DOGE cuts threaten funding to Philadelphia museums, libraries, and more

New directives from the Trump administration are threatening two major sources of funding that have brought tens of millions of dollars in recent years to Philadelphia area museums, libraries, and other cultural organizations.

Department of Government Efficiency, the initiative headed by Elon Musk, this week targeted the National Endowment for the Humanities, demanding deep cuts to the agency as well as the cancellation of grants already committed to groups but not yet paid, according to the New York Times.

Last month, President Donald Trump signed an executive order gutting the Institute of Museum and Library Services, putting staff on leave and directing that the agency be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.”

“Incredibly disruptive” is how Patricia Wilson Aden, president and CEO of the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, described the one-two punch of dismantling the NEH and IMLS and its consequences.

IMLS and NEH have been bedrock funding sources to cultural organizations across the U.S. for decades. Messages to both agencies Friday were not returned.

“This has been an indiscriminate approach to the arts and culture sector that threatens the very infrastructure,” said Wilson Aden. “It has been taken without regard to the indisputable value of the programs offered by the organizations, without regard to the quality of the programs they provide and their impact on the communities that they serve. We believe that this is a shockingly irresponsible approach that goes directly to undermining the value of the contributions of the creative sector to our communities, the economic benefits, the social impact — all of the things that we have carefully documented.”

In the Philadelphia area, grants from both agencies have paid for a wide range of projects — K-12 educational programs, renovations, exhibitions and public events, conservation of historic materials, and more. The NEH has awarded about $37 million in grants to Pennsylvania in the past five years, according to GPCA. IMLS has distributed $54.4 million across the commonwealth in the same period, the IMLS database shows.

Last year, the Woodmere Art Museum in Chestnut Hill was awarded a $750,000 grant from IMLS’s “Save America’s Treasures” program to stabilize and conserve significant works by Philadelphia artists in its collection. Woodmere director and CEO William R. Valerio said the work is underway. The grant has been partially paid, an invoice has been submitted for another payment, and “we hope to get paid for the rest,” he said. “IMLS is an incredibly important organization, and the ‘Save America’s Treasures’ program preserves American history.”

The Wagner Free Institute of Science in North Philadelphia was awarded a $350,000 NEH grant toward a new $1.9 million HVAC system for its library wing as part of a project to protect its 17th- to 19th-century collection of natural history, archival, and special collections materials.

The grant has not been paid and the institute has no word on its fate.

“That leaves us in a vulnerable position,” said Susan Glassman, executive director of the Wagner. “We were very close to having it [fully] funded. Without the NEH, we would have a lot more fundraising to do.”

Moreover, the NEH grant had helped leverage other large gifts. “We were moving forward and were ready to start the project in 2025. Right now we might have to pause a little bit,” Glassman said.

Stewards of the Philadelphia-focused Atwater Kent Collection were also in a holding pattern. IMLS awarded a grant of $138,547 to conserve Civil War-related material previously in the collection of the former Philadelphia History Museum, but work cannot begin unless the funding is assured.

“We had a generous grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts directed in part to this conservation work. The IMLS grant was meant to leverage that and allow us to conserve even more of this rare material so the public can enjoy it,” said Rosalind Remer, senior vice provost of Drexel University, which oversees the Atwater Kent collection. “If the IMLS grant is officially terminated, we will not be able to afford as much and will have to make some decisions about which materials warrant the most immediate attention.”

The Philadelphia Museum of Art was awarded a $400,000 NEH grant for last year’s Mary Cassatt exhibition, and that grant has been paid, according to Art Museum spokesperson Maggie Fairs. “Like other institutions, we are monitoring what is happening daily to gauge the impact to the museum,” she said.

NEH funding is awarded to individual scholars as well as organizations. It has also flowed through dozens of agencies across the U.S. like PA Humanities, which this week received word from the NEH that its general operating grant had been terminated effective immediately. The Pennsylvania agency conducts arts and culture advocacy and research and gives grants of its own — recently to groups in Chester, Gettysburg, Tunkhannock, and two dozen others, according to its 2022 tax return.

The NEH’s allocation of $1.8 million to PA Humanities this year accounted for 60% of the group’s annual budget, and making up that money “has put us in crisis mode where we are reaching out to allies and supporters,” said executive director Laurie Zierer. “But to be frank, with current staffing and infrastructure, we have three to four months before we have to scale back. $1.8 million is not an easy plug.”

Wilson Aden of GPCA said the group has asked its own community to write letters and has been lobbying members of Congress for a reversal of the decisions to gut the NEH and IMLS.

“All of these things we are hoping, collectively and individually, will hold back the tide of these irresponsible actions,” she said.