The director of the Mauritshuis museum in the Netherlands said the Trump administration’s proposed funding cuts to exhibitions have caused the team to reconsider loaning art to the United States.
Martine Gosselink said talks of lending items to museums in the U.S. have taken place but the president’s March executive order seeking to eliminate the Institute of Museum and Library Services raised concerns.
A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from dissolving the agency that financially supports archives and museums in every state.
“I’m not saying we won’t do it,” Gosselink said in an interview with The Guardian about potentially loaning art pieces.
“But we will be extra careful, and we need guarantees. Because if you lend it out to a museum and there’s not enough staff to treat it in the way you want [it] to be treated, then we wonder whether it’s a good thing to be sending our collection.”
A few weeks after the order, President Trump targeted Smithsonian museums with a federal overhaul due to narratives the White House claimed were “divisive, race-centered ideology.”
“Museums in our Nation’s capital should be places where individuals go to learn — not to be subjected to ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history,” Trump’s late March order states.
Gosselink said the orders threaten the artworks’ ability to be displayed to the public.
“How do you know for sure that the museum will still be open and working and operating during the whole period of the loan?” she asked.
The museum director also said she empathizes with her counterparts overseas.
“We really feel for our colleagues in American institutions about what’s happening in archives, libraries and museums,” Gosselink said. “It’s a huge catastrophe.”
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