The National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington, DC, is ending its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) applications because of this of an executive order (EO) issued by President Donald Trump on Monday, January 20. The govt order terminates such initiatives throughout all federal businesses and entities, referring to them as “illegal and immoral discrimination programs.”
An NGA spokesperson informed Hyperallergic that the museum has closed its Office of Belonging and Inclusion in response to Trump’s mandate.
“The employees of that office have been reassigned to already vacant positions elsewhere in the museum,” the spokesperson mentioned.
In addition, the museum has eliminated any language referring to DEI from its web site. On a web page outlining the institution’s mission and values, the phrases “diversity, equity, access and inclusion” have been changed with “welcoming and accessible.”
Signed on Trump’s first day in workplace together with a slew of controversial mandates that vary from pushing to redefine birthright citizenship to withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, the United Nations’s local weather change physique, the EO requires all federal businesses and departments to finish their DEI applications, plans, and initiatives inside 60 days.
The order additionally applies to any accessibility-related plans, equity-related grants, and “environmental justice” positions and workplaces, invoking a dedication to “expending precious taxpayer resources only on making America great.”
The NGA’s announcement comes three months after Ford Foundation chief Darren Walker was appointed president of the museum. Hyperallergic has contacted Walker through the Ford Foundation for remark.
Established by Congress in 1937, the NGA receives the bulk of its funding from the federal authorities and homes a group of greater than 150,000 work, sculptures, ornamental arts, pictures, prints, and drawings. Four years in the past, the museum launched a $820,000 rebrand specializing in DEI that included a brand new brand and signage, and concerned a dedication to addressing an absence of various management and workers.
Last weekend, the establishment hosted a fundraising dinner for the Trump Vance Inauguration Committee. (A consultant for the NGA informed Hyperallergic that whereas it “does not typically allow private events, exceptions have been made for official requests from across previous administrations,” as in an occasion held for President Bill Clinton in 1993.)
It is at present unclear how different museums will reply to the EO. Hyperallergic has reached out to the Smithsonian Institution for remark.
