The Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven has withdrawn two federal grant requests for a forthcoming Southeast African art exhibition in the wake of Trump’s bans on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programming and initiatives. To cover the $200,000 funding gap, the oldest university art museum in America will rely on its endowment to finance the exhibition, CT Insider reported.
Roland Coffey, director of communications for the Yale University Art Gallery, confirmed to Hyperallergic in an email that the museum withdrew its grant applications for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) “because of concern the exhibition did not meet the granting organizations’ criteria.”
The proposals, which each requested $100,000 from the federal agencies, were submitted to finance an exhibition centered on the migration of the Nguni peoples in southern Africa. The show is set to open next fall.
Earlier this year, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing all federal agencies to “immediately cease” opportunities and policies promoting DEI. To comply with the mandate, both the NEA and NEH incorporated anti-DEI requisites into their grant application guidelines. (The NEH briefly removed this requirement from its guidelines after a preliminary court injunction before reinstating it when a judge temporarily suspended the court order.)
Trump has also threatened to eliminate the NEA and NEH entirely. Simultaneously, he has waged assaults on trans and queer communities through his so-called “gender ideology” ban.
Coffey told CT Insider that the museum “objects specifically to the grant compliance stipulation that ‘the applicant does not operate any programs promoting [DEI] that violate any applicable federal anti-discrimination laws.’”
This is not the only exhibition for which the Yale University Art Gallery had to source alternative support in light of federal funding changes. The NEA cancelled a $30,000 grant for the planned exhibition Nusantara: Six Centuries of Indonesian Textiles, and the museum made the decision to dip into its Robert Lehman Endowment Fund to mount the show. Slated to open on September 12, the exhibition will present textiles spanning the 14th to the 20th centuries from across Indonesia, a country home to nearly 13% of the world’s Muslim population.
The Robert Lehman Endowment Fund is one of hundreds managed by Yale University’s endowment, which as of June 2024 was valued at $41.3 billion, according to the school’s financial report. These financial holdings, which help fund the museum’s programming and operations, will now be subject to a tax of up to 8% on endowment earnings under Trump and the GOP’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” adding to the strain caused by the loss of federal awards.