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cultural groups across the country reeling as Trump defunds arts & humanities - a national cultural bloodbath
Massive budget cuts hit Austin-based nonprofit that supports hundreds of Texas arts, cultural groupsThe organization faces a 65% budget cut, threatening support for the organizations they help support across the state.
AUSTIN, Texas — Federal funding for Humanities Texas, the state’s humanities council, has been terminated, leaving the Austin-based nonprofit struggling to secure financial support.
The organization's executive director, Eric Lupfer, said the loss of a $2.6 million grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities amounts to a 65% cut in its annual budget.
AUSTIN, Texas — Federal funding for Humanities Texas, the state’s humanities council, has been terminated, leaving the Austin-based nonprofit struggling to secure financial support.
The organization's executive director, Eric Lupfer, said the loss of a $2.6 million grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities amounts to a 65% cut in its annual budget.
https://www.kvue.com/article/news/local/humanities-texas-loses-millions-federal-funding/269-c8a05401-f994-4c38-8e64-5101289bd239
Alaska News
‘Devastating’ DOGE cuts hit museums, cultural centers and libraries all over Alaska
By Zachariah Hughes
Published: April 9, 2025
Information about the participants in Alaska Humanities Forum’s Leadership Anchorage program are displayed in the Anchorage office on April 9, 2025. Forum leaders say it will likely need to shut down after a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities that it'd already been awarded was abruptly canceled this month. (Marc Lester / ADN)
Cultural institutions all over Alaska, of all different sizes, are scrambling to figure out what a wave of cuts to federal grants means for local programs and staffing.
Over the last few weeks, museums, libraries and cultural organizations across Alaska have started receiving notice that funds promised to them through federal programs are being terminated in order to align government spending with a recent Trump administration order and the Department of Government Efficiency. In some cases, the money has already been spent, and small, local organizations are struggling to figure out if they’ll be reimbursed.
“It’s really devastating for our field,” said Dixie Clough, who directs Museums Alaska, an organization that helps support museums and cultural centers around the state.
https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/2025/04/09/devastating-doge-cuts-hit-museums-cultural-centers-and-libraries-all-over-alaska/
US Jewish cultural institutions reeling as Trump defunds arts and humanities
Widespread cuts are touted as cutting costs, but come two years after a Biden administration initiative described museums as a critical tool against the spread of antisemitism
By Asaf Elia-Shalev
10 April 2025, 2:02 am
JTA — A museum holding one of the most important photography collections of pre-Holocaust Jewish life wanted to scan thousands of images and make them accessible to the public online.
As part of the fundraising to digitize the archive of the renowned Russian Jewish photographer Roman Vishniac, the museum, known as the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, applied in November for a $250,000 grant from a federal agency called the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
But last week, the agency was effectively shuttered by the Trump administration, which called it “unnecessary” in an executive order signed by the president in March. The agency’s staff are on leave and its $290 million budget, most of which goes out as grants to museums and libraries throughout the country, is frozen.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-jewish-cultural-institutions-reeling-as-trump-defunds-arts-and-humanities/
Cultural counterrevolution: Funds cut from humanities grants to go toward Trump’s fascistic “National Garden of American Heroes”
ccording to various media reports this week, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), at the direction of the Trump administration, plans to re-direct funding in part toward building a “National Garden of American Heroes,” one of the president’s pet projects.
In early April, the new administration announced plans to terminate financing for 85 percent of NEH grants. The endowment is the largest federal government source of funding for museums, libraries, colleges and universities, historical sites, cultural research projects and individual scholars.
Recipients of grants already announced, including numerous documentary filmmakers, received emails canceling their funding. According to Deadline:
“Your grant no longer effectuates the agency’s needs and priorities… [T]he NEH is repurposing its funding allocations in a new direction in furtherance of the President’s agenda,” the letter said. “The termination of your grant represents an urgent priority of the administration…”
The letter was signed by Michael McDonald, the NEH’s acting chairman. The previous head of the endowment, Shelley Lowe, was pushed out by Trump officials in mid-March.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/04/12/nywp-a12.html
Chinese Culture Center in San Francisco grapples with grant fallout
NPR
By Chloe Veltman
Published April 11, 2025 at 4:30 PM EDT
The Trump administration is downsizing federal agencies. It's ending federal grant programs, and it's dismantling diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. This is all affecting cultural groups across the country. NPR's Chloe Veltman brings us the story of one small community organization in California trying to make sense of the new chaotic funding landscape.
CHLOE VELTMAN, BYLINE: The Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco is an anchor in the city's vibrant Chinatown neighborhood. Since 1965, the nonprofit has offered art and education programs that serve the Asian diaspora through exhibitions, talks and even dance flashmobs.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
VELTMAN: Jenny Leung is the center's executive director. She says up to 30% of her organization's funding each year comes from federal sources.
JENNY LEUNG: We were extremely proud to be funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute of Museum Library Services.
VELTMAN: But now Leung says she feels let down by all three agencies...
LEUNG: Creating a lot of different chaos.
VELTMAN: The National Endowment for the Humanities canceled a grant last week worth over $115,000.
LEUNG: It just said, the project wasn't aligned with the priorities and that it was terminated.
VELTMAN: More than 1,000 such grants were canceled in all 50 states. Leung says the funding was meant to document the neighborhood's rich history and culture. Cantonese-speaking photographer David Huang was part of the project. He says he's beyond disappointed to hear about the grant being cut.
DAVID HUANG: (Speaking Cantonese).
VELTMAN: That's not the only funding challenge facing the center. Executive director Jenny Leung says her team applies annually for National Endowment for the Arts grants, but they haven't this year because of the Trump administration's executive orders targeting diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
LEUNG: There's all this fear of what, like, illegal DEI means and trying to sort that out.
https://www.mainepublic.org/2025-04-11/chinese-culture-center-in-san-francisco-grapples-with-grant-fallout
‘We should all be worried’: Trump order threatens funding for Mississippi’s colleges cultural centers and programming
Leaders at the Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University warn of risks as Trump targets the Institute of Museum and Libraries.
Avatar photo
by Candice Wilder
April 7, 2025
For nearly three decades, a little-known federal agency has provided millions of dollars in support and funding to Mississippi’s colleges and universities museums, to libraries and to cultural institutions, including the Margaret Walker and COFO Civil Rights Center at Jackson State University.
In 2011, the state’s largest historically Black university’s cultural center and museum, received a $48,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Libraries Services. The grant paid for staff to travel and learn about the historical preservation work from larger museums and institutions across the country.
“That grant was my professional development,” Robert Luckett, director of the cultural center said. “It was so important and has been foundational for all of the work we’ve done at Jackson State for the last fifteen, sixteen years.”
But, Jackson State isn’t the only Mississippi college that has benefitted from funds from IMLS, and the federal agency has flowed millions of dollars in grants to the state.
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Now, with an executive order from President Donald Trump, which led the federal agency’s nearly 70 employees to be placed on administrative leave last week, the future of the Margaret Walker Center’s work remains unclear.
https://mississippitoday.org/2025/04/07/trump-order-threatens-funding-for-mississippis-colleges-cultural-centers/
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