Trump Executive Order Prompts National Gallery to End Diversity Programs

Four years after it mounted a rebranding campaign that focused on diversity, equity and inclusion, the National Gallery of Art in Washington announced this week that it would end those programs because of an executive order signed by President Trump on Monday that described such initiatives as “illegal and immoral.”

“The National Gallery of Art has closed its office of belonging and inclusion and removed related language from our website,” a museum spokesman said.

The institution removed the words “diversity, equity, access and inclusion” from a list of its values online and replaced them with the words “welcoming and accessible.”

Other museums and arts organizations are still considering how to respond to President Trump’s executive order. The Smithsonian Institution, which is separate from the National Gallery, said it had no comment about how the executive order would affect its own diversity programming.

The National Gallery, which was established by Congress in 1937, receives nearly 80 percent of its operating budget from the federal government. Leaders of the institution, which is in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol, have preferred not to anger incoming presidents, whose secretaries of state also serve as ex officio trustees of the museum. Vice President JD Vance and his wife, Usha, appeared at a dinner at the museum with cabinet nominees as part of inauguration week.

The museum’s chief diversity, inclusion and belonging officer resigned last year, before the election, so the post was already vacant. Two other employees in the office, which was charged with making the museum “more visitor-focused, inclusive and equitable,” were reassigned to vacant positions elsewhere in the museum, officials said.