DOGE slashes millions meant for Philly arts and culture
Woodmere Art Museum, Penn Museum, South Asian American Digital Archive, Rosenbach Museum & Library, and other groups have received notices saying their grants have been scrapped.
The Woodmere Art Museum was promised $750,000. Now the money is gone.
Arch Street Meeting House Preservation Trust won an award of $25,000, and that, too, has suddenly evaporated.
In recent days, the federal government, normally a reliable piece of the funding puzzle for arts and culture groups, has canceled grants it had already approved but not yet paid. The Penn Museum, South Asian American Digital Archive, Rosenbach Museum and Library, and other groups in Philadelphia and beyond have received notices that millions of dollars in grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute for Museum and Library Services have been scrapped.
The funding cuts are the latest in a series being executed by the Department of Government Efficiency, headed by billionaire Elon Musk.
A wide range of cultural organizations have been hit, said Patricia Wilson Aden, president and CEO of the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance. “The disruption has been sweeping.”
In a GPCA survey that has so far drawn responses from 190 groups across the state, 52% said grant cancellations from agencies like the NEH and the IMLS have the potential to disrupt cash flow and payroll, threatening operations; half said the cuts would likely curtail educational programming for children; and 39% said rescinded funding would likely force the axing of exhibits, presentations, and performances.
If people think the cuts are aimed only at projects dealing with DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) or LGBTQ matters, Aden says, “That is not the case. This goes to the infrastructure of our cultural sector.”
In some cases, because grants are often paid as reimbursements for money already spent, groups have been left footing the bill for expenses they expected would be covered.
Many are turning to supporters for help.
The Woodmere had collected only about $15,000 of a promised $750,000 from the IMLS when it received word of the cancellation. It has already incurred expenses for conservation, storage, transportation, and other aspects of a new building, the Frances M. Maguire Hall for Art and Education.
» READ MORE: DOGE cuts threaten funding to Philadelphia museums, libraries, and more
Now the Woodmere must, in essence, raise the same money for a second time.
“With Maguire Hall opening in October, I’ve already begun the work of reaching out on a one-on-one basis to Woodmere’s most loyal supporters and working to fill the gap,” said Woodmere director and CEO William R. Valerio, who called the loss of the funding “a blow.”
In response to the funding crisis, the William Penn Foundation, Philadelphia’s largest funder of arts and culture, is offering an unusual degree of flexibility to its grantees on how money may be used. There “may be opportunities” for William Penn grants already awarded to be spent on purposes other than those first proposed, a note from the foundation said.
The foundation might agree to shift part of a grant budget to cover costs like legal support, crisis communications, or public education efforts, chief philanthropy officer Elliot Weinbaum wrote in an email to arts and culture groups this month.
Additionally, “if a delay or disruption in federal funding is creating financial strain, you may request an accelerated payment schedule for your grant,” his note said.
A spokesperson for another major source of local arts funding, the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage in Philadelphia, said it has not adjusted policies or developed any special support, adding in a statement that “PCAH and the Pew Charitable Trusts recognize that this is an extremely difficult time for the arts and culture sector and are monitoring the changing environment to determine whether and how we can find opportunities to help.”
The gutting of the IMLS is being contested in two separate lawsuits. The cuts to the NEH, ordered earlier this month, are targeting both direct grants made by the agency and NEH funding that passed through 56 states and jurisdictions, including PA Humanities, to local groups.
In the meantime, the future of funding from the National Endowment for the Arts is unclear. An executive order from President Donald Trump in January would have required grant applicants to agree to not “promote” — among other things — the “false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa.” But the “NEA has rescinded the implementation of the EO pending further administrative review,” according to a court filing in a lawsuit over the matter.
GPCA’s Aden said arts groups and patrons should put pressure on elected officials to save federal funding of the arts. From 2020 to 2024, about $111 million has flowed into Pennsylvania from the NEA, NEH, and IMLS — $42.5 million of that into the Philadelphia region.
“I can’t predict the outcome, but the fight is absolutely necessary,” she said. “NEA and NEH were mandated through Congress. Congress ultimately has the ability to keep them alive, and that’s why we are sending messages to our allies in Congress that these organizations are essential.”
A project at the University of Delaware’s Center for Historic Architecture and Design was just underway courtesy of a $348,655 NEH grant when the center received its cancellation notice. The money was to have funded digitizing and re-digitizing drawings, photographs, and other materials relating to historic architecture in the Mid-Atlantic — structures at risk or that have since been demolished — so the entire collection could be put online for public use.
The grant’s cancellation forced the termination of the project’s digital archivist, who had been on the job for just eight weeks. This particular grant had been paid up front, and it is unclear what will happen next.
“I imagine we have to send back the remaining funds to the federal government, but because this is so new and fast moving, no one knows what’s happening,” said Catherine Morrissey, associate director of the center. “It took us four years to get this NEH grant, and our goal is to find other ways to fund this project.”
The Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts in Center City lost at least $321,850 in grants from both the NEH and the IMLS. As a result, the group — which works with collecting institutions to help them care for their materials through conservation and preservation — will have to continue some projects in modified form, continue others only if replacement funding can be found, and halt some altogether.
One project, a co-op for Drexel University students, will go on, “but at this point we can’t commit to a second cohort,” said executive director Michelle Eisenberg.
The program was designed to bring greater socioeconomic diversity to the collections care field and create more career pathways. “To not be able to proceed with that is a pretty big loss to the field,” she said.
Eisenberg recently received an email from the IMLS saying she could request reimbursement for money already spent as part of a grant award. She has not received a similar notice from the NEH, she said.
The $25,000 award to Arch Street Meeting Preservation Trust was to have gone toward updating written materials and hiring interpreters to explore and present the history of the Black Quaker experience. The NEH grant would have covered most of the budget, and although none of the money has been paid, the project is moving ahead, said Sean Connolly, executive director of the trust.
“We’re going to find a way. We don’t know how we will pay for it, but this is a really important story to tell for the Semiquincentennial,” Connolly said.
Finding replacement money, though, at this late stage promises to be tricky, he said.
“You think you have a plan in place and then the carpet is pulled out from under you.”