Lonnie Bunch To Retire As Smithsonian Secretary At End Of 2026

For more than two decades, Lonnie G. Bunch III has been one of the most consequential figures shaping how America encounters its own history.

Now, the historian who helped turn a generations-long dream of a national museum dedicated to Black life into one of Washington, D.C.’s most recognizable institutions is preparing to step away.

The Smithsonian Institution announced Tuesday that Bunch, 73, will retire as its 14th Secretary at the end of 2026, concluding nearly 38 years of service to the Smithsonian and seven years at the helm of the world’s largest museum, education and research complex.

In a statement shared with ESSENCE following the announcement, the National Museum of African American History and Culture reflected on the legacy of its founding director, whose vision helped take the museum from an idea decades in the making to a permanent home for Black history on the National Mall.

“It is with very mixed emotions and heartfelt gratitude that I announce my retirement from the Smithsonian,” Bunch said in announcing his departure. “I have spent nearly half of my life working at and being part of the Smithsonian family, and what a privilege it has been.”

His tenure as secretary was historic from the beginning. When Bunch assumed the position in June 2019, he became the first African American and the first historian to lead the Smithsonian. But by then, he had already accomplished the work that would become perhaps the defining chapter of his career: building the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

The museum itself was generations in the making. Efforts to establish a national institution devoted to Black history stretched back decades before Congress formally established NMAAHC in 2003. Bunch was named its founding director in 2005, taking charge of what was then essentially a museum without a museum. There was one staff member, no permanent collection, no building and no established site.

What followed was an extraordinary exercise in institution-building.

Bunch helped secure federal funding, build a staff of historians and curators, develop a collection from the ground up and guide the international competition that would ultimately determine the museum’s design. He also helped advocate for its coveted location on the National Mall, within sight of the Washington Monument.

By the time NMAAHC opened on September 24, 2016, the idea Bunch had inherited had become a 400,000-square-foot institution dedicated exclusively to documenting African American life, history and culture.

President Barack Obama led the dedication ceremony as thousands gathered on the National Mall. Inside was a history of America told through objects that made the enormity of the Black experience tangible: Harriet Tubman’s hymnal and shawl, an original casket that once held Emmett Till, a segregation-era Southern Railway car, Louis Armstrong’s trumpet, Chuck Berry’s Cadillac and, eventually, George Clinton’s legendary Mothership.

The objects were never simply artifacts. Together, they told a larger story about the country itself—one that placed slavery and freedom, resistance and creativity, grief and joy within the same American narrative.

Bunch frequently described his ambition for NMAAHC as creating “a place that would make America better.”

The public responded. The museum welcomed its millionth visitor less than five months after opening, and the Smithsonian says it is now approaching its 14 millionth visitor. Its collection has also continued to grow; Smithsonian records now put its holdings at more than 45,000 artifacts and works of art.

When Bunch was elected Smithsonian secretary three years after the museum opened, his responsibility expanded dramatically. He became responsible for an institution encompassing 21 museums, the National Zoo, libraries, research centers and educational programs. His tenure included steering the Smithsonian through the COVID-19 pandemic, expanding its digital and educational work and helping advance two museums still in development: the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum and the National Museum of the American Latino.

In 2024, Bunch also launched the Smithsonian Campaign for Our Shared Future, a $2.5 billion fundraising effort that became the largest campaign in the institution’s history. The Smithsonian announced this year that the campaign surpassed its goal a year ahead of schedule.

His retirement, however, arrives during a particularly complicated chapter for the institution.

Over the past year, President Donald Trump’s administration has increased scrutiny of the Smithsonian and how its museums interpret American history. In March 2025, Trump signed an executive order directing his administration to work to remove what it described as “improper ideology” from Smithsonian properties and criticizing exhibits that the administration argued portrayed American history in an overly negative light.

That scrutiny has extended to museum exhibitions and materials dealing with race, slavery and inequality. The administration has sought reviews of Smithsonian content as part of a broader effort to reshape how federal cultural institutions present the nation’s history.

The tensions have raised questions about the Smithsonian’s independence and the future of historical interpretation within its museums. The Smithsonian is not a conventional federal agency; it is governed by a Board of Regents, which includes the Chief Justice of the United States, the vice president, members of Congress and private citizens.

Bunch has maintained that the political pressure was not the reason for his decision to retire. Speaking about his departure, he acknowledged the demands of leading the institution while emphasizing that the time had come for new leadership.

His career nevertheless offers a reminder of what can be at stake when institutions decide whose history deserves to be collected, protected and placed at the center of the national story.

Long before Bunch became secretary, Black Americans had preserved those histories themselves—in families, churches, historically Black colleges and universities, community archives and local museums, often while the nation’s largest institutions overlooked them. NMAAHC gave thousands of those objects and stories a permanent home on America’s most symbolic stretch of public land.

“He envisioned a museum of which the American people and their descendants could be proud, a place that would serve as a beacon of hope, reflection and remembrance for future generations,” Shanita Brackett, acting director of NMAAHC, said in the statement shared with ESSENCE.

Kinshasha Holman Conwill, who served as the museum’s deputy director from 2005 until her retirement in 2022, remembered Bunch’s leadership similarly.

“Lonnie Bunch led with vision, tenacity and boldness,” Conwill said in the statement. “He inspired. He coaxed—creating a pathway for what needed to be done against all odds.”

That pathway ultimately led to a bronze-colored building standing prominently on the National Mall—a museum filled with the evidence of Black America’s presence in the nation’s history.

Bunch will leave the Smithsonian at the end of the year. The institution he helped transform will continue without him.

But perhaps the clearest measure of his legacy is considerably simpler: Black history has a permanent home on the National Mall, and millions of people have already walked through its doors.