The theme of the conference was Museums and Trust, but trust in the US government seemed in extremely short supply during the four-day event (6-9 May).

AAM president and CEO Marilyn Jackson outlined the scale of upheaval during her opening address.

“Since last May, the challenges we are facing have grown exponentially, with attacks on our field and the dismantling of federal agencies that support our sector,” said Jackson, who was the president and CEO of the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville, Kentucky, before joining the AAM in April last year.

“The series of executive orders released by the White House have attempted to censor us and tell us what we can say and what history we can celebrate. These executive orders have also attempted to tell us who we can hire, who we can honour, and how we should behave in our communities.

“And the executive orders have slashed federal funding,” Jackson continued. “Hundreds of millions of dollars have been lost in a variety of agencies, and we’re now also facing state and local funding cuts.”

But Jackson did end on a more positive note, highlighting how the sector can work together and the support that AAM can provide. This included advocacy work and helping museums understand how the executive orders might impact them, including what might be done to challenge and possibly reverse some of the decisions.

The three federal agencies supporting the cultural sector that have been targeted by Trump’s executive orders are the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

On 2 May, a few days before the AAM conference started, the NEA began terminating grant awards to museums and other cultural organisations. This was similar to earlier actions by IMLS and NEH. Staff numbers have also been slashed at these agencies.

The day before the news of the cancellation of the NEA grants, there was some good news –– a judge granted a Temporary Restraining Order to prevent the Trump administration from further dismantling the IMLS while the merits of the case are reviewed.

This order prevented additional grant terminations and staff cuts from taking place during this time, but it did not undo the staffing cuts or grant terminations that have already taken place.

Fightback

The bewildering number of executive orders (directives issued by the US president over the management of federal government) and other actions taken by Trump since he took power on 20 January has made it difficult for the museum sector to respond. But there are signs that cultural organisations are beginning to fight back.

The AAM conference coincided with an announcement that the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation were providing $800,000 to support 80 small and mid-sized cultural organisations across the US to continue with community-based visual arts programmes that were in danger of being cancelled due to financial uncertainties.

All the programmes had been receiving grants through Challenge America, a longstanding NEA initiative designed to extend the arts to underserved communities that which was abruptly suspended earlier this year. NEA-supported initiatives have since been threatened further with the federal administration’s recent proposal to eliminate the NEA completely in 2026.

“The Warhol Foundation recognises the essential contributions that small arts organisations make to our cultural lifeblood by giving artists in every corner of the country a platform from which to be seen and heard,” said Joel Wachs, the president of the Andy Warhol Foundation.

“We want them to know that we see the extremely difficult circumstances under which they are operating and we value and appreciate their work. We are committed to providing some semblance of stability and continuity during this time of unprecedented upheaval.”

The news of this funding support followed an announcement made by the Mellon Foundation made on 28 April that it was providing $15m of emergency funding to the Federation of State Humanities Councils to address the impact of federal funding cuts for state humanities councils. This money will help provide support to all 56 state and jurisdictional humanities councils across the US.

“The places where American communities come together to read, learn and engage with the humanities’ vast and varied forms of knowledge and creativity are often those supported by these councils,” said Elizabeth Alexander, the president of the Mellon Foundation.

“At stake are both the operational integrity of organisations like museums, libraries, historical societies in every single state, as well as the mechanisms to participate in the cultural dynamism and exchange that is a fundamental part of American civic life. While Mellon’s grant-making will not cover the entirety of these cuts, we stand side by side with the 56 Humanities Councils across the US and remain deeply committed to the work they lead on behalf of us all.”

Alongside support from private foundations in the face of federal funding cuts, some museum leaders have issued bold statements criticising Trump’s decisions, including the executive order, Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, which critics say aims to alter how the US story is told at the Smithsonian Institution and at Department of Interior monuments, memorials and statues.

“We cannot reverse course on our nation’s journey towards a more just and equitable future,” said Ann Burroughs, the president and CEO of Japanese American National Museum (JANM) in Los Angeles in a statement issued in early April.

“Museums like JANM create educational opportunities for younger generations to grapple with complexity. They invoke a sense of social obligation, and they encourage action to protect democracy and foster empathy.

Burroughs’ deep commitment to racial and social justice was shaped by her experience as a young activist in her native South Africa when she was jailed as a political prisoner for her opposition to apartheid.

Burroughs continued: “When the 14th secretary of the Smithsonian, Lonnie Bunch, spoke at JANM, he reminded us that ‘the great strength of a nation is looking at its past, learning from that past and using that past to point us toward a different future’.

“Widespread dismantling of federal agencies that support our work and the attempts at the wholesale erasure of history will not help us achieve a more just America. History does not yield to censorship or political ideologies. It thrives on critical thinking and depends on new evidence and interpretation.

“It demands honest, open conversations, and a commitment to having an evolving understanding of how the past shapes the present and the future. We must continue to embody our mission, carry the lessons of history forward, and celebrate the richly diverse stories and untold histories.”

Fluid situation

But the relentless nature of the upheaval in the US cultural sector was further demonstrated on the last day of the AAM conference with the news that Trump had fired the head of the Library of Congress in Washington DC. News agency Reuters reported that the White House said that Carla Hayden lost her job partly over her commitment to diversity.

Hayden was the first women and first African American to be the head of the Library of Congress. The library, the largest in the world, is also the main research arm of the US Congress.

In such a fluid situation, the long-term impact of the Trump administration’s decision over culture is difficult to predict. Like many countries, the funding that supports museums across the US is complex, with government support coming from local, state and federal sources.

Overall, government support as a percentage to total income has been falling over the past 20 years, according to AAM figures. And revenue from investments and private sources is much higher than many other countries, although this does vary hugely across different US museums.

But the future of museums in the US feels deeply precarious, particularly their diversity, equality and inclusion work. And the Trump administration is only three months into a four-year term.