380: IMLS

Archival Spaces 380:

Institute of Museum and Library Services in Peril

Uploaded 22 August 2025

Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s as film curator, I applied for and received several Institute of Museum Services grants for cataloguing and preserving the film poster collections at George Eastman Museum. That federal agency had been in existence since 1976. Through the 1996 Library and Technology Act, the agency was absorbed into the independent Institute of Museum and Library Sciences, as were the activities of the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science. The Congressional Act was reauthorized in 2003 and again in 2010. Between 2016 and 2024, Congress appropriated anywhere between $230 million and $497 million to IMLS, which was divided between individual states, and a host of other programs, including those for Native Americans, Latinos, African Americans, National Museum Leadership, and Professional development. In FY 2024, $ 266 million was awarded. IMLS makes up no more than 0.0046% of the Federal budget. The grant application process is extremely rigorous, peer-reviewed, and requires periodic reporting before, during, and after the grants have been awarded.  Such funding has been absolutely crucial for film and media archives and museums, funding operations, cataloguing, collection maintenance and expansion, curatorial activities, and professional development.

In his never-ending quest to destroy American government, education and American cultural institutions, Donald Trump on 20 March 2025 appointed Keith E. Sonderling to the position of “Acting Director” of IMLS with the specific brief to eliminate the staff and the work of the agency: Executive Order, “Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy,” required within seven days the elimination of IMLS “to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.”  On Monday, 31 March, circa all fifty-five employees of IMLS were put on administrative leave. The notification followed a brief meeting between Elon Musk’s DOGE staff and IMLS leadership. Employees were required to turn in all government property prior to exiting the building, and email accounts were disabled. At the same time, Sonderling cancelled all 900 open awards to museums across the United States. According to a published staff text message: “As of the end of March there were 891 open awards to museums with $180 million in federal funds (appropriated in prior fiscal years to support multiyear projects) matched with $185 million of non-federal cost share.”  

Within days, grantees were notified of the cancellation of open grants. The grant process for 2025 was paused. Yet messages were mixed. As one arts administrator with several open grants told me, IMLS was still requiring institutions to continue delivering intermediary and final reports; otherwise, they risked “becoming ineligible for future IMLS grants.” At the same time, when inquiries were made to IMLS, instructions were either contradictory or not forthcoming at all, not surprising, given that only one or two staff members remained to answer the phones. As in almost every other corner of the Trump government, including the Social Security Administration, MAGA-generated chaos reigned supreme.

Within a week, nineteen members of the National Museum and Library Services Board wrote to Sonderling – in German, his name means crank or oddball – that all current-year and multi-year grants, contracts, and awards had been authorized by Congress, “are non-discretionary and must be honored.” A second letter remained unanswered, as did the first. On 4 April, a coalition of twenty-one state attorneys general filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, claiming Trump’s executive order was illegal. Days later, the American Library Association (ALA) and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) filed a lawsuit against DOGE for “the Trump administration’s gutting of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).”

While in response to the ALA lawsuit, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon on 30 April initially granted a short-term emergency injunction blocking the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the independent agency, the same judge in a ruling on 6 June stated that the plaintiffs had failed to establish “a substantial likelihood of success on the merits.” The court’s interpretation was frustrating because Judge Leon determined that the lawsuit was ultimately centered on contractual, not constitutional, issues. Meanwhile, on 5 June, Chief Judge John J. McConnell in the suit filed by the coalition of Attorneys General, Rhode Island v. Trump, ordered a preliminary injunction against the Trump Administration’s dismantling of three federal agencies, including IMLS. The judge found that the administration acted “without proper procedures,” violating the separation of powers, the Administrative Procedure Act, and the Take Care Clause. IMLS was supposed to comply with the order by again processing and disbursing grants, bringing employees back to the office, and scrapping plans to move the agency into a smaller office space in the Department of Labor. However, given the contradictory rulings, it is unclear whether the Trump Administration will comply. To date, the Administration has ignored the order, as it has almost every other ruling against it by the judiciary.  Write to your Senator and Congressperson to stop this outrage.