One blustery day in May 2023, Meeteetse Museum personnel made an unwelcome discovery.
Their roof had started leaking, in part due to age and in part thanks to some hail damage. On top of that, leaves had clogged the gutters, freezing in place. This eventually caused even more water to get backed up into a building full of historical artifacts and exhibits.
There were more than a few frantic phone calls immediately after the discovery to alert board members and volunteers to come help rescue important pieces of area history from drowning in moisture.
“Everything had to come out,” Museum Director of Collections Alexandra Deselms told Cowboy State Daily. “If it wasn’t nailed down, it came out of the room. And that was closed off for a year, because the carpet got damaged and just everything structure-wise.”
Most of the exhibits were fine, if wet, Deselms said. It was just a matter of making sure everything was properly aired and dried out to prevent further damage.
Insurance money helped replace damaged carpet and flooring. But what helped them replace the leaking roof was a federal grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. That grant included not just funds for a new roof, but also a solar panel, which was to help the museum trim thousands from its annual electric bill.
That would have put the museum on better financial footing going forward. But now that grant has become the source of a financial bind.
The museum still owes about $9,000 for the solar panel portion of the grant, on a contract it has already signed with the company.
“I know so far, with both deposits, we’ve paid about $35,000 (for the panels),” Deselms said.
That’s produced a bit of a scramble to find a donor who can cover the remaining cost of the grant.
Or to figure out what to do if a donor can’t be found.
Not Just Meeteetse
Meeteetse’s museum is just one of several small-town museums facing financial questions they hadn’t expected after federal funding for the humanities was unexpectedly cancelled by the Trump administration in April.
Josie Molloy with the Old West Museum in Cheyenne told Cowboy State Daily there were grants the museum had planned to apply for that are no longer available. That’s happened at Washakie Museum and Cultural Center faces as well.
Executive Director Marian Bender told Cowboy State Daily a majority of its arts-related programs have been funded by Wyoming Arts Council, which received a lot of its funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.
“We have an application pending for programming support from WAC, for programs in July 2025-June 2026,” she said. “We have not heard yet if their funding levels are going otherwise be affected by federal cuts.”
She expects to cut programs and raise activity fees if so.
A National Honor Wyoming Can’t Win Again
A bigger loss could stem from the Trump administration’s move to dismantle the Institute of Museum and Library Services, something that’s the subject of an ongoing lawsuit.
One of its programs was the National Medal for Museum and Library Services, an award to recognize outstanding museums.
“In the fall of 2024, Sen. (Cynthia Lummis) nominated the Washakie Museum for that,” Bender said. “That award was won a few years ago by the Gatchell Museum in Buffalo and it brought national attention, more visitors, and additional funding opportunities to this important small museum.”
Without IMLS, it’s an honor Wyoming can’t win again, Bender said.
Previously Approved Funding Questions
Washakie Museum and Cultural Center in Worland was also one of two selected by the American Alliance of Museums for a study measuring the impact of small museums on communities. That study was only at the halfway point when American Alliance of Museums lost previously approved federal funding.
The Alliance plans to continue the study to the extent it can. But not only has the scope of that study diminished, so has the support that had been expected for Washakie Musuem’s participation.
Heart Mountain, which tells the story of Japanese Americans incarcerated in internment camps, said its programs have received significant support over the years from the National Park Service, National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute for Museum and Library Services.
They questioned cutting funding for those congressionally approved entities, and said it weakens yet another congressionally approved measure, the Norman Y. Mineta Japanese American Confinement Education (JACE) Act.
The JACE Act was introduced by Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso at the end of 2022, and spending from it was set to begin in the new fiscal year, starting Oct. 1.
National 250th Celebrations Affected
The cancellation of funding has left many museums across the state wondering about the status of grants they’ve only partially received, as well as raised question about the future avenues to support programs.
At the Homesteader Museum in Powell, for example, they are in the midst of working on a new Smithsonian exhibit that will be exhibited in 2026 to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding.
The exhibit is the cornerstone of what the museum’s director and curator Brandi Wright has been planning for the special occasion.
She had been particularly excited about the grant opportunity when she saw it advertised by the Wyoming Humanities Council and was among four communities in the state selected to participate.
Smithsonian exhibits in the past have been slam dunks for the museum in the past, which hosted 7,000 visitors last year, from all but four states in the nation.
Wright believes tourists in particular enjoy the museum as a way to learn more about the culture and history of the West, but she sees that Smithsonian name on a flyer is a deal-maker when tourists are deciding where to go.
“That just really got a lot of people in my door,” Wright said. “So, they have been a real blessing for us.”
For the present exhibit she’s working on, the first $3,000 or so has already been spent and reimbursed, Wright said. But if there are future expenses, Wright believes those may be something the museum would have to cover themselves. That’s problematic for a small museum with limited access to funding sources, particularly now that federal sources appear to be no more.
“I’ve been fortunate here at the Homestead museum to have hosted I think like five of these Smithsonian exhibits,” she said. “But now with the Wyoming Humanities funding not being there, I can’t apply to get these exhibits that come in anymore. So that’s another, I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future.”
Private Donations Harder To Come By
Exhibits, though, aren’t the only thing she’s worried about. She’d also been keeping her eyes and ears out for a grant to help restore some of the old 1930s era logs at the museum, which have begun to rot.
“Are places like the State Historic Preservation office still going to offer grants for the restoration of buildings?” she wondered. “Or am I going to have to figure out a different way to raise funds to preserve the building?”
One of those “different” ways involve private donors. But those funds are becoming harder and harder to come by, something that Buffalo Bill Center of the West’s Executive Director and CEO Rebecca West has already started to notice.
“The loss of the federal arts and library museum services funding creates a ripple effect in the fundraising world,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “So, what’s happening is private foundations are being hit even harder for funding requests, because people need to look for different resources. Individual donors are seeing pressures as well. There’s a lot more competition for funds than there was before.”
Buffalo Bill Center of the West annually hosts around 160,000 visitors at its museums. It’s considered a star tourism attraction in northwest Wyoming, with popular exhibits on its once-upon-a-time famous resident Buffalo Bill Cody, as well as exhibits on Native American culture, famous cowboys and cowgirls, and western arts and culture. There are also hands-on experiences like authentic chuckwagon dinners, live birds of prey, and behind-the-scenes tours and cocktail hours, which focus on both history and history makers alike.
Adjust And Keep Moving Forward
West does have some grant projects that are mid-way in the process, including a large $600,000 grant for its Collections Storage Project. While the museum did receive most of the funding it had been expecting for the project, thanks to a well-timed decision to accelerate submission of its expenses, about 5% of the grant remains outstanding.
The museum is right now going through an appeals process to see if it can get the remaining funds it was awarded. If not, that could be among things that the museum will need to find a private donor for.
“The funding outlook for National Endowment for the Humanities is obviously not good,” she said. “We don’t have a lot of information about what’s going on with grants that were submitted and had not yet had a notification.”
But West said the museum has decided to find ways to adjust without the funding and keep moving forward.
For the 250th anniversary of the nation, that’s going to mean a shorter timeframe for its planned exhibit. It will now open in September, which is the second most popular month for the museum as far as visitation.
“We will have plenty of content and year left to celebrate 2026,” she said. “And the exhibition is designed so that it’s not just time specific to the 250th. The themes and the content of that are timeless.”
Among those timeless symbols is the buffalo or bison, West said.
“That is a species that has witnessed 250 years of change in the United States,” West said. “Because bison existed long before humans were here. It’s an ancient species, so it’s one of those indicator animals that has felt the impact of humans, of the frontier, of its decimation, of its populations, and now, also it’s resurgence.”
That makes it a symbol of hope, too, West suggested.
“So that’s the message,” she said. “We’re taking that symbol of hope and that message to go along with our exhibition planning to go along with our collection, storage project planning,” and we’re going to keep moving forward.”
Economic Development Role
Brinton Museum Executive Director Kendra Heimbuck is another of the state’s larger museums that is adopting much the same attitude about moving forward with hope.
The Brinton Museum in Sheridan County relies on a combination of grants from foundations, private donors, and earned income to raise about $1.5 million annually, along with its endowment funding. The latter has been an issue, given what’s taking place in the stock market lately, but is a situation she said is being watched closely.
Heimbuck said the museum has been eyeing additional federal grants from the entities like the National Endowment for the Humanities. She was among those dismayed to see that funding source suddenly vanish.
“It’s hard. It’s disheartening for someone who’s in the museum field to see the … lack of public support for investing in the arts and humanities,” she said. “I know that we’re not meeting physical needs. But it’s so important to the healthy makeup of a community.”
The Brinton Museum annually hosts around 26,000 visitors each year, Heimbuck said. About 45% of those visitors are from the surrounding area, but the remainder come from well outside what the museum considers local. A large portion of those are from outside the state itself.
“We are an economic driver for our community,” she said. “And I think all of even the small-scale museums, to an extent, are playing a role in driving some economics and tourism.”
People may not “need” arts and cultures to survive, Heimbuck added, but she believes they do need them to thrive.
“History is so important,” she said. “Just understanding where we come from and our identity as a community allows us to really understand ourselves and I think, continue growing as a healthy community. If we don’t have that sense of place, who we are, if we don’t have a place where we can explore that, we lack … depth and human connection.”
While it may be hard to measure the impact of having a museum on a community’s economy, Heimbuck added, it’s nonetheless part of what helps economic development interest to attract both new businesses and workforce.
“We need everything in the community,” she said. “We need housing, we need jobs, we need arts and culture. Looking at how we attract workforce, and maintain our businesses in the community, the arts play a large role in helping attract new businesses and as employers are working to recruit. Everything is very interconnected.”
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
