'It is a blow:' Louisiana libraries, museums brace for cuts as Trump targets cultural funding

The email from the National Endowment for the Humanities came at 11:38 p.m. on April 2. It landed in Miranda Restovic's spam folder.

The message: A partnership that had lasted more than 50 years between the federal agency and the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities had ended overnight. 

"NEH has reasonable cause to terminate your grant in light of the fact that the NEH is repurposing its funding allocations in a new direction in furtherance of the President’s agenda," said the email, signed by Michael McDonald, the endowment's acting chairman.

For Restovic, president and chief executive of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, which leads and funds arts and cultural initiatives across the state, it meant that $600,000, or 20% of its annual budget, was gone.

"It is a blow," said Restovic. "In the last five years, we have reached every parish in the state ... This grant was terminated by the NEH, but it is the state of Louisiana that loses."

The Trump administration, aided by billionaire Elon Musk, is slashing federal spending in the name of removing bloat and waste. In recent days, Louisiana officials learned they are set to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in FEMA funding to protect against storms and tens of millions of dollars in funding for public health. The state's farmers are dealing with the loss of some $350 million in agricultural programs and subsidies.

Now, Louisiana's museums, libraries and cultural organizations are grappling with  — or bracing for — dramatic cuts as well.

Big changes, coming fast

In addition to the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, an array of other institutions have been notified of cuts — including Tulane University, LSU, Southern University and the University of Louisiana-Lafayette. The New Orleans Museum of Art recently received notice that its two current grants from the NEH had been terminated.

"Any elimination of funding from these agencies impacts our ability to serve our public in essential ways," said NOMA spokesperson Charlie Tatum. "Programming at all museums will be in jeopardy without the critical support for operations and initiatives provided by these cultural agencies."

Some other libraries and museums are bracing for cuts through another federal agency, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, which is the main source of federal funding for the country's libraries and museums. After naming the agency in mid-March as one of seven that should be "eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law," the Trump administration placed its staff on leave.

In fiscal year 2024, the IMLS awarded $3.5 million in grants to libraries and museums in the state, including $2.7 million to the State Library of Louisiana, which has a $9.7 million budget.

In a statement last week, Meg Placke, state librarian, said the system’s funds are secure through 2026.

"The last communication IMLS sent us informed us that our funding would be the same for 2026 and official award letters would be sent in April," Placke said. "While we are aware that some states have had IMLS grants canceled, we have not received any communication from the agency about any changes to our grant funding for this fiscal year or next."

That last communication came March 18, said Barry Landry, a spokesperson for Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser, who oversees the state library. IMLS staff were put on leave March 31.

'Would never have been possible'

Cuts to arts and culture institutions would be felt in myriad ways, according to museum and library officials.

On Tuesday, a mannequin stood in the center of the NOMA galleries, wearing a masquerade of gold and feathers, bells and mirrors, its knees bent as if about to dance. A group of first graders ran over to him. One girl pointed. Another leaned in. A third child took his invitation, bobbing back and forth.

The children, students at the Willow School, were experiencing “New African Masquerades,” a rare look into the artists animating West African masquerade.

It’s a major exhibition that grew from long relationships with artists, new ideas about curation and, over the course of its creation, two NEH grants. In fact, it “would have never been possible without funding from federal agencies," Tatum said.

The most recent of those grants, for $500,000, was among those terminated by NEH last week. While most of that grant has been paid, only half of another grant of $500,000 for a state-of-the-art conservation laboratory, has made its way to the museum, according to the NEH website.

Mary Cosper-LeBoeuf, longtime executive director of Terrebonne Parish Library, said libraries are more reliant on federal and state programs than most people realize. Though they are funded through local taxes, many parish library systems use the State Library of Louisiana for access to databases, interlibrary loans, braille books, online tutoring and other services.

Should that funding end, “it’s going to affect every single city library and parish library in this state,” said Cosper-LeBoeuf.

In New Iberia, the Bayou Teche Museum had hoped to sort through, digitize and transcribe boxes of audio files of local residents talking about the history of the area, making the information available to visitors. So it applied for and received a $25,000 grant from IMLS.

So far, it's gotten $7,000, and Ana Bellomy, the museum's director, said she's not sure if it will receive the rest.

Lauren Davis, curator at West Baton Rouge Parish Museum and past president of the Louisiana Association of Museums, says the cuts will affect communities across the state, but they also feel personal.

"People worked their behinds off to get these grants. I can't fathom how devastating it is for all of these colleagues who have put their hearts and souls into it," Davis said. "This is not the kind of career you go into to make money. They go into it because they are passionate about what they do."

Davis said a particular concern is the loss of shared information — especially in light of grants that were focused on digitally archiving information and history ahead of the nation's sesquicentennial celebration.

Decades of federal support

President Lyndon Johnson and Congress created the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities in 1965 as a way for federal dollars to support local research and education and to promote the country's history and traditions.

State level agencies, including the LEH, were created in 1972 to give individual states and territories greater autonomy. Between fiscal year 2019 and 2023, the NEH issued $12.9 million to support 66 projects in Louisiana, according to the NEH website.

The IMLS was created in 1996 under President Bill Clinton as an independent federal agency to foster "leadership, innovation and lifetime learning by supporting the nation's museums and libraries." First lady Laura Bush, a librarian herself, was a cheerleader for the agency that provided more than a quarter of Louisiana's State Library's budget.

The Trump administration's shuttering of the IMLS in March is part of a broader effort to cut "bureaucracy and bloat to deliver better services for the American people," his spokesperson told USA Today.

The agency's funding to states including California, Connecticut and Washington have halted early, while other states are ending programs in anticipation of cuts. Last week, 21 Democratic state attorneys general filed suit, arguing that by placing the IMLS staff on leave and curtailing grants, the Trump administration is overstepping its powers.

Directors of a dozen Louisiana libraries, worried about potential cuts, have informally discussed whether they could, on their own, form a consortium, to help make up for any lost services. But recreating what already exists is inefficient, said Cosper-LeBoeuf.

"I completely understand that there's mismanagement, and we have to live within our budget," she said. "But I think the majority of librarians are very serious and very frugal with the money that we're given. That's just how we're trained."