President Donald Trump announced Friday that he has fired the director of the National Portrait Gallery, Kim Sajet, whom he called “highly partisan.” The dismissal marks the first action Trump has taken against the Smithsonian Institution since an executive order he signed earlier this year that promised to eliminate “divisive narratives” and “anti-American ideology” from the museum and research body, which is partially funded by the federal government.
“Upon the request and recommendation of many people, I am herby terminating the employment of Kim Sajet as Director of the National Portrait Gallery,” Trump wrote in a post on his social media platform Truth Social. “She is a highly partisan person, and a strong supporter of DEI, which is totally inappropriate for her position. Her replacement will be named shortly.”
Hours after Trump’s post, Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III told staff that the White House also sent new details of proposed cuts to the Smithsonian’s budget, in an email obtained by The Washington Post. The president’s request to Congress proposed a 12 percent reduction of the institution’s budget and excluded funding for its Anacostia Community Museum and its forthcoming National Museum of the American Latino, Bunch said.
It is unclear if the president has authority to dismiss Sajet. The Smithsonian’s programming is not under the purview of the executive branch, and personnel decisions for senior-level Smithsonian museum positions are made by Bunch. Neither the museum, the institution nor the White House immediately responded to a request for comment.
Thomas Berry, the director of the Cato Institute’s center for constitutional studies, said presidents have the authority to hire and fire top officials in the executive branch who then have the powers to make their own hiring and firing decisions, with the understanding that they could lose their jobs if the president is not satisfied with their decisions.
“The shorthand for this that is often used as a good rule of thumb is that the power to fire goes to whoever has the power to appoint,” Berry said. In the National Portrait Gallery’s case, top personnel decisions are made by the Smithsonian’s secretary, who is appointed by the board of regents.
The National Portrait Gallery, established in 1962 by an act of Congress, houses portraits of distinguished Americans, including every president. Its collection includes more than 26,000 works. An independent institution, the Smithsonian has operated as a public-private partnership since 1846, with the federal government covering about 62 percent of its expenses.
On March 27, the president issued an executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which aims to “restore the Smithsonian Institution to its rightful place as a symbol of inspiration and American greatness.” A 35-year-old special assistant and senior associate staff secretary, Lindsey Halligan, was among the order’s architects — instigated, in part, by her early-2025 visit to the show “The Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture,” an exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which shares a building with the Portrait Gallery.
The order calls for Halligan and Vice President JD Vance to “remove improper ideology” from the Smithsonian and “prohibit expenditure on exhibits or programs that degrade shared American values, divide Americans based on race.”
Trump’s unprecedented order was foreshadowed by a Nov. 25 Wall Street Journal opinion piece co-written by the Heritage Foundation’s Mike Gonzalez, one of the contributors to Project 2025, which called for the president to “retake control” of the Smithsonian’s museums. The institution, Gonzalez wrote, had “forsaken their mission of spreading knowledge and instead are trying to ‘decolonize’ society.”
Sajet, who formerly served as president and chief executive of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, was selected to lead the Portrait Gallery in 2013 — becoming the first woman to serve in the role.
As director, Sajet has focused on diversifying the gallery’s collection and programming by acquiring works that reflected a broader range of artists and subjects and integrating Spanish into the museum’s communications strategy. In 2017, she was the first Smithsonian director to name a choreographer-in-residence to create dance performances based on the museum’s exhibitions. She also hosted the museum’s “Portraits” podcast series, now in its sixth season, to engage the public with conversations about art, history and identity.
Sajet was “fair minded, and interested in all kinds of projects,” says a former National Portrait Gallery historian who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of professional repercussions. “I’ve never thought of her as politically motivated.”
Born in Nigeria, Sajet is a citizen of the Netherlands who has worked in the United States for 30 years.
“A big part of my job [at the Historical Society] was being able to talk about American identity and what this amazing country has done,” Sajet told The Washington Post in 2013. “Americans sometimes forget how much they are observed by other people around the world. I’m looking forward to reminding people of the larger global context. It’s something the Smithsonian values.”
On Saturday, the Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Art Museum plan to host their family Pride festival.
Meryl Kornfield contributed reporting to this report.
English