Millions of dollars in previously awarded federal grants intended for cultural groups across the country have been canceled by the Trump administration. Among the affected organizations are state humanities councils, including Virginia Humanities, which produces the radio show "With Good Reason" and other history and arts programs. WMRA’s Meredith McCool reports.
[sound of birds singing, distant traffic]
On a warm spring afternoon, the garden at the Anne Spencer House is lush with greenery and birdsong. Nestled along Lynchburg’s Pierce Street Renaissance Historic District, the home features the restored gardens of the Harlem Renaissance poet Anne Spencer. Since the 1970s, the preservation of the house and its grounds has been supported in part by Virginia Humanities.
According to Virginia Humanities Executive Director Matthew Gibson, the Anne Spencer House and Garden Museum is one of the many cultural institutions across the commonwealth that have flourished thanks to funding from his organization.
MATTHEW GIBSON: The work that we do is to support the preservation, documentation, and stories about all of us as Virginians. … Those stories help us to connect to one another across our many divides, to see one another as human beings without the sort of boxes and labels that, you know, our society always wants to try to put people into.
Now, their ability to do that work faces a significant funding challenge. On April 3, Gibson was notified that $1.35 million in general operating support awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, or NEH, was terminated.
GIBSON: When I got an email at 12:51 a.m. on April 3, from, allegedly from NEH, but it was, you know, it was really from the Department of Government Efficiency – because it actually came from a microsoft.com email address, not an neh.gov email address – terminating our current grant. That was a real surprise. I think we had always assumed that the active grant we had this year would be up for a political discussion, which is typically how a budget gets created in Congress. It's a political process, you know, the White House proposes and Congress disposes. And we thought that … the FY 26 budget was going to be the one that we're going to have to focus our sights on…. As far as the practical impact on us, we are going to have to lay off staff and curb some of our programs, maybe even get rid of a couple of our programs.
Gibson said that the organization will survive thanks to support from the state, corporate foundations, and private individuals, but they will have to make significant reductions. He added that, as hard as the cuts are for the NEH and Virginia Humanities,
GIBSON: It's going to be really hard for Virginians.
He shared that Virginia Humanities provides close to a million dollars a year in support that's locally directed, organized, and controlled in the form of grants to rural and urban organizations such as historical societies, museums, and libraries. Those organizations engage local communities in educational topics about issues that are relevant for those particular communities. For example,
GIBSON: There's a place in Lynchburg called Pierce Street, which was this sort of bastion of sort of an American Renaissance, sort of an African American Renaissance. You had poet Ann Spencer there. You had Chauncey Spencer, her son, who was one of the Tuskegee Airmen. You had Arthur Ashe and Althea Gibson learning how to play tennis on the same block. I mean, it's an incredible place, right? And I think about what would happen if we divest both from the federal level, but the trickle down divestment, that comes from that initial divestment. If we do that, what happens to the communities like that?
For instance, Virginia Humanities was pivotal in the creation of a virtual tour of the Anne Spencer House and Garden Museum, which is available through Encyclopedia Virginia. The virtual tour opens up the entire property to those with limited mobility, as the second floor of the 1903-built home is only physically accessible by stairs.
Currently on Pierce Street, Shaun Spencer-Hester, Anne Spencer’s granddaughter and the director of the museum, is hard at work tending the garden and constructing an adjacent event space. She told WMRA that, in order to preserve her grandmother’s beloved refuge, sources of revenue beyond grant funding will be a necessity. Nevertheless, she has plans to apply for a Virginia Humanities grant to support the creation of a new museum brochure.
Despite the challenges, Matthew Gibson has hope.
GIBSON: What gives me hope is these people, you know, the people that we work with every day, whether it's in urban, suburban, or rural communities, they're just incredible people. They're not the, you know, the faces of the left or the right. They're people, they're Virginians. I think that's what gives me hope.
The NEH did not respond to WMRA's request for comment.