Jo Pickup, Australian museum director offers insight into mood of US cultural sector after University of Michigan trip, Arts Hub, 8 April 2025

As the Trump administration’s executive orders ramped up, an Australian museum director was touching down in Michigan. Their first-hand insights say a lot about changes likely to come.

Seb Chan is the leader of one of Australia’s most significant contemporary cultural institutions.

As Director and CEO of ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image), he has worked with the Museum for the past decade, playing a pivotal role in transforming ACMI’s visitor and digital content experiences before taking up the Director and CEO role in 2022.

But Chan is also no stranger to the US – having worked in a senior leadership role at the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York in the early 2010s.

Just a few weeks ago, Chan found himself back at the US border – entering the country this time as a visiting scholar at the University of Michigan. He was there for a two-week stay as a guest of the University to present to faculty and students, and to meet with institutions across Ann Arbor and Detroit. He then continued to Boston as a guest of MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) to talk at the newly rebuilt MIT Museum.

Over the fortnight he was able to catch up with long-standing US museum sector colleagues – many of whom hold citizenships from countries outside the US

The conversations he had over this time offer important insights into these US cultural leaders’ most pressing current concerns. They also hint at what may be on the horizon as the Trump administration’s policy changes continue to shape that country’s future.

Gloomy mood hits US museum sector

At almost exactly the same time as Chan’s plane touched down in Michigan, the news hit the headlines that one of the US’s largest federally-funded museums and library agencies was subject to a Trump administration executive order hit the headlines.

As Chan tells ArtsHub, “I arrived in Michigan the same day as the IMLS (Institute of Museum and Library Services) cuts were initially announced.

“But they still let me in, which was good,” he adds, half laughing.

As Chan is all too aware, the government’s IMLS cuts are no laughing matter, and stem from a Trump administration executive order that calls for a reduction in IMLS’s federal funding as part of its mission to continue to target “the elements of the Federal bureaucracy that the President has determined are unnecessary”.

IMLS funding is, among other things, used to support countless US libraries and museums that offer reading, literacy and book borrowing services to their local communities – including disadvantaged groups.

The immediate effects of this US government’s order have seen IMLS staff put on administrative leave with no indication of when they will return to work, nor what the IMLS’s future funding will look like.

Read: President Trump attacks artist, portrait removed from public eye

The fact that Chan arrived on the same day as this news was breaking meant he saw its shockwaves ripple through the US museum sector first-hand.

“The mood there is certainly dark right now,” Chan tells ArtsHub.

“For me personally, as a traveller to the US who was coming in through border security, I have to say that I have not felt that kind of unease since I was in the US in the early 2000s soon after 9/11.”

He continues, “Everything just feels very uncertain and unstable”, adding that while it may seem we are greatly removed from the chaos here in Australia, there are still clear and present threats to our own sector.

“Many of the people I was speaking to have institutional projects partially funded through Federal funds, which are being cancelled, and others rely on university funding, which has also been threatened. These projects are core to future museum exhibitions, and also to keeping museum staff in employment.”

Impacts of US policy changes on Australian museums

From Chan’s perspective, as we continue to deal with what is likely to be a prolonged period of policy change in the US, the most concerning factor for Australian museums concerns the simple pragmatics of if and how Australian institutions can continue doing business with their US partners.

“Speaking purely from a [museum] business and logistics point of view, it’s the increased level of uncertainty in the US that is the greatest concern to us right now, because uncertainty is never a good thing for business and trade.

He continues, “Like with all trade, we need trading partners that are consistent and stable. But what the administration over there has created is instability, which, in our field, will be felt particularly acutely.”

To elaborate, Chan uses his own museum as an example of an institution that routinely loans its objects to international museums and sends exhibitions overseas.

“ACMI tours our exhibitions around the world, including to the US,” Chan says. “And of course when we do that we need to have confidence in those institutions that they have a high level of stability.

“At a very basic level, that means these institutions can be relied upon to send us back the objects we are lending them in one piece.”

He continues, “Similarly, when you are doing up a business contract to buy in an exhibition [to Australia] from another country, you want to know that that institution is financially stable.

“So now, in the US, there is concern that stability we had with one of our major trading partners is not certain anymore.”

Alarm bells around declining US museum visitation

Aside from the problem of likely new barriers in the way of easy exchange of works and exhibitions to and from the US, Chan also realises there are new worries on the minds of his US museum colleagues in terms of how well (or not) their institutions will fare at their newly distant position from the rest of the world.

As Chan tells ArtsHub, “I got the sense [my US colleagues] are worried that the Trump administration’s isolationist mindset will tar them with that same brush.

“It’s actually really sad because, as we know, part of the role of arts and culture is about bringing people closer together through dialogue and exchange – it’s about fostering conversation and thinking around complex ideas,” he continues.

“But if the US is closing itself off from the rest of the world, that means all those amazing US artists and thinkers and practitioners may well be shut off from those dialogue and exchange opportunities. And that’s just going to be a net loss to whole world if that happens.”

Chan also expresses concern at the prospect of his US colleagues mapping out ‘worst-case scenarios’ plans amid their government’s continuing policy changes.

“I think many of them are starting to worry about their income targets,” he says.

“Because of these new isolationist policies, they can see the number of tourists they would have otherwise relied on as part of their visitation are probably not going to be there.

“When we can see our US colleagues rethinking their forecasts, and not being able to plan for growth – that aspect is also of huge concern to us as an international sector,” he adds.

“It feels like a huge blow to us all at a time when we are still recovering from the disturbances brought about by the global pandemic.”

Ultimately, while Chan believes it’s too early to tell what specific outcomes will result from the Trump administration’s new directions, he is more certain in his view that the world is, and will continue to be a web of complex connections and interdependent exchanges.

“The reality is that, like it or not, nothing is outside the global economy anymore. So, these changes are bound to have ripple effects,” he says.

“It’s just too early yet to know exactly what they will be in the longer term. But it is heartening to see museums around the world banding together to support our colleagues.”

On 1 April 2025 the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced new funding cuts affecting the NEH (National Endowment for Humanities). These cuts come on the back of US government cuts to IMLS funding (after a March 14 executive order calling for continuing reduction of federal bureaucracy), and a 27 March 2025 order that effectively put the Smithsonian Museum on notice to review its programming in line with Trump administration priorities.

On 2 April, Australia’s own peak body for the Museums sector, AMaGA, issued this public statement in response to these executive actions.

ArtsHub will continue to follow these policy changes and their implications for the Australian arts sector.