Pennsylvania Museum Initiates Legal Action Against Trump Administration Over Reduction in Grants
A Pennsylvania art museum is suing the Trump administration after the government terminated a $750,000 federal grant for collection conservation earlier this year.
The Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia filed a lawsuit yesterday, August 26, against President Donald Trump, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the agency’s Interim Director Keith Sonderling, and other administration officials, months after the agency revoked its Fiscal Year 2024 “Save America’s Treasures” grant. The museum, which operates out of a 19th-century mansion in the city’s Chestnut Hill neighborhood, alleges that Trump officials usurped Congress’s authority to distribute federal funds by prematurely terminating its grant.
The IMLS grant that the Woodmere received is administered in [partnership](https://nps.gov/subjects/historicpreservationfund/save-americas-treasures-grants.htm) with the National Park Service and awarded to “historic properties and collections.” After receiving the grant, according to the lawsuit, the museum initiated an “ambitious conservation project” to prepare an exhibition of Philadelphia artists in 2026, timed with America’s 250th celebrations. The museum received just $195,000 of its total grant before its termination.
The Woodmere hopes the IMLS will restore its funding so that it can continue its original planned [project](https://www.imls.gov/grants/awarded/st-256887-oms-24) to install new storage facilities, address collection crowding, and improve cataloguing efforts.
“This has delayed critical preservation, digitization, and conservation of our collection — work we hope to resume if the grant is reinstated,” Woodmere Art Museum Director and CEO William Valerio told *Hyperallergic*.
With the grant expiration approaching in September, the museum stated in court papers that it has exhausted non-litigious methods of restoring the grant, including a formal appeal. Trump signed an executive order in March demanding that the IMLS and several other federal agencies [cease operations](https://hyperallergic.com/996700/trump-moves-to-dismantle-institute-of-museum-and-library-services/) of non-statutory functions, effectively dismantling the organization. The lawsuit asks the court to reinstate its grant and declare Trump’s gutting of the IMLS “unlawful” or “unconstitutional.”
The president proposed eliminating the organization’s funding in his Fiscal Year 2026 budget proposal, which also excluded the National Endowment for the Arts from federal dollars. A federal judge [declined](https://www.ala.org/news/2025/06/court-allows-trump-administration-proceed-efforts-destroy-institute-museum-and-library) to block Trump’s dismantling of the agency in June after other judges blocked [some of his actions](https://hyperallergic.com/1014493/museum-grants-reinstated-after-federal-court-ruling/).
The IMLS has not yet responded to *Hyperallergic’s* request for comment.