Shelly C. Lowe, the first Native American to serve as chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), has stepped down from that role “at the direction of President Trump”, a spokesperson for the agency revealed on Wednesday (12 March). Lowe, a citizen of the Navajo Nation, was nominated to the role by Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, in October 2021 and confirmed by the US Senate in February 2022.
“President Trump has designated Michael McDonald, who had been serving as NEH’s general counsel, to assume the role of NEH’s acting chairman until such time as the president nominates and the Senate confirms a new NEH chairman,” an NEH spokesperson told The Art Newspaper in a statement.
Chairs of the NEH and its sister agency, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), are appointed to four-year terms, so Lowe theoretically had another 11 months in her role. The previous head of the NEA, Maria Rosario Jackson, resigned three days before Trump’s inauguration. Trump’s administration has not nominated a new chair to lead the NEA; Mary Anne Carter, who led the agency for part of Trump’s first term, is currently serving as its interim chair.
Former NEH chair Shelly C. Lowe (left) and former NEA chair Maria Rosario Jackson (second from left) with then-president Joe Biden and Jill Biden during a National Arts and Humanities medal ceremony at the White House on 21 October 2024 Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz, via Flickr
The NEH awards federal funds to heritage sites, museums, universities, independent scholars and others, and has given more than $6bn in grants since it was founded in 1965. For fiscal year 2024, the NEH (like the NEA) was awarded $207m in federal appropriations. The agency’s most recent grant cycle, announced the week before Trump’s inauguration, awarded $22.6m to 219 projects across the US—from $25,000 for the West End Museum in Boston to organise an exhibition about the history of the LGBTQ+ community in the area, and $300,000 for a project about immigrant stories at the Tenement Museum in Manhattan, to more than $140,000 for a project on climate change and resiliency at the High Desert Museum in Bend, Oregon.
Since Trump took office, both the NEH and the NEA have changed their requirements and language around their grant initiatives in response to the president’s executive orders, removing language about prohibiting the “promotion of discriminatory equity ideology” and supporting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). (Federally funded arts institutions like the Smithsonian Institution and the National Gallery of Art have also shut down their DEI programmes.) The NEA ended its grant programme providing support to underserved communities and groups, and is encouraging would-be grant applicants to propose projects celebrating the 250th anniversary of the US in 2026.
During his previous term, Trump repeatedly sought to defund or completely do away with both the NEA and the NEH, as well as the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). Since returning to office, Trump has focused primarily on foreign and economic policy (including imposing tariffs on the US's biggest trading partners), but he did purge the board of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts of all its Biden-era members, installed 14 new board members including himself and Usha Vance, the wife of Vice President J.D. Vance, and was promptly elected board chair. Last week, drag performers held a protest rally at the Kennedy Center.