Adding to ‘Kafka-esque’ environment, two Philly grants cut by DOGE are restored
Historic Germantown and the Atwater Kent Collection received late-night emails on Wednesday stating their previously rescinded IMLS grants had been restored. What about the rest?
Leaders of Historic Germantown and the Atwater Kent Collection at Drexel University received late-night emails on Wednesday from the Institute of Museum and Library Services stating that grants awarded but rescinded as part of cuts by the Department of Government Efficiency would be paid after all.
The latest developments in the IMLS funding saga, however, along with deep cuts to the National Endowment for the Humanities, have left the cultural community feeling anything but assured.
“Kafkaesque is the word I am using to describe things,” said Conservation Center for Art & Historic Artifacts executive director Michelle Eisenberg, whose group lost federal grants and was not among those that received an IMLS reinstatement notice.
» READ MORE: DOGE cuts threaten funding to Philadelphia museums, libraries, and more
“This letter provides notice that the Institute of Museum and Library Services is reinstating your federal grant,” said one of the emails. “This action supersedes any previous notices you might have received related to grant termination. Based on additional internal review, IMLS has determined that your grant is consistent with the agency’s priorities in furtherance of the President’s agenda.”
Other groups with canceled grants, such as the Rosenbach Museum & Library, Chester County History Center, and Penn Museum, have not received reinstatement notices.
IMLS did not respond to messages requesting information about how many grants were being restored.
Leaders of museums, libraries, and other cultural institutions this week assessed who had received rescissions of their rescissions, who had not, and whether the reinstatements would stick — or get canceled yet again.
“It’s not the email I expected at 9:51 p.m., I can tell you that,” said Tuomi Joshua Forrest, executive director of Historic Germantown, which last week was scrambling for replacement funding after being told that a $108,812 grant for its Science Sleuths program had been canceled.
» READ MORE: A science program was poised to reach kids across Philly. Then DOGE killed the funding.
Forrest says he will now submit a request for the next payment toward the remaining $46,999 of the grant yet to be paid — and hope for the best.
Since an Inquirer article on Sunday reporting that the group needed to raise at least $30,000 in new donations or shut down the new science program for middle schoolers, the group has received a dozen pledges of between $20 and $5,000. Forrest will work with the new funders to use that money to meet the matching component of the grant’s terms, which require raising an additional $108,812 from other sources.
“We have to raise a dollar for every dollar we get from IMLS, and we have to raise and spend the full costs before we receive a reimbursement from IMLS,” he said. “So these gifts are critical in helping us complete the pilot this school year.”
The restored grant to the Atwater Kent Collection is for $138,547 to conserve Civil War battlefield drawings, painted works by Philadelphia artist David Bustill Bowser, and a historic American flag from the Perry Expedition.
Leveraging funds is one way in which IMLS has provided a key piece in the funding puzzle since its founding in 1996. The U.S. government agency has distributed $54.4 million across Pennsylvania in the past five years, according to the IMLS database.
The IMLS grants were canceled after President Trump signed a March 14 executive order directing the shrinking of seven federal agencies “to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” The American Library Association and American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO filed a suit on April 7 against the Trump administration after it gutted the agency’s staff and grants and fired its board of directors.
“Congress is the only entity that may lawfully dismantle the agency, not the President and certainly not DOGE,” states the lawsuit, which asked for a preliminary injunction directing the administration to “reverse these unlawful actions and to halt any further steps to dissolve the agency” while the court considered the matter.
The administration filed a motion urging the judge in the case to reject the request for a preliminary injunction, arguing, among other things, that the court lacked jurisdiction in the matter.
On Thursday — one day after local organizations received emails reinstating funding — the judge issued a temporary restraining order, saying that the wholesale termination of grants and services and mass layoff appeared to violate the terms of the legislation that established IMLS.
The court order, in force as the case proceeds, said the agency “shall not further pause, cancel, or otherwise terminate IMLS grants or contracts” or “fail to fund them for reasons other than not complying with grant terms.”