<
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/25/small-museums-trump-cuts-arts-funding>
"For the past two years, a small arts non-profit has been telling stories about
the communities living alongside the Los Angeles river, one voice at a time.
The organization, called Clockshop, has collected the oral histories of nearly
70 local residents, activists and elected officials. Their knowledge is
compiled in a vast cultural atlas – which contains videos, an interactive map
and a self-guided tour exploring the waterway and its transformation from a
home for the Indigenous Tongva people to a popular, rapidly gentrifying urban
space.
But in April, the future of the ever-growing atlas was thrown in uncertainty,
when a three-year federal grant from the Institute of Museum and Library
Services (IMLS), the agency that supports libraries, archives and museums, was
terminated 17 months early. The grant, originally for $150,000, still had
$20,000 left to pay out. “There is no recourse to recover the funds still in
the grant project activities,” the organization said in a post on Instagram.
Now, executive director Sue Bell Yank says their mission to preserve the
stories of residents ousted by gentrification could lead to “erasure of the
past, of cultural self-determination, and a lack of understanding about how
communities can successfully advocate for the kinds of neighborhoods we
deserve”.
Clockshop’s post foreshadowed an alarming message that would eventually be
delivered to hundreds of other arts and cultural institutions across the US. As
the Trump administration directed federal agencies to cancel grants that did
not support the president’s new priorities, which focused on funding “projects
that reflect the nation’s rich artistic heritage and creativity” and targeted
anything broadly deemed “DEI” (diversity, equity and inclusion), millions of
dollars dedicated to preserving local history and culture suddenly disappeared.
Shortly after IMLS grants were terminated, so too were those awarded by the
National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Endowment for the
Arts (NEA). By Friday 2 May, a spreadsheet created by writer and theater
director Annie Doren was being passed around the internet, aiming to catalog
every organization that had lost their NEA funding. With more than 500
organizations on the list, the question shifted from who lost their funding to
who
didn’t."
Cheres,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
