Smithsonian changes course, will put Latino museum in existing building
Instead of awaiting a new building, which would take years to construct and could encounter political opposition, the museum will be housed in the Arts and Industries Building.
The Smithsonian Institution announced Monday that it will put its National Museum of the American Latino in a 145-year-old building on the National Mall instead of constructing a new one.
The Smithsonian’s Board of Regents voted Monday to house the American Latino museum, which Congress created in 2020 but which has lacked a permanent home, in the Arts and Industries Building, a 258,000-square-foot redbrick Victorian structure next to the institution’s headquarters.
Jorge Zamanillo, the museum’s director, called the decision “a major milestone in a dream and effort of decades in the making.”
“Designating the Smithsonian’s Arts & Industries Building as the home of the National Museum of the American Latino places the U.S. Latino story at the heart of the National Mall and the American story,” Zamanillo said in a statement. “We could not be more excited to build on the rich legacy of this historic building and transform it into a next generation museum that celebrates the history, culture, and contributions of Latinos in the United States.”
The decision revives a plan the Smithsonian considered but discarded years ago, a major shift for a project whose supporters have spent decades pushing for a new building on the National Mall designed specifically for the museum. It also gives the Smithsonian a path forward that does not depend on Congress approving construction on one of the undeveloped sites the institution previously selected.
The Smithsonian had chosen two sites near the Washington Monument for its two new museums — one across from the National Museum of African American History and Culture and another between the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Tidal Basin. Both are controlled by the National Park Service and sit within the Reserve, an area of the Mall where Congress has restricted new construction.
Because the Smithsonian owns the Arts and Industries Building, the institution can decide how to use it without additional legislation.
That distinction could prove important. Building a Smithsonian museum from scratch can take a decade or longer, even after Congress authorizes it. The National Museum of African American History and Culture took more than a decade to build after its 5-acre site was chosen.
In a statement Monday, the regents noted that Congress directed them to consider the Arts and Industries Building when it authorized the Latino museum in 2020 and said their selection of a site is now complete.
The decision also separates the Latino museum’s path from that of its counterpart, the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum. The two museums were created together in 2020 and had been pursuing potential sites in lockstep, but legislation needed to move the women’s museum forward ran into a congressional roadblock this spring.
The House rejected that legislation after Republicans added provisions restricting how the museum could present transgender women and giving President Donald Trump greater control over its site. The Smithsonian has said a new building for the women’s museum would still be roughly a decade or more away.
The regents’ decision Monday returns to an idea almost as old as the campaign for the Latino museum itself.
Latino advocates began pressing for a national museum after a Smithsonian-commissioned report in 1994, titled “Willful Neglect,” sharply criticized the institution’s treatment and representation of Latino Americans. The Smithsonian created what became the Smithsonian Latino Center in 1997, but supporters continued pushing for a full-fledged museum.
Then-Rep. Xavier Becerra (D., Calif.) began sponsoring legislation in 2003 to create a commission to study the idea. Congress approved the commission five years later, and in 2011 it recommended creating a Smithsonian museum devoted to Latino history and culture, estimating that the project would cost $600 million. Among the locations under consideration was the Arts and Industries Building.
The building resurfaced as a proposed home in 2016, when Becerra and then-Sen. Bob Menendez (D., N.J.) introduced legislation that would have placed the museum there and added an underground annex. The historic building presented challenges for a modern museum: Its soaring ceilings and skylights were not designed for conventional exhibitions.
Congress finally authorized the museum in December 2020, during the final weeks of Trump’s first term, as part of a massive spending and pandemic-relief package that also created the women’s history museum. Arts and Industries was among four finalist locations for the two museums in 2022, but the regents ultimately chose the two undeveloped sites on the Mall instead.
That same year, the Latino museum opened its first physical exhibition space, the 4,500-square-foot Molina Family Latino Gallery inside the National Museum of American History.
The project has also become entangled in the second Trump administration’s broader campaign to reshape the Smithsonian.
Trump’s proposed 2026 budget sought to eliminate separate funding for the stand-alone museum and instead integrate Latino programming across the Smithsonian. The proposal drew objections from Democrats as well as Republican members of the Congressional Hispanic Conference, who called eliminating the museum’s funding a “disservice to the American public.” A White House official said at the time there was no reason to provide construction funding because Congress had not approved a site.
The museum’s programming has also drawn criticism from conservatives. It’s first exhibition, “¡Presente! A Latino History of the United States,” addressed immigration, LGBTQ rights, and criminal justice reform alongside figures including Celia Cruz and Roberto Clemente. Republican lawmakers criticized the exhibition’s portrayal of Latinos, and a planned follow-up exhibition on Latino youth movements was later scrapped.
Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation and a longtime critic of the Latino museum, has argued that the problem goes deeper than individual exhibitions. He contends that the museum was conceived to portray Latinos primarily as victims of discrimination rather than as part of a shared American story.
The Smithsonian ”could never win a vote in Congress to house the Latino Museum anywhere else,” Gonzalez wrote Monday on X. He first wrote about the Smithsonian’s change in plans in the Washington Examiner this month.
The building the regents selected Monday carries its own unusually rich Smithsonian history.
Arts and Industries opened in 1881 as the institution’s second building and the first Smithsonian facility designed as a public museum. Over the decades, it served as an incubator for collections that eventually moved into the National Museum of Natural History, the National Museum of American History, and the National Air and Space Museum.
The building closed in 2004 because of structural problems. A renovation that took nearly 12 years and cost $55 million stabilized the structure, although it has been used only intermittently since. The Smithsonian temporarily reopened it in mid-June to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary but plans to close it again at the start of next week.
