The companies standing up to Trump on DEI
Companies like Costco and Levi’s are rejecting the White House’s position on diversity, equity and inclusion.
Artist Cheryl D. Edwards had eagerly anticipated the March 2025 opening of “Before the Americas,” an exhibition she’d curated of nearly four dozen works by Afro-Latino, Caribbean and Black artists scheduled at the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington, D.C.
Then, in February, the Washington, D.C.-based painter and printmaker was in Costa Rica preparing for a solo show when she got a call from museum staff: The show she’d spent three-plus years putting together was being cancelled.
She was crestfallen. “I asked why,” she said. “They said the funding had been taken away. I said, can we not raise the money some other way? And they said no.”
The exhibit, she said, had become a casualty of the Trump administration’s crackdown on federal support for diversity initiatives.
Edwards’ dismay didn’t last long. Don Russell, the university curator at George Mason University who’d previously shown some of Edwards’ work, quickly reached out and offered to host the show at the school’s Gillespie Gallery despite the venue’s typical focus on contemporary art; “Before the Americas” opened there on Aug. 25.
With the Trump administration moving to make artistic and cultural institutions like the Smithsonian less “woke” and nixing federal funding for diversity efforts, regional and local entities are embracing the responsibility of showcasing marginalized communities, even as many face cutbacks of their own.
In May, the administration rescinded hundreds of grants awarded through the National Endowment for the Arts to redirect funding toward projects focused on the nation’s 250th anniversary, among other things.
A few institutions, like George Mason, are hosting exhibitions cancelled elsewhere, while some already focused on marginalized communities are doubling down on their missions. Others are striving to promote community, hoping to break down walls in a divided country.
Shortly after Trump took office, the NEA scrapped a grant program targeting underserved populations and issued new rules for grant-seeking arts groups, forbidding the use of federal funds to promote “diversity, equity and inclusion” or “gender ideology.”
“I think we are taking a risk by doing this,” Russell said of hosting the “Before the Americas” exhibition, noting that George Mason, whose president has made racial diversity a priority, “has been in the spotlight around DEI issues.”
“I was around during the culture wars of the early 90s, and it seemed like the arts were the easiest thing to pick on,” Russell said. “Now, everything is being attacked. It’s hard to predict where the chips will fall.”
Earlier this year, the ACLU successfully sued the government on behalf of several arts organizations challenging the NEA’s ban on “gender ideology” as unconstitutional.
“The prohibition has led these organizations to alter the scope of their artistic projects – many of which involve transgender characters, cast transgender or nonbinary actors, and otherwise celebrate and affirm transgender and nonbinary people – or to be barred from NEA funding altogether,” the ACLU said.
Arts and humanities communities have faced cultural battles on multiple fronts ever since Trump’s return to office. After the president signed an executive order in March criticizing “narratives that portray American and Western values as inherently harmful and oppressive,” several federal arts institution leaders were either fired or chose to step down under administration pressure.
In August, an article posted on WhiteHouse.gov featured a list of presumably objectionable examples of ways that U.S. museums have portrayed American history and diversity.
“It’s an incredibly serious moment,” said Alyssa Nitchun, executive director of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art in New York City. “But the power of art right now is more important than ever. Art shifts hearts and minds like nothing else.”
The LGBTQ-focused museum is among several institutions that stepped up to host portions of “Nature’s Wild,” an exhibition exploring homosexuality in the Caribbean that like “Before the Americas” was scheduled to appear at the Art Museum of the Americas before being cancelled in February.
In Maryland, the Baltimore Museum of Art will feature “Amy Sherald: American Sublime” starting Nov. 2 after the artist withdrew her scheduled show at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery following pushback against her painting depicting the Statue of Liberty as a transgender woman.
The way in which regional institutions have moved to make sure these art works get seen “underscores how cultural resistance and strength require networks of individuals across institutions,” Nitchun said.
Edwards, the Washington-based artist, said she tells the young artists she mentors that in the current atmosphere, it’s more crucial for them to create than ever.
“We have to create like our hair’s on fire,” she said. “We are witnessing the erasure of history and creativity. It’s important for us to document this moment…. We’ve always been marginalized, but it doesn’t stop us from creating and thriving.”
‘An uncertain year’
While arts organizations get most of their funding from private sources and admissions, program fees, space rental and so on, public funding typically accounts for about one-tenth of their revenue, according to the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies. Grants awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts, the nation’s largest arts and education funding source, have been especially prized for the prestige and extra funding prospects they bring, especially for rural or smaller institutions with less access to private foundations.
“Those grants really helped smaller museums like ours,” said Heather Arnet, executive director and CEO of the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, New York, which has devoted all of 2025 to LGBTQ artists from its permanent collection.
The museum doesn’t generally rely on federal funding, Arnet said, but had sought an NEA grant to fund an exhibition this year. Otherwise, the institution has stayed true to its yearlong Pride initiative, scheduled to coincide with the 10-year anniversary of the U.S Supreme Court’s ruling recognizing same-sex unions.
“We still feel completely committed to these shows and our community,” she said.
The museum’s lineup includes an ongoing exhibition featuring the work of Emma Stebbins, a lesbian neoclassical sculptor best known for her bronze statue of an angel at New York’s Bethesda Fountain.
“The sculpture is incredibly famous but most people don’t know who she is,” Arnet said. “She’s never received a museum show until now.”
Most of this year’s related costs had already been incurred by the time she learned grant funding would be pulled, leaving no choice but to tap reserves, individual donors and corporate supporters to make up the difference.
“It has been an uncertain year for many of us in the arts sector,” she said.
In Sebastopol, California, the Sebastopol Center for the Arts relies mainly on its community for support but successfully applied last year for an NEA grant to fund an artist-in-residency program in 2025. In May, the center learned its funding had been cancelled.
Serafina Palandech, the center’s executive director, said the day she received the news happened to fall on the day the center was hosting an exhibit opening. When she shared the news with those in attendance, “it was just a beautiful response,” she said. “People were upset, and two private donors immediately stepped up to provide the funding that the NEA was supposed to provide.”
Palandech said ongoing campaigns against diversity and inclusion have inspired the center to double its efforts, including a collection of artworks sprinkled throughout the small city of 7,500 that focus on creating a sense of belonging.
For instance, one work is a giant anatomical heart, its insides a sprawling community of houses, that beats and flashes in response to a viewer’s interaction; another project transforms a chain-link fence into a wellspring of wisdom, inviting people to pen words of advice to younger versions of themselves.
“We were like, ‘Are people going to say mean things?’” Palandech recalled. “We were so worried we sent someone regularly to check. But people were writing these thoughtful, kind sentiments to each other….
“When we envisioned the project, it was to engage people to come together,” she continued. “Like, how can we create a sense of belonging in our community that’s the opposite of divisiveness? We believe that’s an integral part of how we get through this moment in time.”