The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) began informing the agency’s grantees this week that their funding was being cancelled immediately. In messages sent to state humanities councils and other NEH grantees—some signed by the agency’s acting director, Michael McDonald, others from an email address affiliated with the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge)—recipients were told that the funds would instead be allocated “in a new direction in furtherance of the president’s agenda”.
The NEH, one of the main conduits for federal arts and humanities funding in the US along with the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)—which Trump has sought to shut down completely—and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), is funded through appropriations made by Congress. Its appropriation for fiscal year 2024 totalled $207m. Many of the agency’s grants are distributed via state humanities agencies, which in turn distribute the monies to projects in their respective states.
The agency for the state of Connecticut, for instance, CT Humanities, was informed late on 2 April that its federal operating grant had been terminated; “That means $1.5m of CT Humanities’ $4m budget this year is now gone,” according to a spokesperson.
“While arts and humanities may feel to some like abstractions—nice but not necessary—they are not,” Jason Mancini, the executive director of CT Humanities, said on Thursday in testimony before the appropriations committee of the Connecticut General Assembly. “All the problems, the pain and suffering we confront; the love, joy and connection we hope to feel are rooted in and expressed through arts and humanities. While it’s tempting to ascribe a dollar amount to all of this, we should recognise arts and humanities for what they truly are… invaluable.”
Virginia Humanities, that state’s equivalent agency, said in a statement that it will not receive $1.35m in federal funding that had been allocated to it by Congress in the most recent NEH appropriations. “This will have direct, significant impacts on our programming and our ability to make grants and award fellowships,” the statement adds. State humanities agencies across the US, from Georgia to Vermont to Washington state, issued similarly dire statements after receiving notices from the NEH or Doge.
The NEH’s most recent round of grants, announced six days before Trump took office, directed $22.6m to 219 projects across the US, from $25,000 to update a permanent exhibition at the Whaling Museum in Cold Spring, New York, to $22,693 for the Museum of the American Railroad in Frisco, Texas, to develop an interpretive plan outlining a more inclusive history of the railroad. Shortly after taking office, Trump pressured Shelly C. Lowe, the first Native American to serve as chair of the NEH, to step down.
“Your grant’s immediate termination is necessary to safeguard the interests of the federal government, including its fiscal priorities,” the letters signed by McDonald and received by grantees this week state in part, according to The New York Times. “The termination of your grant represents an urgent priority for the administration, and due to exceptional circumstances, adherence to the traditional notification process is not possible.”
In addition to slashing the funding and staff of at the NEH and IMLS, Trump has sought to pressure the Smithsonian Institution to change the programming at the 21 museums, National Zoo and the research institutes it oversees. He also purged the Democratic appointees from the board of the foremost federally funded performing arts centre in Washington, DC—the Kennedy Center—and installed his own supporters, who swiftly elected Trump as board chair. Federal arts agencies and institutions including the Smithsonian and National Gallery of Art have complied with the Trump administration’s crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, while the NEA has shifted its grantmaking priorities away from underserved communities and towards supporting projects related to the 250th anniversary of the US in 2026.
