The Brooklyn Rail

On March 27, 2025, President Donald J. Trump issued an executive order entitled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” in which he chastised “negative” and “divisive” representations of the United States in federal institutions—representations that he considered subversive of “our Nation’s unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness.” Five months later, the White House issued a statement entitled “President Trump Is Right About the Smithsonian,” wherein its museums and their displays were castigated. Two of the disparaged works received particular public attention. Here I would like to ask: Are they subversive? And who is really being subversive—the artists, or the President?

Amy Sherald’s Trans Forming Liberty (2024) was to have been part of American Sublime, a traveling exhibition of her work, at the National Portrait Gallery. But Sherald cancelled that stop when the inclusion of that painting was put into question, and she moved her exhibition to the Baltimore Museum of Art. What was the problem? Trans Forming Liberty presents trans performance artist Arewà Basit posing as the Statue of Liberty. Lindsey Halligan, a special assistant to the president, asserted: “The Statue of Liberty is not an abstract canvas for political expression. It is a revered and solemn symbol of freedom, inspiration and national unity that defines the American spirit.” Fair enough. But is that not precisely what Trans Forming Liberty does?

The Statue of Liberty was conceived in France to commemorate not only the centennial of the American Revolution, but also the more recent abolition of slavery; that is why broken chains lie at the feet of Lady Liberty. And let us not forget that she originally was clad in copper: for the first thirty years or so, before she oxidized, she looked like a person of color. Like its hue, the statue’s meaning has changed over time: it has always been a “symbol of freedom,” but an expansive one. Sherald said of her painting: “It demands a fuller vision of freedom, one that includes the dignity of all bodies, all identities.” What is subversive about that? Does it not, to reprise the president, contribute to “advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness”?

* * *

Even before its inauguration in 1886, the Statue of Liberty was given an added meaning that has come to overshadow all others. “The New Colossus” (1883), a sonnet by Emma Lazarus, named the statue “Mother of Exiles,” and has her speak the now-famous words: “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, /…/ Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.” On the White House hit list, there is a striking painting that portrays precisely the people whom Lady Liberty invites to our shores. Refugees Crossing the Border Wall into South Texas (2020) by Rigoberto A. González had been displayed in the National Portrait Gallery, where it was a finalist for the 2022 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. It is also entitled The Flight into Egypt, a motif that many viewers recognize immediately, inasmuch as we see a mother and her baby perched on a ladder at a tall border barrier, while the father offers her support. We know from other works by González what they are fleeing: gang violence in Mexico, which he depicts in scenes of brutal beheadings. But what awaits them in America? Some of what they will encounter lies crumpled in the lower left corner: junk food containers, a girlie photo, and a newspaper with the headline, “Trump Impeached.” The Christian symbolism is reinforced by the crucifix that the mother clutches next to her child, and the ladder evokes the iconography of The Descent from the Cross (1650/1652).

Are these not the very people to whom the Statue of Liberty beckons: “your poor,” “the homeless”—all attributes of the Holy Family in the Gospels? The flight into Egypt is recounted by Matthew (2:13–21), the same Gospel which foresees that the Son of Man will judge and damn those who do not aid the hungry, the thirsty, the homeless, the sick (25:31–46). This painting is hardly “subversive”—certainly not of Christianity. But the White House sees in it only a scene “commemorating the act of illegally crossing” the border. That is like saying that Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper (ca. 1494–98) depicts a bunch of guys having dinner.

* * *

Subversion lies in the eye of the beholder, and the accusation of subversion can at times be a projection of the person lobbing the charge. Trans Forming Liberty stands solidly within the American tradition of expanding freedom; indeed, it is eminently “patriotic”—a word that Sherald applies to her entire oeuvre. Refugees Crossing the Border Wall is suffused with Christian symbolism and transmits a Christian message. So why would the White House castigate those images? Obviously, because it wants to constrict—let’s say it: subvert—both American freedoms and the Christianity it pretends to uphold. So who is really being subversive now?