A hoped-for $250,000 grant for the Contemporary Jewish Museum most likely will fall through as the White House slashes federal funding for the arts, CJM’s executive director told J. on Monday.
The news comes after the San Francisco museum announced in November that it would shut its doors for at least a year, citing a drop in attendance and a need to bolster its financial stability.
The grant would have helped fund a new exhibition, CJM executive director Kerry King said. She declined to provide details about the exhibition, saying only that the planning was in the early stages of a multiyear process.
“To know that [the grant] is off the table, as far as we can know, certainly changes how we thought about a really significant possibility for a source of funding for that exhibition,” King said.
CJM had applied for the grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Studies, which faces an uncertain future.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on March 14 to shut down seven federal agencies, including the institute. A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order against the action on May 1, but it remains unclear whether the institute will survive or have any funding for grants.
Many groups that received grants from the institute in its most recent round have been told that their grants are rescinded. CJM was expecting to hear about its application this summer, but it is now operating under the assumption that no new grants will be approved.
The exhibit isn’t canceled, however, King said.
“This could all happen,” she said. “It’s just going to be different, in the way we think about the funding for it.”
The institute’s shaky future also means that the CJM has lost an opportunity to start working with a federally funded program that helps museums assess their operational strengths and weaknesses and plan for the future.
CJM had applied to the Museum Assessment Program, whose funding also came through the institute and is now frozen.
King said the CJM is still fortunate that a volunteer group of Harvard Business School alums is offering strategic help. But she expressed regret about the loss of the assessment program.
“It would have just been an amazing complement and invaluable to have the conversations with other organizations who are in parallel with us, or have experienced something and we learn from it,” she said.
King said the federal funding crisis, which has affected people and institutions across the arts world, has been pushing everyone to think more creatively.
“We’ve got to be inspired by each other and move it forward,” King said.
As far as more concrete news on the fate of the CJM and whether it will reopen at its striking building in downtown San Francisco, King told J. that “it’s too soon for me to really be able to say anything that is that specific.” But she added that staff, volunteers and the board are “working every day” on the institution’s future.
The building, which shut down in mid-December, remains closed except for rental events.