The letter to the Japanese American National Museum on Friday morning from the National Endowment for the Humanities read in part: “Due to a change in the Administration’s funding priorities, DOGE has made the decision to terminate NEH awards.”
The Los Angeles museum had seen this coming. On Wednesday night, state humanities councils across the country had begun receiving similar letters stating that their NEH funding had been terminated, one day after Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency visited NEH headquarters. By Friday, the scope of the NEH cuts was crystallizing as arts and humanities organizations began grappling with the loss of money previously approved by Congress, and social media lighted up with reports of NEH staffers being put on administrative leave.
The $175,000 NEH grant that JANM lost was for the museum’s Landmarks of American History and Culture workshops. Now in its third year, the program brings teachers from across the country to L.A.’s Little Tokyo to learn about Japanese American history, including the mass incarceration of U.S. citizens by their own government during World War II, a civics lesson aimed at preventing history from repeating. Over the last two years, more than 100 teachers from 31 states have attended the two-week program and shared their experiences and new knowledge with approximately 21,000 students.
“This is impacting many museums in the United States, especially cultural and ethnic museums,” Japanese American National Museum board chairman Bill Fujioka said of the NEH decision. “We already have a signed contract with the federal government for that money. And we’ve been told it’s being clawed back.”
The NEH grant money being rescinded was mostly allocated on a reimbursement basis, Fujioka said — meaning organizations were expected to spend the money first, then get reimbursed. The NEH letter amounts to a refusal to reimburse those expenses, despite earlier NEH approval.
Fujioka said the Japanese American National Museum was worried about the loss of not only NEH funding but also money allocated through the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences, which awarded $26.4 million in grants and research funding to cultural organizations in California last year. Its staff was put on administrative leave late last month.
Organizations such as the Japanese American National Museum have feared losing their federal funding ever since President Trump took office and began his campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion, Fujioka said, adding that many organizations have scrubbed their websites to remove any reference to DEI. The Japanese American National Museum will “scrub nothing,” Fujioka said, and instead will highlight the importance of DEI.
“Our community is based on diversity, equity is guaranteed to us in the Constitution, and inclusion is what we believe in,” Fujioka said.
Local museums that could be affected by IMLS funding cuts include the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which was awarded $744,095 through the organization last year, as well as UCLA’s Fowler Museum ($188,808) and the Autry Museum of the American West ($70,617).
LACMA confirmed to The Times that it received a letter terminating its NEH grant, but the museum declined further comment. The Times has reached out to a dozen California museums to discuss potential NEH or IMLS funding cuts; no others have agreed to speak on the record.
Fujioka said his museum has grants from NEH and IMLS totaling $2 million — $1.45 million of which was approved during the Biden administration but which the museum is bracing to never materialize; and $522K in grants applied for but not yet awarded. Of the approved grants, $750,000 was part of the NEH program Save America’s Treasures, devoted to historic preservation. Fujioka’s museum earmarked that funding for a climate control and HVAC system upgrade that will help to preserve 160,000 artifacts.
Fujioka said the museum is considering taking legal action on behalf of all museums losing previously approved funding, but JANM President and Chief Executive Ann Burroughs said the idea has not yet been explored in detail.
“It is an option that is open to us, and we would certainly join a class action lawsuit,” she said.
“We know that the actions that are being taken are not lawful because this is essentially approved funding,” said Rick Noguchi, president and chief executive of California Humanities, a state affiliate of the NEH, which was notified Wednesday night that its funding had been eliminated.
The California Humanities council gets about $3.5 million annually from the NEH, which accounts for 90% of its budget. The organization is designed to funnel federal money to educational programs at California museums, libraries and schools, among other places.
Noguchi said humanities councils across the country might band together to ask for a court injunction to prevent the funding loss, which he said would be “devastating.”
He described the reaction of state humanities councils as the NEH notices were landing.
“It was a parade of letters that were being posted on a directors’ listserv, because every state has a humanities council, and so it seemed like they were going alphabetically,” Noguchi said. He added that this is funding appropriated by Congress. “There’s a line item in National Endowment for the Humanities budget called the federal state partnership.”
The NEH was established by Congress in 1965. It provides grants for humanities projects to organizations including museums, archives, libraries, colleges and scholars. A longtime NEH official, Michael McDonald, is the agency’s acting director. He took over last month after the previous director — Shelly C. Lowe, a Biden appointee — resigned under pressure. The New York Times reported that McDonald told NEH officials this week that “the agency would focus on patriotic programming.”
McDonald signed the California Humanities council letter, which was reviewed by The Times and read in part: “Your grant’s immediate termination is necessary to safeguard the interests of the federal government, including its fiscal priorities. 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.”
The NEH did not respond to a request for comment.