The guillotine hovers, its blade gleaming with political pragmatism and indifference to the intangible riches of human culture. Once again, U.S. museums, libraries, and cultural institutions—already thin-stretched and understaffed—find themselves in the crosshairs of federal austerity.Former President Donald Trump, wielding the executive order like a cleaver rather than a scalpel, has set his sights on seven federal agencies, chief among them the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). His mandate: prove your worth in seven days, or face obliteration.

The IMLS: An Unsung Pillar of American Culture

Founded in 1996, the IMLS functions not as a lavish bureaucratic indulgence but as a lifeline. Its nearly $300 million in annual grants support everything from the grand marble halls of the Met and LACMA to modest county libraries and regional museums that preserve indigenous artifacts, Black history, and local lore. It props up literacy programs, digitization efforts, conservation work, and more.

This is not art for art’s sake. This is infrastructure for cultural survival.

Cutting Culture for Coins

Trump’s rhetoric dresses this cultural severing in business drag: “streamlining government,” “saving taxpayer dollars.” But the math is insulting. The entire IMLS budget represents a speck in the federal ledger—less than 0.01% of discretionary spending. The Pentagon could lose more behind a filing cabinet than the IMLS spends in a year.

This is not about money. It’s about ideology. A worldview that sees culture as frivolous, libraries as outdated, museums as elitist playhouses, and the public as unworthy of access to shared knowledge.

This isn’t Trump’s first crusade against the arts. Previous budget proposals under his administration sought to axe the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities as well. Congress, like a weary firewall, blocked those cuts—barely. But this new offensive is bolder, sharper, and more systematic.

The First Casualties: Small Libraries and Community Museums

If the IMLS vanishes, the dominoes fall fast. Libraries will be the first to shutter programs: rural story hours, job training sessions, digital literacy initiatives—gone. Museum educators, archivists, conservators—disappeared in the name of fiscal “responsibility.”

Urban cultural titans may weather the storm, cushioned by private donors and endowments. But the museums in Tulsa, Baton Rouge, Akron—those preserving regional identity and offering exclusive art exhibitions to communities far from the Chelsea circuit—will not.

These spaces don’t just house artifacts. They house memory, identity, and aspiration. And they make it free.

The Looming Cultural Blackout

The IMLS isn’t a luxury. It’s the nervous system that links thousands of institutions across all 50 states. Kill it, and you don’t just snuff out a line item—you initiate a cultural blackout.

Consider this: a single IMLS grant might fund a traveling exhibition of Native American art, a digitization project for a Civil Rights archive, and a reading program in a prison—all in one fiscal year. No private funder, however benevolent, replicates that scope or egalitarian reach.

Resistance on the Shelves and the Walls

EveryLibrary, a national advocacy group, is mobilizing fast, urging citizens to pressure Congress. Art institutions, activists, and educators are calling for protest—not just performative, but legislative. The stakes? Whether culture remains a democratic right or retreats behind the velvet rope of privilege.

Public outrage has swayed policy before. But will America rise again to defend its intellectual and artistic commons? Or has cultural fatigue set in?

What’s Lost When We Lose the IMLS

This isn’t just about grants and budgets. It’s about access. It’s about whether a child in Appalachia gets to learn about Egyptian hieroglyphs, or a single parent in Detroit can check out a book on art therapy. It’s about whether we view knowledge as a collective inheritance, or a commodity reserved for the few.

The question now isn’t whether the art world cares—it does. The question is whether we can organize quickly and effectively enough to stop the cleaver mid-swing.

Because once the lights go out in these libraries and museums, it won’t just be the paintings and books that disappear. It will be the belief that they ever mattered.