One of President Trump’s latest executive orders, Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy, instructed agency heads to quickly dismantle seven government agencies, including the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).
On March 31, the entire Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) staff was placed on administrative leave as a follow up to the executive order from March 14. Placing the entire staff on administrative leave raises questions as to whether the agency will be able to fulfill its legal obligations to disburse congressionally appropriated funding, leaving museums, libraries, and communities across the country at risk of losing vital resources. Read the rest of AAM’s statement here.
Contact your DC elected officials now to support IMLS. You can use AAM’s advocacy tools to more easily advocate.
IMLS is the only agency dedicated to providing support and funding to museums, cultural centers, and libraries across the country. It is a research and granting agency that is incredibly efficient and effective. Their $294.8M budget is less than one-hundredth of one percent of the overall federal budget (0.0046%), and they award $266.5M of their budget in grant funding to museums, cultural centers, and libraries every year.
IMLS is hugely beneficial to our state and to the communities our museums, cultural centers, and libraries serve. Since 1996, almost $63 million in IMLS funding has been granted to organizations in Alaska.
This funding supports critical infrastructure, technology, training, educational and community programs for museums, cultural centers, and libraries.
Previously funded IMLS museum programs have had a huge impact on the state. Here are a few of those stories:
IMLS grants and IMLS museum assessment programs over several years were what literally allowed the Sheldon Museum and Cultural Center (DBA Haines Sheldon Museum) in Haines, AK to grow from a mom and pop museum into a fully accredited institution.
In 2007, the Alaska State Museums received a $163,275 21st Century Museum Professionals grant to create an internship program for 19 student interns to be placed at small museums and cultural centers across the state; three of the interns returned after graduation to take permanent jobs in Alaska institutions, and they still work in Alaska to this day.
In 2013, the Alaska State Library received a $78,439 Museums for America grant which allowed the Alaska State Museum (ASM) in Juneau to provide hands-on professional development for 30 staff at Alaskan museums and cultural centers across Alaska, many of them from remote towns and villages, as they assisted with the move of ASM’s 42,000-object collection—teaching participants collections management skills, while enabling the museum to safely move their collections in a tight timeframe.
In 2022, the University of Alaska Museum of the North received a $500,000 Save America’s Treasures grant to perform conservation treatment on Bus 142, but the unexpected impact of the project was the groundswell of community it created—with thousands of new museum fans watching the conservation process on the live webcam and in person at the observation windows, and community members who rallied to donate over $100,000 of in-kind services for the project.
In 2010, the Anchorage Museum received a $61,360 Conservation Program grant that funded the assessment and treatment of ethnographic and historic objects in the old Alaska Gallery, training to museum professionals around the state, and helped move forward the renovation and planning for the new Alaska exhibition—an exhibition that is now a huge draw to Alaskans and the tourism industry with hundreds of thousands of visitors learning about the history and development of Alaska.
In 2021, the Anchorage Museum received a $181,143 Museums for America grant in partnership with Nay’dini’aa Na’ Kayax (Chickaloon Village Traditional Council) that supported digital repatriation of images and materials related to Chickaloon Native Village, provided Chickaloon Native Village with a template for what a strong collaboration looks like with a non-Indigenous repository, and has led to the return of over 4,000 digital surrogates from the Anchorage Museum and other repositories around the country, solidifying the trust Ahtna Elders have in the work their digital archives department is doing for them.
In 2022, the Kodiak History Museum received a $48,279 Inspire! Grant for Small Museums to improve accessibility of their collection by photographing over 2,300 objects and uploading at least 75% of the records and images on a public online database, which has aided in referencing and sharing the collections (now searched over 1,000 times), and also in documenting their conditions to ensure their continued preservation before an impending collections move.
In 2015, Koniag, Inc. received a $49,612 Native American Native Hawaiian Museum Services grant for the Alutiiq Museum to advance knowledge of Alutiiq kayaks by updating its kayak exhibit, developing educational programming, and working with the Peabody Museum to ship their rare 19th century Alutiiq kayak to the Alutiiq Museum for a 10-year loan, during which, Harvard returned the kayak permanently to the Alutiiq Museum—an unexpected, welcome outcome from the project.
In 2020, Koniag, Inc. received a $116,389 Native American Library Services: Enhancement Grants grant for the Alutiiq Museum to create two books with associated lesson plans—an illustrated elementary school storybook about an ancestral Alutiiq family, and Alutiiq history book—both now being used in Kodiak classrooms providing a fuller picture of Alutiiq history; the history book has even won the 2025 Alaska Anthropological Association’s Outstanding Current Contribution award.
In 2022, the Alaska Native Heritage Center received a $107,244 Save America’s Treasures grant to update a third of their casework in the Hall of Cultures, which has allowed them to better protect the cultural belongings they steward and exhibit, expanded the partners who will lend them art to exhibit, and expanded the types of art they can display due—all due to the increased security and improved environmental conditions of the casework.
In 2017, Sealaska Corporation received a $47,757 Native American Native Hawaiian Museum Services grant to support a comprehensive reorganization and inventory of the Sealaska Heritage Institute’s (SHI) collections, which resulted in the organization’s first publicly accessible online database launched right before COVID—allowing SHI to transition more easily to their now popular remote reference services during the pandemic and continuing to the present.
In 2022, Sealaska Corporation received a $96,250 Native American Native Hawaiian Museum Services grant that increased access to their Indigenous archives by providing training for Sealaska Heritage Institute staff to gain expertise in digital archives management and preservation—a capacity building project that would not have been possible without IMLS’ support of professional development opportunities, which leads to better services for museum communities.
In 2022, the Ilanka Cultural Center and Museum of the Native Village of Eyak received a $98,258 Native American Native Hawaiian Museum Services grant to create high-definition 3D scans of 15 artifacts to add to their virtual reality “game” experience of a traditional Eyak village site, enabling users to perform activities like canoeing, drumming, tracking; innovative programming like this, in addition to other IMLS funded programs, has over quadrupled their visitor count at the cultural center in the last four years.