Arts and culture organizations add billions to Minnesota’s economy. Federal funding they rely on is at risk.

The four-paragraph letter got straight to the point: The Norwegian-American Historical Association at St. Olaf College was losing a nearly $300,000 federal grant, effective immediately.

“Your grant’s immediate termination is necessary to safeguard the interests of the federal government, including its fiscal priorities,” the letter from National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) acting Chair Michael McDonald read.

The historical association was just months into a three-year project to preserve and digitize records documenting Norwegian Americans’ relief efforts for occupied Norway during World War II. Now the group’s half-dozen staffers will have to find another way to pay for it.

“It was awful,” said executive director Amy Boxrud. “We’ve been cautiously optimistic that a signed grant with the government would be honored, so we were really devastated that the grants that are already underway were being rescinded.”

The historical association is among thousands of museums, libraries, historic sites, colleges and universities and other organizations together losing millions of dollars in federal funding as President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency takes aim at the decades-old agencies that support them.

At the NEH and lesser-known Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), employees have been placed on leave and grants either canceled or left in limbo without anyone remaining to cut the checks.

Between fiscal years 2019 and 2023, the NEH awarded nearly $15 million to Minnesota organizations. Last year, the state received more than $4.7 million in IMLS grants.

More grants are outstanding. The Museum of Russian Art in Minneapolis recently applied for about $25,000 to help pay for a new gallery lighting control system, executive director Mark Meister said. A decision would typically come this summer, he said, but he’s not holding his breath.

“It’s a very sad situation. I think it’s a huge mistake,” Meister said of the federal funding cuts. “It’s not saving the government very much, and in fact, it’s hurting citizens who really grow and learn and change by exposure to the arts.”

At less than $300 million a year each, the NEH and IMLS budgets are small in the scheme of the federal government.

But cuts could have broad economic impacts: Arts and cultural production contributed $1.17 trillion to the U.S. economy in 2023, including nearly $15 billion in Minnesota, according to data the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis released April 2.

“We know that in Minnesota, the arts and the cultural and creative sector is an important industry,” said Sue Gens, Minnesota State Arts Board executive director. “It’s not just the work that we do to connect people and help people understand culture and help them experience their own creativity and talent, but it’s also a jobs creator, and it generates taxes.”

The NEH and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) — which as of Wednesday had not undergone cuts — date to 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson established them as part of his “Great Society” domestic agenda.

Trump tried to dismantle the NEH and NEA multiple times during his first term, saying they should not be the federal government’s responsibility.

The IMLS, which a Republican Congress established in 1996, was one of seven independent government agencies listed in Trump’s March 14 executive order “[continuing] the reduction in the elements of the Federal bureaucracy that the President has determined are unnecessary.”

Minnesota is one of 21 states challenging the order in federal court.

In 2024, IMLS grants to Minnesota included $250,000 for the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis to make the museum more accessible to visitors with disabilities; about $212,000 for the Ramsey County Historical Society to digitize county assessor records as a resource for studying racial housing covenants, redlining and zoning; and $10,000 each for the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and Red Lake Band of Chippewa to provide library services.

Minnesota’s regional public library systems rely on an annual $1.15 million grant to a state-funded library organization to share materials through interlibrary loans. The arrangement serves all 87 counties and last year delivered 368,500 items by courier, mail and digitally.

At the Great River Regional Library system in central Minnesota, a $7,000 subgrant for delivery to academic libraries allowed patrons to request and borrow 14,500 items.

“This is the glue that holds all of the services together,” said Jami Trenam, the library’s associate director of collection development. “When it comes down to it, these services that are provided are going to be impacted, and it’s hard to put a dollar figure on that.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.