High Desert Museum Sees Funding Cuts to Several Projects

Leaders at the High Desert Museum learned that federal budget cuts could impact a number of projects offered to museum guests. The funding cuts, realized primarily through the termination of federal grants, are set to impact a series of improvement projects at the museum.

Museum Director Dana Whitelaw says they’ve learned about the losses over the past several weeks and were given very few details. With grant terminations streaming in, and an uncertainty about certain allocated funds, many projects are in limbo as the museum awaits direction on the usage of its funds.

The first indication that funding for museum projects was at risk came from the federal agency, the Institute of Museum and Library Services. In late March, the Trump administration, along with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, made major cuts to the agency, laying off almost all of its staff.

“We have received over $1.4 million from IMLS over the last 10 years for various projects,” Whitelaw said. “This is a significant agency for funding innovative, bold projects that advance the work of museums.”

Through the IMLS, the museum recently received $238,000 in funding for a capital expansion project, aimed at growing its gallery space and learning center and adding more gathering areas.

While the High Desert Museum already received all of the allocated federal funds for this project, it received a letter that the funding was terminated on April 2. Since the money is essentially under contract to be spent, the museum is waiting to see if it needs to return those dollars.

“It’s certainly a hit for our project. We will find another way to raise that money, again. But, in terms of the logistics of returning money, we haven’t had to do that before,” Whitelaw told the Source Weekly.

Another major funding source for the museum includes the National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent federal agency that also faced severe cuts. The museum currently has five projects with NEH that were all terminated on April 8, according to Whitelaw.

The five projects, she said, are in various stages of progress and total about $1.29 million in funds. According to Whitelaw, the museum has already used all but about $700,000 of those funds.

One of the projects included $500,000 for the renovation of “By Hand Through Memory,” the museum’s permanent exhibition dedicated to the indigenous people of the plateau. “For the largest grant, the $500,000, we have spent very little of it, so that’s the most significant hit in terms of cash,” said Whitelaw. “We’ll have to look for other funding opportunities to replace that money that’s at risk.”

In addition to this project, Whitelaw noted a $100,000 loss, which was intended to go toward a two-year salary for an emerging humanities scholar – an opportunity for someone finishing their master’s degree or PhD.

At the High Desert Museum, the scholar was slated to help with the renovation of the indigenous exhibit, currently being renovated. The museum was forced to rescind its two-year job offer.

“We had offered the job, and it had been accepted. She was supposed to start last week,” Whitelaw said. “That is perhaps the most painful, because it has ripple effects. When we’re talking about the humanities and museum projects, they are sometimes decades in the making, and the impact that those dollars have goes on for decades… so the loss is more than just the dollar figure.”

While Whitelaw said certain projects will continue, including the planned expansions and the development of its new learning center, others are being terminated.

One project on pause includes a $150,000 project, funding the creation of 30 long-form videos exploring climate impacts in rural communities. Another paused project includes a digital program, which would have created a website for an online experience of the museum. Finally, a $50,000 project that would develop a plan to help the museum better sustain its collection of almost 30,000 objects is paused.

Other local museums, including the Deschutes Historical Museum, are seeing these impacts. While the historical museum didn’t have any existing grants that lost funding, museum director Kelly Cannon-Miller said they were in the middle of writing an IMLS grant for new exhibits. That opportunity is now gone, she said.

“The number of grant opportunities that we can apply to has been cut, which just means we have to look for other funding sources to replace that,” Cannon-Miller told the Source Weekly.

Based on her interactions with the community, she said, most individuals do not want to see their institutions go away.

“It’s beyond disappointing. This is what we invest our careers in, providing educational opportunities to our communities and designing programs and exhibits to help them learn and understand this place that we live in,” she said. “To have your leaders say it’s not valuable to them is really painful.”

Moving forward, the High Desert Museum is unsure about how these terminations and funding cuts will impact its various projects.

“Understanding exactly what it means and what we’re responsible for has been part of the process. What do we need to pause? What do we need to completely terminate on our end? We’re trying to figure out all the legal and logistical questions,” Whitelaw said.

While the museum waits for more information, it will continue to raise funds for its main improvement project and continue to investigate how it can retain the funding it already received. According to Whitelaw, the museum learned last week that it can have some of the termination decisions reviewed, which it plans to do.

“The 1.43 million that we received from IMLS over the past 10 years has put the museum on a different scale of work. It expands our mission, it allows us to work with indigenous advisors and expands the impact of our mission across the region,” she said. “It’s heartbreaking to have the funding go away and know that that work is at a minimum paused, if not completely ended.”

This article appears in Source Weekly April 17, 2025.