Artist Amy Sherald decided to keep her exhibition "American Sublime" from being installed at the Smithsonian after the gallery told her it had concerns about the painting Trans Forming Liberty, which presents the Statue of Liberty as a Black trans woman. She writes for MSNBC about the importance of museums to the past and present. "Philippe de Montebello, an art curator who previously directed the Metropolitan Museum of Art for 31 years, once called museums 'the memory of mankind.' If that is true, then to manipulate museums is to manipulate who we believe we are. Control the memory and you control the future," Sherald writes. "Museums are not stages for loyalty. They are civic laboratories. They are places where we wrestle with contradictions, encounter the unfamiliar and widen our circle of empathy. But only if they remain free."

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