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Yale Art Gallery funds art of the Nguni people exhibit itself
ART | AGENCIES | America’s oldest university art museum pulled two federal grant applications for an African art exhibition because it refused to agree to the anti-DEI language that was part of the Trump administration’s new grant acceptance guidelines, the museum said.
A spokesman for the art gallery said it pulled the grant request to the National Endowment for the Arts for $100,000 and another for the same amount from the National Endowment for Humanities for an exhibit on the art of the Nguni people of southern Africa scheduled for fall 2026.
Roland Coffey, director of communications for the museum, said in an emailed statement the gallery “objects specifically to the grant compliance stipulation that ‘the applicant does not operate any programs promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) that violate any applicable federal anti-discrimination laws.’ ”
Yale University Art Gallery said the decision left a $200,000 hole in the gallery’s fundraising plan for the African art exhibition, but the museum said it will reach into its endowment to mount the show as scheduled.
The Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven. The museum has pulled two federal grant applications for a future African art exhibition because it refused to agree to the “anti-DEI language.”
In response, Coffey said, “we have a world-spanning collection of art, and it is our mission to represent a diversity of cultures.”
This is the second NEA grant to be terminated at the gallery. Each time the gallery used its powerful fundraising ability and endowment to cover the lost grant money.
Yale University reported an endowment of $46 billion at the end of the 2024 fiscal year.
Coffey did not give a figure for the gallery’s endowment, saying only that it “has a number of endowed funds which support exhibitions which are managed within the university’s endowment.”
Earlier this year the National Endowment for the Arts canceled a $30,000 grant for the gallery’s planned September exhibit, titled “Nusantara: Six Centuries of Indonesian Textiles.” Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country.
This 17th century woman’s ceremonial skirt from Indonesia will be part of an upcoming exhibit at the Yale University Art Gallery.
In June, Coffey said the museum would move forward with the Sept. 12 textile exhibit, “as we have other funding sources to support the project.” He later clarified that the additional support comes from the Robert Lehman Endowment Fund.
Lehman, a graduate of Yale, was the head of Lehman Brothers, the investment banking firm founded by his family. At his death in 1969, he left an art collection whose value was estimated at $50 million, according to the New York Times. Lehman bequeathed nearly 3,000 of those works to The Met, where they are exhibited as a private collection.
Coffey stressed that the decision was made by the gallery and not by the university.
In May, the Trump Administration began canceling grants for the National Endowment for the Humanities and National Endowment for the Arts, after Trump announced that his next budget would eliminate both agencies.
Many of the cancellations were for projects written, performed or about people of color, including Yale Repertory Theater’s planned production of “Spunk,” a Zora Neale Hurston play long believed lost.
The NEA terminated a $30,000 grant for the production, scheduled to open Oct. 9. The production had an original budget in the “mid-six figures,” Yale Rep’s outgoing director, James Bundy, dean of the David Geffen School of Drama, told The Yale Daily News.
Caitlin S. Griffin said the cut was “damaging but not destructive,” and referred to Bundy’s statement, released after the cut was announced, that the theater’s “commitment to producing the play is unwavering.”
In an April statement, the NEH said it would award “projects that do not promote extreme ideologies based upon race or gender.”The administration cancelled an estimated 560 such grants, totaling more than $27 million, PBS reported.
The Yale museum has a significant African art collection, comprising nearly 2,000 objects. In 2021, the gallery reinstalled its African art collection from its second floor to a more prominent space on the ground level. In 2022, the NEA helped fund its exhibit, “BÁMIGBÓYÈ: a Master Sculptor of the Yorùbá tradition.”
The Yale University Art Gallery is the oldest university art museum in the country, established in 1832 when artist John Trumbull sold 28 of his history paintings and 60 miniature portraits to the university.
