‘A very difficult moment’: How Trump put museums at risk | Museums

FFrom Times Square to the Washington Monument, America saw a new year with more fanfare than usual, celebrating the fact that 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the nation’s birth. But as the United States looks back, precious repositories of the nation’s history face an uncertain future.

Attendance at the museum declined. Budgets are unstable. Cuts in federal funding are taking their toll. Donald Trump’s culture wars are spreading fear, intimidation, and self-censorship among some filmmakers and donors.

The alarm was sounded late last year by a survey by the American Alliance of Museums (AAM), which showed that institutions face significant headwinds and a fragile and inconsistent recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic.

“This has revealed some troubling news, which is that the recovery from the pandemic has not only stalled, but is actually declining,” says Natanya Khashan, associate vice president of marketing and digital experience at AAM. “We are seeing declining attendance, poor financial performance, and increasing instability in the museum field thanks to some new economic and political pressures that have emerged.

The survey of 511 museum directors, conducted in July and August 2025, found that only 45% of museums reported attendance at or above pre-pandemic levels in 2019. This represents a decline from 2024, when 51% reached that milestone.

About 52% of museums reported stronger results in 2024 than before the pandemic, a decline from the previous survey, where 57% reported an improvement in 2023. Meanwhile, 26% reported weaker results, worse than the 19% who reported declines in the previous survey. Forecasts for 2025 are less optimistic than for 2024.

Trump’s impact is evident through executive orders and federal cutbacks: 34% of museums suffered the cancellation of government grants or contracts; 29% saw a decline in attendance due to changes in travel/tourism and/or economic uncertainty; 18% saw changes in the scope of their government grants/contracts; 13% are subject to new legal restrictions on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) activities. Only 31% of museums reported no impact at all.

The survey found that for those affected by canceled grants, the average loss was $30,000. The missing grants were most often from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).

Of the museums that lost federal funds, 35% had to postpone or delay facility improvements, 28% had to cancel or reduce general programs, and 24% had to cancel or reduce programs for students, rural communities, individuals with disabilities, seniors, and/or veterans.

“The most immediate impact we’re seeing in terms of management is the elimination of federal grants that happened this year,” Khashan says. “About a third of museums report losing federal grants in 2025.”

“It’s often in the middle of the project and most museums haven’t been able to replace that funding, which has downstream effects: many of these organizations are planning capital renovations and things like that, so architects, design firms and other for-profit companies are also losing business because of those cuts. Not to mention, of course, the impact on communities that are experiencing program cancellations or reduced capacity in the museums or price increases.”

Significantly, 67% of museums reported that this lost funding had not been replaced by institutions, sponsors or donors. Only 8% reported that funding had been completely replaced. “While we have seen some organizations stepping up to fill the gaps, especially for those organizations they were already working with, we see that this will not bridge the gap for everyone,” Khashan added.

Among those affected is the Berkeley Museum of Art and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA) at UC Berkeley, which has about 30,000 square feet of gallery space and receives 120,000 visitors a year. In 2019, BAMPFA received bequests for more than 3,000 African American quilts, the largest collection of its kind.

But in April she learned that the federal government had canceled two grants totaling $260,000 to preserve the quilts. “It was devastating because there was an urgent need to recover the quilts,” recalls Julie Rodriguez Widholm, executive director of BAMPFA. “They are textiles and it is important that we do not let this work be delayed until it is overwhelming for us at an institutional level.”

“It was difficult to come to an understanding because it was unprecedented to be told by the government that the grant had been canceled because it was no longer in line with American priorities. There was a lot of confusion about the legality of that.”

The loss of funding received media coverage, which became an incentive for new funders to step up their efforts and fill the gap. “We were able to make up the lost amount from IMLS, which was great and allowed us to continue working and showed that our community and funders care deeply about this work that we do,” Widholm adds. To bring attention to this unacknowledged part of American art history by the mostly female African American quiltmakers of the twentieth century.

But she cautions: “We still need more funding, and it’s a very difficult moment right now overall for philanthropy in the United States because of the economic uncertainty and the decline in federal engagement in the arts or setting certain parameters around what the government will fund at this time. We have to get creative and think about how we engage more deeply with individual donors.”

The 250th anniversary of US independence will likely witness a struggle over American identity. The Trump administration has made aggressive efforts to reshape the Smithsonian and other cultural bodies to align with an “anti-woke” nationalist agenda. The president’s executive orders and political pressure led to the resignation of Kim Saget, director of the National Portrait Gallery, and sparked accusations of self-censorship among some curators.

Federal officials are now calling for a broad review of the exhibit’s content, aiming to replace narratives about systemic injustice with a more triumphant view of American history. While some private museums remain isolated from their funding models, some observers warn of a chilling effect that could further damage funding and visitor numbers.

Stephen Reilly, former director “There is a wariness of controversy on the part of foundations and institutional funders,” he says of the Speed ​​Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky. “We hope that museums will not stop trying to be relevant in the art they display. This does not necessarily mean that it is offensive or politically controversial, but if it is watered down, it will exacerbate the challenges they already face.”

In Tulsa, Oklahoma, the Greenwood Rising Museum is dedicated to telling the story of the city’s historic Greenwood District — known as Black Wall Street — and the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. It opened in 2021 on the 100th anniversary of the massacre, and has about a dozen employees with an average annual budget of between $1.5 million and $2 million. It does not receive federal funding.

Raymond Doswell, its executive director, says the museum is focused on marketing and outreach, but the current political climate could impact future fundraising efforts. “We can tell that, especially from corporate donors, they’re very concerned about diversity language and those kinds of things and how that might be seen.

“On top of that, a lot of friends in the corporate and philanthropic world have had to step in to help other foundations, other nonprofits that have been struggling and rely heavily on both federal and state dollars to do a lot of different types of work outside of education and the arts. That means there’s support for organizations like ours but maybe less so because there’s some real need out there and people are stepping up to try to help meet that need.”“

Looking ahead to 2026, museum leaders expect major disruptions due to shifts in philanthropy, inflation, financial instability, and continued government funding cuts. But Doswell remains optimistic about the bicentennial of America’s founding.

“We’re going to find out how much we rely on institutions to help tell these stories,” he adds. “There are some things we won’t be able to get around in terms of storytelling, and some of these things seem like they’re going to be uncomfortable for a lot of people, but it’s going to turn into a battle between truth and propaganda. There’s going to be pressure on national institutions like us, and smaller institutions. I feel very focused on what we have to do and what we have to say.”

Museums have weathered storms before, notably the Great Depression of the 1930s. But Marjorie Schwarzer, author of Riches, Rivals, and Radicals: A History of Museums in the United States and a retired professor at The history of the museum at the University of San Francisco suggests that they have never had to deal with a figure like Trump.

She says: “Museums are focused on their mission and public trust, and have been since the 1880s. Museums are not used to thinking of one individual as the boss. That’s quite the opposite of this field.”

“It pisses everyone off. It’s very direct. I read the recent threat to the Smithsonian and it made absolutely no sense; it was destroying my brain cells. Like, what are they asking for? It was overt bullying. That’s what’s different about this industry.”

Although the United States has a stronger culture of donor support and philanthropy than Britain, this culture may also be eroded by fear of Trump’s efforts to rewrite history. “Funders will be wary,” Schwarzer warns. “I’ve heard stories told to me privately by directors of exhibitions that have been canceled, not because of federal or Trump funding but because other funders are worried about the political fallout.”

Schwarzer adds that federal funds have been crucial in helping American museums push new boundaries. “You get periods of innovation like after the bicentennial in the 1970s: you had this huge surge in funding, and that’s where you get programs for children and programs for people with disabilities and neighborhood exhibitions and exciting new types of exhibition strategies and new technologies. If you don’t have the funding to get that going, you’ll see that the field won’t be able to do that kind of programming.”

She warns that now, while other countries are doing innovative work, the United States risks losing its “leadership advantage.” “The 20th and early 21st centuries was a time when American museums assumed a leadership position and pushed the field way forward. Now we will not be able to play that role within the international museum community in the way that we have done for the last 100 or 120 years. That reflects universities, it reflects journalism, it reflects all of these fields.”