From questionably constitutional Executive Orders, to the takeover of the Kennedy Center, to the widespread defunding of the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) and National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), to the new ideological mandates imposed upon the Smithsonian Institution, the Trump Administration’s aims are clear. By targeting cultural programs centered on themes of gender, race, or complex narratives of the country’s history, it is on a mission to curtail ideological freedom, and it is doing so by wresting control over government-funded or government-run areas of the arts and cultural sector.
While these agencies and institutions represent a small fraction of the country’s vast cultural ecosystem, such blatant attacks put extreme pressure upon other, non-governmental cultural institutions to proactively censor in order to remain in good standing with power.
The chill runs deep. In recent months, several such examples have made the news:
- The Art Museum of the Americas canceled one exhibition that had received US government funding because the Trump Administration had labeled it a “DEI event,” but it also canceled another, independently-funded exhibition—which highlighted the administration’s disfavored themes of queerness and colonialism—without giving a reason.
- The White House Correspondents Association also received the administration’s message: it decided to pull comedian Amber Ruffin from performing at its annual correspondents’ dinner, out of a desire “to ensure the focus is not on the politics of division.”
- The Rhode Island School of Art and Design explained its dismantling of a student-run exhibition because of fears that the show’s pro-Palestinian, anti-colonialism content might attract the ire of federal antisemitism investigations.
More than ever, we need cultural leaders willing to lead. Absent government support, cultural institutions like those listed here—and the artists, curators, directors, trustees, scholars, and others who make their work possible—are left to uphold and defend a tradition of intellectual and artistic freedom which is essential to our democracy.