*Patriotism on display, (painted by “Pam ‘76-77” for the 200th anniversary of the U.S. (collection Trey Speegle); New York Times headline, June 2026*

DonOld has never met a story he couldn't rewrite to star himself. This time it's American history — and he's decided the Smithsonian got the coloring wrong. DonOld thinks he knows everything about everything. People with Narcisistic Personality Disorder always do, especially this jackass. Only HE knows what is truly “American” and what is great about this country.

Nineteen Smithsonian museums are now being reviewed for "Americanism" — tone, framing, whether the wall text loves the country back enough — funding held hostage until they comply. He’s has his lakess grilling Smithsonian curators in public in hearings and in the press.

According to The New York Times,

The unusual directive, made through an executive order, was a considerable escalation of the president’s dispute with the Smithsonian and its history museum, which was the subject of a recent 162-page report. The report accused the museum’s director, Anthea M. Hartig, of “radical activist ideology” and the museum of undermining “faith in American institutions.”
The order went so far as to suggest that the signage inform potential museum visitors of locations where American history is better presented. The administration did not explain where the public would be redirected.

*Curator's scholarships, overruled by a biased report and a sidewalk sign.*

In the hearing and in the press, I keep seeing the same word: unqualified. That's the charge, dressed up differently in drag each time. In the early 50s a paint by number, Abstract No. 1, was entered in a contest, won first prize, and the judges were furious once they learned it had been painted by number. Not a real artist, they said. Same complaint the White House makes about the Smithsonian now.

But let’s back up a bit. In 1992, I helped Saturday Night Live’s first head writer, Michael O’Donohue, organize a paint by number exhibition from O’Donoghue’s collection of some 200+ paintings at the Bridgewater Gallery in New York City. It was a big hit and got a lot of press attention.

*O’Donoghue, Hardwick & Speegle at the “40 Years of Paint By Number Paintings” at the Bridgewater Gallery in New York City, 1992.*

In 1994, Michael O’Donghue died suddenly of a massive brain aneurism at just 54. His widow, former SNL bandleader Cheryl Hardwick, gifted his paint by number collection to me and as they say, the rest is herstory. It literally changed the entire course of my life.

Twenty-five years ago Paint By Number Accounting for Taste in the 1950s opened on April 6, 2001 at The Smithsonian’s Museum of American History. I was up on a lift, hard hat on, thirty feet above the entrance, painting the banner myself at the opening (see pic).

*Trey Speegle on a “cherry picker” painting a giant mural on the Smithsonian Museum of America Art, April 2001.*

*Innstallation views, Smithsonian Museum of American History, 2001*

*The cover of The New York Times Home section* *featuring my collection* *in my Brooklyn Brownstone, April 6, 2001*

One section of the companion Smithsonian’s website was then titled "Every Man a Rembrandt." Those pages don't exist anymore — its own small omen.

Across the way from the exhibit in 2001, sat Dorothy Gale's ruby slippers, worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz. The Smithsonian thought those shoes were so representative of Americana they attached them to the museum's own logo. Twenty-five years later, I ask you, “friend of Dorothy’s” or not (50s code for gay) isn’t that just a little “TOO gay” for a museum today in these Divided States of America?

The current paint by number mini-retrospective, at Gallery 52, brought many of those paintings home for the show's 25th anniversary — through September 6, in Jeffersonville, New York, (Saturdays 12–5 and by appointment.) I couldn’t have planned the timing better –or worse, depending on your political affiliation. The institution that once had the nerve to say paint-by-number counts is now being told what its own walls can count as American.

Although paint by number IS vintage Americana, with landscapes from sea to shining sea, among many others, to me, paint by number was never about just the pictures, it was about permission. Anybody can paint. Here are the lines — stay inside them (or don't) the choice is yours, and nobody upstairs gets to revoke your Art card. That IS artistic freedom, minus the artspeak.

Turns out it's free speech too.

BURSTING OUTSIDE THE LINES

In 2010 I did a show in my hometown, Houston, at Koelsch Gallery. Titled Outside the Lines, a cliché phrase used a million times, I’ll admit. Paint by number was intended to be the most obedient art form ever mass-produced. Stay in your lane. Don't improvise.

Words expressed in some of my paintings, You Are Here. It Can Happen to You. Why Can't You Just Be Nice. It's Not About You. Positive top notes with subversive undertones. I told an interviewer once that a lot of my work out of a realization: ‘I am NOT my ideas’. My identity is (and isn’t) tied to them — they can exist on their own. That's the opposite of conformity. The viewer is handed the same opportunity: finish the idea yourself. Let yourself be drawn in. Get inspired.

*Trey Speegle, It’s Not About You (installation with Lamonte) Benrimon Contemporary, 2011. Private collection.*

Another phrase I've been circling for a decade, one I once told a magazine I want to build an exhibit around: Originality is Overrated. Hearing that you might think I'm just being glib. I'm not. I am being ironic. I believe that paint by number is the largest conceptual art project in the history of the world. Millions of mass-produced painting projects sent out into the world to be completed. I’ve collected over 3000+ (and counting) of these little conceptual mini-masterpieces.

Freedom isn’t really about getting a blank canvas (we rarely get one) freedom is what you do with what you're handed… stay inside the lines, go outside them. “You do you”, as they say. But the second somebody with a title, a little power and a hearing room decides what is "American enough," you're not talking about patriotism, or taste or art.

You're talking about control.

When anyone would tell Michael, “You have a nice day!” He’d snap back with a smirk, “Don’t tell me what to do!” That was the essence of Mr. Mike.

And the essence of true freedom, American or otherwise. –Trey Speegle, July, 2026