Background
On March 27th, 2025, Donald Trump issued the executive order "Restoring truth and sanity to American history," which directs the Smithsonian institute's board of regents to "remove improper ideology" from its museums and research centers.
The Smithsonian's board structure is made up of the Vice President, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, 3 senators (picked by the President pro tempore of the Senate), 3 House representatives (picked by the Speaker of the House), and 9 citizens (picked through joint resolution). The EO also directs Vance to seek to appoint new people to the Board of Regents to advance the EO.
The Smithsonian has many museums, including the African Art Museum, the African-American History and Culture museum, the Asian Art Museums, and the National Postal Museum (The National Gallery is not a Smithsonian Institution museum).
Resolution Criteria
Will the Smithsonian close down any of its museums by EOY 2026? Resolves YES if there is reporting that any Smithsonian museum has been permanently closed (or closed for an indeterminate period of time, excluding planned or regular closures, such as renovations). An announcement is enough to resolve this YES, even if there are later attempts to block it with court orders.
Update 2026-11-08 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): Government shutdowns count as "regular closures" and do not trigger a YES resolution.
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Every Smithsonian museum closed on Oct 11-12, 2025 "for the remainder of the shutdown," with no reopening date until the 43-day shutdown ended. They reopened Nov 14-17. That is a closure for an indeterminate period, and it was not planned or regular like a renovation, so it meets the criteria. It happened after this market opened (March 28, 2025).
Art Newspaper: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/10/13/smithsonian-institution-museums-close-us-government-shutdown
Washington Times: https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/oct/11/smithsonian-shutter-sunday-government-shutdown-continues/
ABC7: https://abc7news.com/post/smithsonian-museums-national-zoo-closed-amid-government-shutdown/17998703/
Reopening, Fox 5 DC: https://www.fox5dc.com/news/smithsonian-reopen-several-museums-friday-government-reopens
@EvanWang11j3 clearly fails the spirit of the market, but arguably does qualify. The strongest argument against is probably that, while government shutdowns are of indeterminate length, they are a "regular" closure; all federal services like the Smithsonian museums are closed during shutdowns, this has happened many times before. In other words, while it's not regular as in "happens on a schedule" (even if it sometimes feels like that, come appropriations season...) or "part of the expected process of operating a museum", it is regular in the senses "precedented and unsurprising" and "part of the expected process of operating a nonessential federal service".
@SeekingEternity there has also been cases where a few of the museums have closed for a day or 2 due to minor issues i mean
@SeekingEternity I'm vetoing this, and keeping it in line with the spirit of the question. Government shutdowns count as "regular closures" for the purposes of this market
@Marnix theres also this which wasnt planned and there was a announcement about it but this prob could also be argued as going against the spirit of the question
https://hyperallergic.com/cooling-system-malfunction-shutters-seven-smithsonian-museums/
