(Reuters) – The director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, Kevin Young, has gone on personal leave, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing an internal email it obtained.
The Post reported that no reason for the leave was given, and that it was not immediately apparent if it was connected to the executive order targeting Smithsonian institutions by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration.
A spokesperson for NMAAHC did not respond to a request for comment. Young, a poet who also serves as the poetry editor of The New Yorker, could not immediately be reached for comment.
Young began his leave for an indefinite period on March 14, and Shanita Brackett, an associate director, has been appointed acting director, the Post reported.
In an executive order on March 27, Trump wrote that “improper, divisive or anti-American ideology” be removed from the Smithsonian, the vast museum and research complex created by the U.S. government in 1846 and serves as a premier exhibition space for the country’s history and culture.
Trump’s order is vague about what the president views as anti-American ideology. But it suggests Trump is seeking to purge elements of what conservatives view as a revisionist history of the United States that places systemic racism at the heart of its narrative.
Last year for his campaign, former President Joe Biden had visited the museum in downtown Washington and greeted his audience by declaring, “Black history is American history.”
When it opened in 2016, then-Smithsonian Secretary David Skorton said he wanted the museum – which housed a robe used by boxing great Muhammad Ali and the coffin of Emmett Till, whose 1955 murder in Mississippi galvanized the civil rights movement – to be a place that would spark dialogue.
“Opening now, at a time when social and political discord remind us that racism is not, unfortunately, a thing of the past, this museum can, and I believe will, help us advance the public conversation,” he said.
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
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