How fragile are cultural institutions when political power intervenes? In his first solo exhibition, Internal Review, Frankfurt-based artist and filmmaker Oliver Hardt confronts the political demands of Executive Order 14253 with the history of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). The Executive Order, titled "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History", aims to reverse the influence of so-called 'divisive ideologies' and thus restore an 'unpartisan' view of history.
The exhibition centers on Oliver Hardt's documentary The Black Museum, which depicts the decades-long struggle leading to the museum's opening in 2016 — from political negotiations and architectural development to the formation of the collection. Within the sequence of major cultural institutions erected in the U.S. capital over the past two hundred years, the NMAAHC forms a symbolically charged addition to the National Mall in Washington D.C. Accordingly, the museum has been recognized not only as an architectural landmark but also as a political achievement of far-reaching significance: "There is no tabula rasa, there is no 'Let's make our
history perfect.' The imperfection of history is part of history. And the trauma of it and all its differences are played out. I think this is a much more honest way of dealing with history, and a much more honest way of remembering, too", says David Adjaye, the museum's architect, in a conversation with the filmmaker in 2013.
Since the beginning of Donald Trump's second presidency, the administration has exerted significant pressure on the Smithsonian Institution. This pressure manifests not only through threats of funding cuts and staff layoffs, but also through intensified demands for content revisions, and increased scrutiny of curatorial narratives — measures that directly challenge the institution's autonomy and its mandate to address complex histories. The exhibition title Internal Review deliberately refers to the enforced revision measures
imposed by the U.S. government on the Smithsonian. The term appears across official documents and is framed as a neutral, administrative procedure. At the same time, the title reflects Hardt's reassessment of his documentary work through the lens of the current political climate. In the exhibition, contextually assembled documents expand Hardt's film The Black Museum and connect the historical struggles with contemporary authoritarian tendencies — including those in Germany — while also foregrounding the museum's architecture as a site of participation and empowerment.
About the artist
Oliver Hardt is an award-winning director, writer, and filmmaker based in Frankfurt am Main. For almost 30 years, he has continuously explored the multifaceted possibilities of film — as visual material, documentary tool, and storytelling medium — resulting in a body of work of political and artistic relevance. In his documentaries, he explores the social and aesthetic dimensions of architecture, design, and contemporary art with a strong emphasis on the cultural dynamics of the African diaspora. Since 2012, Hardt has been closely following the development of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, resulting in the realisation of three films over a period of five years: starting with the short documentary This Building Will Sing For All Of Us (2013), which focuses on the architectural and conceptual design of the museum while it was still under construction.
This led to a collaboration with David Adjaye, the museum's architect, and Okwui Enwezor, then director of Munich's Haus der Kunst, which culminated in the video installation David Adjaye: Collaborations (2015) for an exhibition on the British-Ghanaian architect's work to date. Shortly after the museum's grand opening by President Barack Obama, Hardt started to work on his film The Black Museum (2018), bringing together the many aspects that led to this milestone in the recognition of African American culture.
For several years now, Hardt has been increasingly exploring the spatial presentation of his filmic work. In 2023, he developed the film installation Protest/Architecture, commissioned by the German Architecture Museum (DAM) in Frankfurt am Main and the Museum of Applied Arts (MAK) in Vienna for the exhibition of the same name. Since then, Protest/Architecture has been shown in exhibitions at several European museums and art galleries. In his solo exhibition Internal Review at Synnika, Hardt utilizes this combination of film and installation to create a dense network of discursive references.
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