The director and the secretary of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. met with representatives from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), according to a report published by Kriston Capps in Bloomberg CityLab on Friday evening.
The Trump administration has not previously targeted the National Gallery of Art. Instead, the administration has focused much of its attention on the Smithsonian Institution, whose many museums do not count the National Gallery.
Previously, in an executive order, Trump accused the Smithsonian of enacting a “concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.”
But even though the National Gallery isn’t a part of the Smithsonian, there are signs that the museum may be facing pressure to change with the country under Trump’s leadership once more. Shortly after he came into office for his second term as President this year, the museum began winding down its DEI initiatives in response to an executive order calling for an end to diversity and inclusion offices in governmental agencies. The Smithsonian did the same not long afterward.
The National Gallery is public-private partnership, so it is not considered a federal museum. It does, however, receive funding from Congress.
The nature of the meeting between DOGE and National Gallery director Kaywin Feldman and secretary and general counsel Luis Baquedano was to discuss the museum’s legal status, according to Bloomberg CityLab.
“As a public-private partnership, we have worked with every administration since our inception and will continue to work with the Administration and Congress while we remain focused on fulfilling our mission to preserve and share artistic excellence with all Americans,” Feldman wrote in an email obtained by Bloomberg, which also confirmed with the White House that the meeting occurred.
