DOGE cuts museums’ funding
CODY — Earlier this month, the Trump administration announced it would be cutting funding to museums and cultural institutions nationwide, resulting in the cancellation of hundreds of thousands of dollars in previously awarded grants to local museums in northwestern Wyoming.
The Meeteetse Museum, Buffalo Bill Center of the West and Heart Mountain Interpretive Center have received a combined $1.4 million in grant monies from the National Endowment of Humanities, and more than $794,000 in funds from the Institute of Museum and Library Services since 2020.
While all three institutions had open federal grants going into 2025, only Heart Mountain was able to draw down its final balance earlier this month.
Meanwhile, the Center of the West and Meeteetse Museum have had more than $600,000 in previously awarded grant monies canceled by the federal government as part of this action.
The grants that have been canceled served to fund a variety of upgrades, services and programs at the institutions.
In Meeteetse, the IMLS grant went toward the purchase of a large format scanner and digitization of its collection, increasing public access, while its NEH funding was set to pay for a new metal roof and installation of solar panels, enabling the museum to become more financially sustainable.
At the Center of the West, grants from both the NEH and IMLS were to match donations and fundraising for upgraded environmental controls and security to store and preserve its collections.
Heart Mountain, meanwhile, received annual funding from the NEH to provide for teacher workshops, drawing educators from around the country to the site for two one-week workshops.
Direct impact
Alexandra Deselms, the executive director of Meeteetse Museum, said that the loss of NEH funding has impeded the museum’s ability to complete its solar panel project.
“We’re hoping that if we were able to kind of talk to the congressional offices and reach out, and get enough supporters to reach out, that maybe those funds could potentially be reinstated,” she said. “But we’re also looking into the possibility that we may need to do a few smaller grants that might be slightly harder to get since everyone’s kind of in the same boat.”
The new state of uncertainty, she added, has upended the museum’s ability to carve out a clear timeline for its projects and upgrades.
At the Center of the West, executive director Rebecca West said the museum faced a similar challenge after previously awarded funds from both the NEH and IMLS were terminated, leaving the museum halfway to completion in its long-planned vault storage upgrades.
“It’s a really solid, necessary project,” she explained. “Some of our old vaults were constructed around 1959 with the original Whitney Western Art Museum wing. Those house not only the Buffalo Bill Museum collection, but the Whitney Western Art collection, art and sculptures, some really incredible, valuable works, art and artifacts.
“We were doing a really sustainable, progressive project to not just build another wing and say we’re going to add on vault storage and take up more resources, but we renovated an existing space to make it the highest of standard for vault storage to get the old vaults closed out and things moved over to top-of-the-line storage. We got the construction done. The vault is looking good, however the project is far from complete.”
West said the center still has to install cabinets and move objects, store them properly and conduct both an inventory and condition reporting, which will require additional manpower and labor hours. In addition, the IMLS grants funded upgrades in the art, sculpture and library vaults.
“We were really grateful to have the support from IMLS,” she said. “It made it possible to go forward with this and that’s what they do. It’s an agency that supports projects that look out for preservation and sharing. When you preserve things, you can better share them with the public and keep them for future generations.”
West went on to say that the termination of the grants would have a knock-on effect and impact programming at the museum as well as its wider network.
“Throughout the state, we work with different organizations and databases to share information. Taking away funding for one is going to affect the others, whether it’s library access or digital access,” she said. “It’s a true domino effect, especially since Wyoming is geographically distant as far as its cultural organizations [are concerned]. Once they’re gone, they’re going to be hard to bring back.”
West said that her intention is to persevere, first by caring for teachers and students and second by working in tandem with the museum’s local and statewide partners, which include both the Meeteetse Museum and Heart Mountain Interpretive Center.
“It’s going to take some creative solutions and a lot of collaboration,” she said. “Hopefully, the public will see very little noticeable shift, but we’re trying to make this as smooth as possible and keep priorities going.”
One project at the Center of the West that is likely to feel the impact of the funding cuts is Buffalo Nation, the museum’s planned celebration for the 250th celebration of America.
“The themes are timeless,” said West, adding that the program will move forward, but noting it will look different than originally intended. “It’s basically looking at the history of the nation through the eyes of an indicator species, the American bison, which is the American mammal. It’s on the Wyoming state flag. The early bison existed before humans were here. It’s seen, felt, influenced the many changes we’re seeing over 250 years or more.
“And that was our plan. Now that the NEH has been pretty much dissolved, we know we’re not going to get that grant.”
In addition to the reconfiguration of projects and future exhibitions, there are also potential cancellations on the horizon.
“I know the Homestead Museum in Powell, along with us and a couple museums on the eastern side of Wyoming, (was) going to do this traveling hybrid-Smithsonian exhibit that we incorporated local stories into,” said Deselms. “Most of it was funded through Wyoming Humanities and [because they’ve lost so much funding] they’ve had to pull back. None of us are sure if we’re going to be able to do it without that.”
Aura Sunada Newlin, the executive director of the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center, said that although the museum staff was able to draw down the remaining balance on an NEH grant enabling it to host teacher workshops, she is unsure if the program will continue beyond 2025.
“Each summer, we bring 72 teachers from all over the country, including Wyoming, to our site for a week at a time in two cohorts,” she explained of the grant’s impact. “And they had this powerful experience learning about Japanese American incarceration in the place where it happened.”
The grant, Sunada Newlin added, paid out stipends to each teacher, which went directly into the local economy.
“It paid for teachers to be able to travel here, but also to spend money on lodging, on food and they would go to Center of the West and Homesteader Museum, and go to the dam and the park, go shopping and all of these other places. It has an economic benefit beyond just our content and helping us get our content into classrooms and to students who cannot visit our site.”
Legal action and congressional response
As the fallout continues, the executive directors in charge of the local museums have said they are working not only to find solutions but also to advocate for their broader communities and work with the state’s political representatives.
Noting that Heart Mountain has not been directly impacted by the grant termination, Sunada Newlin said that she and the Heart Mountain board of directors were still taking steps to make their voices heard in line with the museum and historic site’s stated mission to raise awareness about the incarceration of Japanese American people during the 1940s.
“We are a private nonprofit and we don’t endorse political candidates. We stay out of politics, but we do engage on issues that are directly related to our mission,” Newlin said. “In that context, they’ve been reaching out to our members of Congress and putting out statements, not because we’re weighing in on partisan issues, but its policies that are reflective of the reason why we’re here.”
“We pride ourselves on our integrity and our values and our mission,” she continued. “If a letter or an action is in alignment with that, then we have processes for signing onto that.”
Sunada Newlin went on to say that the loss of funding is “really sad for our communities.”
“I grew up in Riverton and my favorite places to go were the Riverton Public Library and the Little Riverton Museum. Those were part of my childhood and those made me who I am,” she said. “Like at the community college, some of the arts and humanities programming they brought in probably got funded by Wyoming Humanities. We have so many opportunities in our communities, and I think we’re at risk of seeing them go away.”
“It’s disheartening to know that we’ve lost this funding and we may not ever be able to get it back or have any new grants for this or any of the programs,” agreed Deselms. “It’s also made me a bit angry that these are legally awarded funds. I would have understood if they paused future grants, but these are legally awarded funds and to just totally take them? I don’t understand it.”
“I’ve reached out to our representatives using the same means that most others have,” said West. “We’ve had board members do it; we’ve had advisory board members do it, and some people have received responses. They’ve been respectful, but one of the other steps we’re taking is we’re reaching out to Wyoming’s attorney general. There are other questions people have. We’re in a contract with IMLS. So [we’re] reaching out, letting them know contractually, this is something that we’re trying to uphold our end. We feel we have held up our end, but that’s not true for the government.”
Earlier this month, 21 state attorneys general filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, arguing the president cannot override congressional mandates, which not only created these agencies but also allocated their funding and outlined their function. The suit describes the cuts as “illegal several times over” and decries what it considers a violation of the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches.
Deselms said that she had spoken to the museum board about the suit and was exploring all possible options to recoup lost funding. She said she would also be contacting the Wyoming attorney general and the American Association for State and Local History, which is compiling grant termination letters and providing assistance for legal aid and advice.
Wyoming Rep. John Winter of Thermopolis, who previously spoke with Deselms and expressed his support for the institution, said that he intends to meet with U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman’s people on April 30 to discuss museum funding.
“I think it’s going to work out,” he said. “I have faith in what they’re doing in D.C., and believe we have to hold out and see what we can do in the meantime. These museums and libraries are important to the people.”
Meanwhile, Sunada Newlin said she had been in contact with the offices of the federal delegation and felt emboldened by their responses to her inquiries.
“I have been sending letters that pertain directly to our mission [almost daily], like advocating for the federal funds and they’ve encouraged us to keep sending them,” she said. “The staffers and the members of Congress, too, they’ve said, ‘This is our job, we love to hear from you, thank you for reaching out.’ They’ve been very gracious.”
In a statement provided to the Enterprise, U.S. Sen. Barrasso said, “President Trump is right to rein in wasteful Washington spending and increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the federal government. We need to cut wasteful and duplicative spending to protect American taxpayers.
“At the same time, I understand the important role that humanities programs and grants play in enriching our communities. I will continue working closely with local organizations and museums to understand the impacts and ensure Wyoming has a voice at the table.”
The Enterprise also reached out to the offices of Sen. Lummis, Rep. Hageman and Wyoming Attorney General Bridget Hill for comment. At press time, responses had not yet been received.
This story was published on April 21, 2025.