronicle through more than 30 objects taken from the Smithsonian collection.

What I wanted to do was to say that America is as much an ideal as it is a place, and that many of those ideals really can be traced to Jefferson's words in the Declaration of Independence.

That for me, the Declaration of Independence challenges us to be a nation in pursuit.

In pursuit of fairness, in pursuit of opportunity, in pursuit of sort of new horizons.

So what I wanted to do was to take Jefferson's ideas, to say it's important to celebrate and understand those words because really for 250 years people have done everything they can to make those words concrete, to make those words accessible, to make those words meaningful to everybody in America.

So I wanted to look at that by saying, "Here are certain aspirations.

Aspirations of fairness, of hope," and how do we use one or two objects? Because as you know, at the Smithsonian, if you come to an exhibition there are hundreds of objects.

Quote, "The Smo- the Smithsonian is out of control," in caps, "where everything discussed is how horrible our country is, how bad slavery was." Respond.

The new exhibit includes the desk Thomas Jefferson used to draft the Declaration of Independence, Amelia Earhart's flight suit, the original draft of Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech, and a model of the Statue of Liberty before it was built.

We think of the Statue of Liberty about immigration, but if you notice, this was given because America abolished slavery.

She's standing on broken chains.

The Office of Management and Budget, which is doing the review, did not respond to CNN's request for comment.

My goal is that history is driven by scholarship, not partisanship.

So one of the, one of the things you did was work with Dave Isay of StoryCorps, The Grio Project.

Well, one of...

Again, all the issues of how do you make it real? Dave Isay and I are old buddies from Chicago, and Dave said, "What can we do?" I said, "Well, let's do The Grio Project so that we get the stories of African Americans who we interview as we go around the country, get that on the radio.

Let people hear, let people get excited." And I'll tell you, without a doubt, what it taught me was, I thought I knew history, but hearing those interviews, I learned so much.

The one that stays with me the most is a grandfather was talking to his grandson, and the grandson was answering, asking questions.

And the last question was, "But Granddad, what was the saddest day of your life?" And I thought he was gonna talk about the loss of a spouse, child.

He said, "It's 1945.

(laughs)