Dozens of Museum Agency Workers Put on Leave Amid Trump Overhaul

The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has placed a majority of its staff on immediate administrative leave following President Donald Trump’s executive order mandating the agency’s dismantlement.

A Trump administrative official told Hyperallergic in an email that roughly 80% of the agency’s 77 employees were placed on leave, while a statement from the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 3403, the union that has represented IMLS workers since 2022, said that the directive impacted “the entire staff.”

According to the union, workers were notified following a “brief meeting” between Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) staffers and IMLS senior leadership yesterday, March 31, and subsequently locked out of their email accounts and instructed to hand over all government-owned materials.

“Museums and libraries will no longer be able to contact IMLS staff for updates about the funding they rely upon,” the union’s statement reads.

All processing of 2025 grant applications has been halted, and while the status of previously approved funding is still unclear, it is “likely that most grants will be terminated,” the union said.

Hyperallergic has also learned that IMLS staff were not permitted to communicate with grantees and applicants about the agency’s staff restructuring.

An email sent to affected IMLS staff from the office’s human resources did not define the length of time for the leave except that it could persist for up to 90 days, a period during which employees are not permitted to enter the agency’s property. 

A Trump administrative official said in a statement that the IMLS restructuring will ensure that taxpayer dollars are “not diverted to discriminatory DEI initiatives or divisive, anti-American programming in our cultural institutions,” harking back to the president’s relentless campaign to eradicate Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEI) programs and initiatives. Last week, these efforts escalated with an executive order attacking so-called “race-centered ideology” at the Smithsonian Institution.

In the 2024 fiscal year, the IMLS operated on a budget of $294.8 million — less than 0.005% of the federal budget. Established in 1996 by the Museum and Library Services Act, the relatively small independent federal agency awards grants to libraries, museums, archives, and other cultural organizations across the country, doling out $266.7 million in funding in 2024.

The news comes on the heels of the president’s appointment of Deputy Secretary of Labor Keith E. Sonderling as acting director of IMLS, which followed the president’s directive to eliminate all “non-statutory functions and components … to the maximum extent” at the museum funding agency and six others.

Following yesterday’s IMLS staff directive, the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) and the American Library Association released statements raising concerns about the potential impact on museums and libraries. The AAM is encouraging museums that experience delayed or cancelled IMLS grants and funding contracts to alert their congressional representatives.