WHAT A DIFFERENCE a year can make.
Last April, with the help of a $3,000 grant from Indiana Humanities, the Indiana Council on World Affairs packed Indy’s Global Village Welcome Center for a forum on the state’s history of migration and immigration that has made Indiana the cultural crossroads it is today. An audience of 211 enjoyed the free event, plus the option of a $25 international buffet provided by local restaurants.
But this April, as one of hundreds of Indiana cultural organizations and museums hit by recent DOGE cuts, the council was forced to charge a $30 admission for an evening devoted to musicians from five countries and their musical heritage. As a result, only 51 people attended.
“Whether it’s a museum, music, a play, whatever, culture should be enjoyed by all Americans, not just those who can afford a ticket,” says Betty Tonsing, vice president for programming at the council.
Affordable access to museums, cultural events, and the arts is at stake for millions of Indiana residents following drastic cuts this year in federal funding at the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute for Museum and Library Services.
The hardest hit will be Indiana Humanities, the nonprofit organization that distributes NEH grants in all 92 counties of the state. The grants assist community groups “to celebrate local history, hold teacher workshops, host festivals, provide educational activities for students, or engage residents in their towns’ unique architectural heritage,” its website says.
Founded in 1972, the nonprofit will lose $1.3 million in annual federal funding or about 40 percent of its budget. While $500,000 of this year’s funds have already been received, the cuts leave an $800,000 gap in the organization’s operating costs and fewer resources to support public humanities programs across the state. Those cuts will ripple across Indiana this year and next with many communities already making plans for the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Local museums and cultural organizations say they will step up their private fundraising efforts to fill the federal gap, but the added competition for donor dollars will especially hurt smaller nonprofits that don’t have a sizable marketing budget, says Julia Whitehead, founder and chief executive officer of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library.
The impact of the DOGE cuts is already being felt locally:
• The Vonnegut Museum will lose $50,000 for maintenance of its historic building on Indiana Avenue. To cover those costs, the museum cut short a summer workshop for high school English teachers and eliminated two of its writing workshops for veterans. The museum will also scale back plans for its Juneteenth celebration at Crispus Attucks High School, long a center of African-American excellence, and a 2026 exhibit on book banning and censorship expected to draw thousands to the downtown museum whose namesake was a fierce defender of free speech.
• The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis will lose a $200,000 grant from the NEH for work on long-term planning and sustainability, most of which has already been completed. But without the grant, “we will have fewer funds available for educational programming, exhibit development, and ongoing care for our collections,” museum officials wrote in an email. The museum will lose another $21,000 in grants from the IMLS for staff development and the creation of a centennial exhibit detailing the stories behind 100 artifacts from the museum’s wide-ranging collection.
• With no prospect of funding from the NEH or IMLS, the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art has put plans on hold indefinitely for expanding the storage of its collection of more than 10,000 artworks. Meanwhile, the museum is awaiting word from the National Endowment for the Arts on a grant to support an exhibit of Western-style celebrity fashions created by Indianapolis-based designer Jerry Lee Atwood.
Rural areas stand to lose the most from the cuts, says George Hanlin, director of grants for Indiana Humanities. Those communities “don’t have a lot of other resources they can tap into for this type of programming. So, we are kind of a go-to resource.”
The NEH was founded in 1965 during Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration with legislation stating, “The arts and the humanities belong to all the people of the United States. … to achieve a better understanding of the past, a better analysis of the present, and a better view of the future.”
