From WXXI news.

This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made with an email.

Earlier this week, the entire staff of about 70 people at the Institute of Museum and Library Services received a message saying that they'd be placed on administrative leave.

Staff members were told their email accounts were being disabled, and they were to turn in their government property.

According to reporting by NPR, the paid leave would be for up to 90 days.

It came after a meeting with Doe staff and institute leadership.

The move comes after an executive order from President Trump, which shrinks seven federal agencies, including the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

The agency provides grant funding to museums and libraries across the country, including many in our region.

What does the administrative leave mean for these museums and organizations?

Well, programs and projects need to be scaled back or cut.

How could this all affect museum goers, library pattern, patrons, and our communities?

Some of it might be speculation, some of it to might be pretty firm.

I mean, a lot is changing quickly.

We know that.

And we want to give our guests time to talk about that with you.

So I will go around the room and welcome our guests now.

Peter Winsby is the Philip K Wareheim curator of collections at the Genesee Country Village and Museum.

Welcome.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you.

Next to Peter is Bruce Barnes, who is the Ron and Donna Fielding, director of the George Eastman Museum.

Welcome.

Thank you for being with us.

Thank you very much.

Next to me here.

Welcome to Hilary Olson, president and CEO of the Rochester Museum and Science Center.

Thanks for being here.

Thanks for having me.

And welcome to Emily Kasper, director of the Rochester Public Library and Monroe County Library System.

Thank you.

So, I want to just take it one by one and ask all of you if we've seen any impact in this regard yet.

If there's anything that we know is on the horizon, and I'll go around the table and start with Peter.

What do you.

What do you see, Peter?

Well, I think it's, kind of, some grim prospects coming up ahead.

we have two open grants, one for $189,000 from the imls that, has was just awarded in the fall of 2024. we don't really expect to be able to to draw on that, for an interpretive project related to enslavement in New York state for the historic village.

And we're also looking on the horizon at, the defunding, perhaps, of the National Endowment for the Humanities, which could come as early as tomorrow.

we have a $25,000 training grant that we're about 80% of the way through, $189,000.

And again, in your view, now that money's not coming.

if if they've taken away the laptops and cell phones of the people that we need to send reimbursements to, we're not seeing that.

Okay.

can you describe a little bit of what I mean?

You did, but I want to make sure we do understand the full scope of the possible impact of this kind of a cut.

So we, with the beginning in, 2023 of the funding of the NIH grant, our intent was to begin to tell the story of enslavement in western New York state.

There are school teachers as well as the general public, that don't know.

New York state was a slave state until 1827.

And so, we wanted to tell that important story.

We have a couple of structures on our property in Mumford that relate to enslavement and, including the Nathaniel Rochester house, from Danville and we wanted to, tell that story from, to, to really educate visitors and, and school children.

And, Peter, I think there's probably some listeners who might be drawing assumptions about why this particular money may be canceled.

They may draw it directly to the theme that you just described.

And they may wonder, well, can't you just rework what you're going to be educating the community on and not focus on this for a while?

And would that money flow again?

how do you feel about that?

It's I would say, you know, this is not going to stop our interpretation.

It's going to put a roadblock in and may slow us down, but we are committed to, interpreting a diverse theme, a theme of fairness, of interpreting, Genesee country history for all.

And, so although this money would be critical for advancing that, we're still institutionally committed to, telling that story of, equity and fairness and, freedom, along with all of the other stories we tell.

It's not an exclusive.

It's something and an additive to our ongoing historical interpretation.

But certainly the federal government under this administration has made no secret of its opposition to any programs related to.

And this is a broad umbrella interpreted in a lot of ways.

I mean, you mentioned the word equity.

They literally are using programs, searching for certain keywords to try to highlight things that are either funded or prioritized.

So, is this kind of education that you're talking about?

If community is not just here, but around the country, do you think that, there is a danger to, to trying to suppress this kind of education?

Peter.

I think it's more important than ever, frankly, that we do tell these stories.

and, you know, we can see the, you know, the the scrubbing of the Smithsonian, the removal of Jackie Robinson's information from, museum walls.

We think it's it's just unconscionable, frankly.

And so it's something that we feel is more important than ever for institutions like ours to do.

well, let me turn, to Bruce Barnes from the George Eastman Museum.

What is on the horizon for you?

So we have three separate grants of approximately $250,000 each, awarded in 2022, 2023 and 2024. the earliest of those is for a new exhibition on George Eastman, in a set of new galleries that we're creating in his mansion.

and that's entitled New Perspectives on George Eastman.

And it's meant to address, so the full transparent story of him.

So there are elements of that have that have to do with, his role with respect to, racial discrimination that occurred at the company, but also, very significantly, his very large contributions to, historically black colleges, both Tuskegee and Hampton Institute, where he was the largest donor ever, to that point, million dollars each.

That is now a piece of history I knew.

Yes, he had started donating.

He was an enormous admirer of Booker T Washington's.

He started donating to both of those institutions which were associated with Mister Washington around 1910.

And in 1924, when he made a set of donations, large donations to a number of universities and colleges, he donated $1 million to each of those institutions, which was by far the largest amount that they had ever received.

So he was very interested in opportunity and education for blacks.

But, at the same time, there was discrimination that was occurring at Eastman Kodak Company at that time, actually primarily against people who were Italian.

There actually were not that many black individuals who lived in Rochester at the time, but not clear whether he was, you know, his extent of involvement in some of that discrimination because one doesn't see that in his personal life.

so we're going to we're going to be transparent about what we learned with respect to all of these things.

And we're also going to tell the story of all the different ways he contributed to Rochester that were positive.

so that's a very important project for us to have people feel confident that our institution is accurately representing the history of someone who was a very important individual in Rochester history and unflinchingly, unflinchingly, transparently.

And we'll give people access to, digitized letters to all sorts of different things.

It will be a very interactive exhibition, you know, in a new set of galleries that we're creating just for the purpose of this exhibition.

Are those efforts on hold now?

the efforts for the gallery construct, the gallery construction is very much on way and will be completed in mid-May.

and then there will be a period of time before we open the exhibition.

we're not putting any of this on hold.

I mean, when you make a commitment to this, you have to keep up with the commitment.

It's possible that we'll have to de scope some things that would have been some of the interactive devices or things like that.

But our intention is to go and find the money somewhere else and we're committed to doing that.

but that's not always easy to do.

it may slow us down.

A it may change the scope.

So that's the first project.

And in some sense, the key project.

there's one job that word one parts of two jobs that are affected.

Both of those individuals are people we will keep.

We will keep those those jobs are not at risk regardless of what happens.

second Grant is we actually have the world's leading collection of Pakistani films, which, are not being preserved in Pakistan.

They're not being preserved anywhere else.

It's 450 films in our collection.

they were given to us by the British Film Institute, which was not interested in continuing to take care of them.

And they weren't doing a very good job of taking care of them.

and we, applied for a grant to rehouse them, catalog them, clean them, make sure that they're in a situation where they've they're stable and they won't be deteriorating over time, rehousing them in very good conditions.

So that project we're about halfway through, we've spent about half of the funds and, there's one job that is fully dedicated to that.

We're hoping that that's a project that will be able to proceed with we're going to seek private funds.

and if we can't find the private funds, we're going to try and figure out a way to continue regardless.

But we can't be certain.

it's expensive enough that it's, I would say an at risk project if we can't find other funding.

And then finally, there's a project that we were granted, $250,000 for last year called Diamond Voices.

The diamond is a reference to our 75th anniversary, and it's a project to digitize a very large archive of, audio tapes and a visual audio visual tapes of various speakers, interviewees, oral histories, conferences that have occurred at our institution over decades.

We had previously done a project called Silver Voices, which was a huge success, and this is the follow on that sort of digs deeper into our archives.

we have not started that project.

We will not go forward with that project unless we are able to get this grant money.

And one of the things I'd like to emphasize is I have no idea whether any of this, these funds are going to be paid out.

And I think, quite frankly, they're not necessarily going to discriminate based on what the content is there.

It's they're not using a scalpel.

Well, in this context, the latest thing that I've heard from the Association of Art Museum Directors is that there was an email that's gone out from Doge, Doge email address.

What's unclear to me is whether it's to Imls grant recipients or to NIH grant recipients that purports to cancel all of the grants.

notably, though, it's from a Doge email address, it's not from the agency address.

so it's not clear whether or not what that means.

What is quite clear to the legal advisors of AMD is that all of these contracts are legally in fully executed contract that you have with Imls, with NIH, with NEA, all of those are legally enforceable contracts, provided that the institution is fulfilling its obligations under the contract the funds had been appropriated in prior years of Congress.

They are set aside so there is no valid basis on which they can be canceled.

What happens in terms of, how one can enforce that, though?

It's quite difficult.

I mean, that's the question.

That's the question.

And there's an issue.

I think there's a very interesting question, for instance, about whether or not, libraries who are very affected, museums, other institutions that are, institutions of, of developing knowledge and learning, culture and art, whether they should be considering some sort of a class action approach, which I understand libraries have talked about doing.

let me just briefly ask you, when you say it's clear they're not using a scalpel, it can I interpret that to mean that you think that this is, a not very thoughtful, clumsy way of conducting funding cuts?

that is one of the great understatements I've heard in my life.

And, the the the one of the things that should be understood, the people who run these agencies and who work at these agencies are profoundly knowledgeable people who have extraordinary commitment to what they're doing.

They have far more applications than they have money to give out.

And the extent of the rigor with which panels of people at these agencies review projects then have it in turn reviewed by their supervisors.

They require, letters of support from experts in the field.

They review the quality of the people who are the project leaders, and then they give you the they whether they reward you the funds, which is most people don't get any funds or whether they turn down the funds.

You get a detailed report from each of the people who were involved in the review process.

That's consolidated into one report that says, this is why your report has weaknesses, and this is why your application is weaknesses.

This is why it has strengths and that's intended.

If you've gotten the grant to help you improve what you actually do, or in the predominance of the cases where you haven't gotten the grant to let you improve the approach or decide maybe it's something you shouldn't pursue.

We've had some cases where we've applied three times and then the third time we get the grant.

so these are letting all these people go, I'm not sure where they'll go.

They're very intelligent people.

They're they're very thoughtful, committed people.

But putting it back together is going to be an extraordinarily challenging thing to do.

So it's, you know, it's kind of like going into a museum and and taking out a sledgehammer and starting to break the vases.

you know, you're not going to be able to easily reassemble any of this.

so it's 189 K that Peter and his group at Genesee may be out.

Three different grants of 250 K, although some partially spent.

How much of that?

750 overall, 525,000 has not yet been received.

I have 25.

Hilary Olson, president CEO of the Rochester Museum and Science Center.

What are you saying?

So we have at our mercy, an open grant through MLS that we received in or started in September.

It was for $240,000 in support of educational programing and partnerships with, Gannon.

Again, Historic site for holding of Shawnee continuity, which is a new exhibit, also MLS supported at the MSK done in conjunction and partnership with Native people.

with a Native American curator and Native American artists working together.

so the programs that we were creating were school field trips and festivals and fairs, but all with native knowledge keepers, rather than saying sort of an old school museum model, which was, you know, oh, our anthropology is no best.

This is no.

The people that we're talking about know best.

so so we received $240,000 or we received the we were told we were going to get $240,000.

and we've received about 20 of that 20, 28.

So, we will it will have an impact on our programing.

We will need to pause the program, the program development, the supplies, the partners, the artists, everyone that was helping to develop this and the impact is, is ridiculous.

It's not just on our staff.

It's not just on our visiting public, but it's on scholarship and and the the creation of new ideas and knowledge that Bruce was talking about.

The the cuts have are enormous in but the impact is the reduction in knowledge and that is for libraries, for museums, for all of us.

Together we were creating something new.

And that's no longer going to be able to happen.

and we don't know.

I mean, the American Alliance of Museums has also said we're looking into what we can do as far as legal action.

But no, nobody's there yet.

These things, you know, every day you wake up and there's something new we're worried about tomorrow.

Like Peter was saying, and even these are reimbursable.

So we were awarded this grant.

We put out the money and expense it, and then we submit to Imls for reimbursement.

So, it's not like they're sending us $189,000.

Check that.

We then expand.

It's reimbursable by stages, by phases of, each of our projects.

So, you know, there's that implied, agreement of here is the award and go forward and do your project.

And now, you know, we're faced with not receiving reimbursement, no one to send our reimbursement vouchers back for, to, you know, to release the funds.

So it's, it's, you know, it may seem like all of these institutions are getting, you know, a half $1 million or something in the mail.

That's not the case.

Yes.

And to Bruce's point, that may, by appearances, not be legal.

But what's the enforcement mechanism?

Because Congress has said that these dollars are going to this place.

Yes.

To impounding money that Congress has set aside.

We've had a lot of lessons on the word empowerment in the last three months, more than I ever have ever seen in American politics.

But time and time again, you see this administration basically saying, okay, like, come at us, what are you going to do?

And so, I don't know what the challenge, what do you think the recourse is?

Hillary?

I think it's, you know, it is all the museums and libraries working together, to to create a sort of mass, a mass recourse.

Right.

We're all going to be working together on we know that several lawsuits will be filed.

We don't know when we don't know what the power is behind those.

So getting together and working collaboratively is going to be better than, than one offs, right?

Bruce is not going to sue the federal government for $400,000 or $500,000, but together we can be doing this so that it does come down to our accrediting organizations, the American Alliance of Museums and, we're part of the Association of Science and Technology Centers, the, which is a whole different talking about federal funding for scientific research.

which I could talk about for another week.

I so I respect so that's a whole other conversation and then, you know, so there's, there's a lot of different groups that are out there and, and the nonprofit associations.

But but organizing everyone together.

The organizing force was one of those was the Imls the you know, they've been supporting museums across.

And they like like Bruce said, the loss of knowledge, the loss of institutional history is tremendous, and it will hurt us for years.

Listeners, you keep hearing Imls Institute of Museum and Library Services.

No, that's okay.

you know, it's the kind of acronym that, most listeners would never hear of if you're not working in the library museum world.

But but now you know, you need to because this is why you may see some changes in the museums and the libraries that you visit.

but has any can I presume, Hilary, that there's been no explanation to your organization about why this cut may happen similar what Bruce had it just kind of a blanket cut or it's a blanket cut.

The entire staff of the MLS, it seems to be, has been laid off, for a 90 day administrative leave, whatever that means.

and we are at this point nervous for the future, right?

I am, the Institute for Museum and Library Services has given just over $1 million in the last ten years.

It's helped us create exhibits and programs for the public.

So we have not only nerves for the dollars that we've been allocated, but what's happening in the future.

And what does that mean for our community and our quality of life?

Because museums and libraries are at the heart of that.

They're part of the cultural zygotes of the entire city.

Right?

You can't you can't have a great city without having great cultural institutions.

And museums and libraries are part of that.

We're going to come back to that theme in just a moment.

Let me ask Emily Casper, director of the Rochester Public Library and Monroe County Library System, to weigh in.

maybe a little different for you.

What's the situation we're in?

a little bit of a different situation than some of our friends here in the museum world.

we do get Grant money, for small projects from Imls at times.

but the biggest concern that we have right now is that, I almost sponsors the the Grants to States program, which basically funds the state libraries.

So, New York State receives $8.1 million to fund the operations of the New York State Library, which then provide services to our library systems and our, local libraries and those are really, really essential services, everything from, coordinating summer reading programs to, helping with delivery between different systems, helping with, administering further distribution of funds like, construction money and other kinds of grants that might come through, lots and lots of programs that they do that we depend on at the local level.

So most of your public library's, operating funds come from the state and from their city and from their county.

But we really depend on the services of the state library, which at this point, we don't know what's happening with that.

we were, maybe like a little bit optimistic when the executive orders were signed because there was language in there about how, this would be removing anything that was not us.

statutory requirement.

Right.

And we said, hey, that's cool, because everything that, pertains to libraries is actually required by law, right?

This is actually something that should, according to that kind of word wording, be protected.

I guess not, we don't know.

Now, and I don't want to go off into, like, speculating about what this could look like.

because we just don't know.

And I think that's the hardest part of it is, is for us.

We don't know what this is going to look like in the future.

but it may not be good.

Well, I mean, the, the Co-Panelists, Emily's Co-Panelists have talked about specific actions already taken.

but going forward, these will not be one offs.

I mean, there will be future endeavors that may not happen.

but that leads me to what I want to ask all of you about.

And I'll start with you, Emily.

I mean, I've been trying to, dig up what people like, Elon Musk have said.

And, you know, if you might have seen yesterday, Politico reported that Trump kind of wants Musk out and he's become a political liability.

But for now, Musk is still the head of Doge.

And he when he has spoken, he hasn't talked about Genesee or the Rochester Public Library system or Eastman or MSI, but he has talked in general about these issues.

And what he has said is that if these are important endeavors that you ought to find yourselves, that you ought to have private donors, that there ought to be individual contributions that fund it, and that you'll be able to carry on if the communities want these endeavors.

You don't need federal tax dollars to do it.

Let me go around the table.

I'll start with Emily.

What would you say to that?

I would say first and foremost, that shows a profound lack of understanding of the concept of a public good that is really just not not getting what we're all about and how we can work together to provide something to our communities that makes them better and stronger and has, a wonderful impact by working together, by pooling our resources in that way.

We do get local funding.

We do have private donors.

We have all of those things.

But there are certain things that it just makes more sense financially to be able to do in, in a, in a way where we're all working together.

And I think he just doesn't get it.

Hillary Olson, president CEO of Rochester Museum and Science Center.

What do you think?

I think there's a what Emily said.

There's a general misunderstanding of what it means to be in the public good, which is what nonprofits do.

We are supporting our communities.

I also think that the I, MLS funding for us specifically has always been a great source of it's sort of a seal of approval.

So if MLS says yes, you can have $100,000 to build this million dollar exhibit, we can leverage that and go to our local funders and donors and say, hey, the institute said, this is a good project.

This is worthy.

So it it provides leverage.

It allows us to really convince people, this is this is a seal of approval.

and on the other end, there's there's not enough private dollars in Rochester.

It's it's we're not New York City.

We're not Los Angeles.

And it's not that there aren't dollars in Rochester, but there's there's not enough to go around to meet all the needs of all of the nonprofits and everyone that's doing major projects.

It costs $1 million or even $3 million to redo one exhibition at the Rochester Museum and Science Center.

There's not a lot of folks that are walking around saying, here's a million in this community, and we really want to offer the best natural history museum, cultural history museum and science center that we possibly can.

It is almost impossible without government support.

And that's that's I'm talking about state, county, city.

But here it's federal.

We can't do it without those those dollars and and just a note I unless is represents 0.004% of the U.S government budget.

It is not it's not like we're finding a giant chunk of money.

Well, to that point that Hillary makes, I that is a fair point.

A lot of what we've heard from Doge is, are these headlines about 8 billion here, and it turns out to be 8 million or even 1 billion here.

you know, that kind of a thing.

And, the money in the federal budget is in the military.

It is in Medicaid to Medicare.

It's in Social Security.

The that's where the vast majority of federal dollars are.

It doesn't mean that every listener should support every little thing that the government spends money on.

I, I understand that, but Hillary's point is correct that if if all of this went away that we're talking about today, it would not change your tax bill one bit.

no.

So maybe a penny I would really literally.

Yeah.

And I would just want to add to that.

I mean, for such a tiny amount of the federal budget, these are services, that provides such a great return on that investment that it's honestly, if you look at the numbers, it's it's ridiculous.

This is not saving anybody money.

This is actually turning around.

And I know, at least in the case of the libraries, this is going to be costing people money because they are taking resources away that, you know, that that could not be purchased individually for more than, you know, of a great, great, much greater amount of money.

Well, let me ask, Bruce Barnes, director of the George Eastman Museum.

I mean, so if the Doge team says every penny adds up and every taxpayer should be protected, and if what you are doing is valuable, you will find funders that are not the federal government.

What do you say?

well, I have an unusual background for a museum director.

I have a PhD in economics.

and so the the the the word public good is exactly the right word to use.

libraries, museums, all sorts of institutions of learning, knowledge, art and culture are making a huge difference in the United States in terms of people's quality of life.

And if you look at the United States relative to all of the other industrialized nations in the world, the support that the, cultural, artistic, organizations get in this country is vastly smaller than it is as a percentage.

And it's actually one of the things that makes, in some cases, the the, institutions so healthy because they've needed to go and develop relationships with private donors.

But it is absolutely the case.

And I really appreciate Hillary's raising this.

There's incredible leverage that we can get.

And I'll give one example, which is we have a 350, a $340,000 grant that we received from the National Endowment for the Humanities for a facility we have in China, New York, where we store 24,000 reels of highly flammable nitrate film, one of the most important repositories in the United States of nitrate film.

So this is film from before 1952, that we are very, very carefully taken care of.

using that original $340,000, we were able to leverage that into additional funds.

We've spent more than $2.5 million in upgrading that facility in terms of improving the environment in which those those films are stored, which is very, very important, lowering the energy costs, that we have there, which means we have a smaller carbon footprint and expanding our capacity by 25% because we were almost filled up.

So there was an incredible if you look at what the societal benefit is, the societal benefit comes from that entire $2.5 million.

And the only thing that it cost the federal government is, is the year and 40,000.

So it's it is and and premature that comes.

There's also essentially they're putting an anti in often what I found is the first place the money comes from is either the federal government or a state grant.

a seed of kind.

But but I my suspicion is that many people in this federal administration would say that the term public good is subjective, and we don't agree with the definition anymore.

the term public good is actually not a subjective term.

the term public good is something that benefits more than one person or a large group of people.

There's something in between called club goods.

We won't bore you with that.

And the, so it's absolutely the case that there are millions of people in the United States who are interested in film.

there are, you know, in each city around the US, hundreds of thousands of kids who are interested in learning more about science.

people need to read.

One of the interesting things about libraries in the United States is they were one of the great act of private philanthropy in the history of the world, which was Andrew Carnegie's creation of, I don't remember how many thousand plus libraries across the United States, but at some point, actually, attention turns away from that.

And you don't have Andrew Carnegie there any longer.

You've got a lot of people who are making small donations.

But in order to take these steps forward or in order to close the gaps, you need to have some contribution from the government.

And we're lucky we live in New York State.

New York State is a particularly favorable environment for supporting all of the different things that we do.

Although I will say one thing that's interesting about emails and NIH and NEA, they have been very good for good reason.

It's spreading the funds that they give across the United States, across congressional districts, so that it has always been the case in prior years that there was bipartisan support, thorough bipartisan support for every one of these agencies.

And consistently, regardless of what the political environment was, the budgets were either held steady or increased year to year.

And that's because every single congressperson had a number of different institutions in their district, or number of different individuals in their district who were benefiting from directly, and then many, many more people indirectly from the funds that were being invested by these programs.

And so we now have a leadership that's decided that they're going to ignore, in fact, what the legislative view of the Congress has been, okay, which is not what the duty of the executive is, and they're going to go forward and they're going to just impose their will.

If you would.

Well, I mean, Peter Westby with Genesee Country Village Museum, you said that the initiatives that could be threatened if you lose, for example, this nearly $200,000 in federal funding, you're going to try to make sure that those happen anyway.

You may try to raise that money elsewhere.

And I think that that the Doge team would say, see, good.

That's what you should do.

Go raise it elsewhere.

I, I suppose that's true, but it shows a total lack of vision and understanding of what our institutions do.

We add value to the community.

We are, attractants for visitors.

We bring in.

I don't know what the rate of return would be for these investments, but, but.

And people may have never heard of the Imls, but they've seen the results of it or, and or they will see the results of its, disappearance when they can't go to, the libraries hours are reduced or, or they can't, the things that do touch them, they may very well say, like, I'm never going to go see that interpretive program at the Genesee Country Museum.

That's that's fine.

but others will, and that's important for us and that's important for us to continue, moving forward with it.

it may not look quite the way we had envisioned it.

It may be a little slower in terms of rollout, but they may find that, the EMR has funds, rural Wi-Fi and, in, in, you know, areas where there is no Wi-Fi.

It, it opens libraries to extra hours to literacy program, to, people getting their tax forms and understanding and getting information who may or may not have, a computer in which to do that.

It all of this helps with the quality of, people's lives in, in Rochester, in Monroe County in western New York state and across the country.

So I think, you know, we are advocating for our portions of it, but I think people need to really understand what the broader impact of this funding does for us as a country and a culture.

So after we take this only break, which I'm late for, we're going to come back and continue this conversation.

We've got some questions and comments from listeners.

and I think a big part of this is the question of what is vital in our communities.

Must himself has said that one of the philosophies of Dodge is to cut, cut, cut.

And then when you see some real blood, when you see something really bleed, then you will know that you got to restore that funding.

But most of the time, just move fast, break things, and then fix it.

After you.

But how do you know?

I mean, if someone desperately needs information on getting help with finding a job with with getting connected to employment services, tax help, all kinds of things, to say nothing of the cultural benefit of museums.

But if you take those away, is is Elon Musk deciding that that you not having that now is a form of real blood?

Is that real bleeding or is that just collateral damage and cuts and funding?

That's pretty subjective.

So we'll talk a little bit more about that.

And I've got your feedback here as we talk about cuts to libraries possibly museums certainly.

And more right here on connections.

I'm Evan Dawson Friday on the next connections.

In our first hour, I co-host the program with Leah Stacy, editor of City Magazine, The conversation about the latest city edition.

Then in our second hour, Patrick Hosking from city co-host with me, we're talking about the Gateways Festival.

It's a time when a lot of arts organizations are feeling pressure or scaling back.

Gateway is moving forward.

Talk to you Friday.

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Learn more at WXXI dawg, this is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson during a brief break.

Hilary Olson, news president and CEO of the Rochester Museum and Science Center, was making the point that when it comes to the notion of, well, just go to your donors, ask them for more.

yeah, there is a long line.

Yeah.

The donors.

And that's the found it.

We have some really generous donors and foundations, in and corporations in Rochester and, and as we call them, as we say, you know, hey, we need help.

This is this is happening.

What do we do?

Their answer is really get in line because this is happening everywhere.

It's not just science.

It's not just the the museum Institute for Museum and Library Services.

It's it's everyone.

And so, you know, all of these local foundations and donors are being pressured from 100 different ways.

And, and it is has become a real struggle.

And I don't want to compete against Bruce.

I want to work with Bruce and and Peter and Emily, together.

But I say that's right.

I take the point, though, that that is way to pat a solution.

Almost a flippant, remark there.

So let me get some feedback from listeners here.

Roger says, it seems there is a segment of the population that wants to dumbed down education in this country, and that way they can rewrite history in a way that reflects more favorably, favorably toward their own heritage.

It's all very cynical.

Have a fantastic day.

That is from Roger.

Peter Winsby, what do you make of Roger's point?

There?

You know, I think the, as I, as I said in my opening, our interpretation is additive.

It's not taking away anyone's history.

It's adding stories to, to our interpretation that have not been told in our past.

We're about to come up on our 50th anniversary as a museum.

We were a bicentennial project in 1976 to open.

we're coming up on the 250th anniversary of our country's history, as well as the 50th anniversary of our museum's founding.

And we want to broaden and expand our storytelling and to talk about things that may not have been envisioned, you know, 1976 and to expand them.

And it's it's not, as it's an additive process and not a subtractive process of I'm going to tell my story or I want to tell this story that I feel is important.

And I'm going to to, dumb down the, the stories that have been we want to to show both the highlights and the, that the progress of history is wavy, you know, it has its ups, it has its downs and, and it's important for cultural institutions to be able to tell those things Michael writes, to say, I think that one of the best ideas our country has ever had was free public education for everyone and free public libraries for everyone.

I think that it's amazing that there are places where you can go and check out books on any subject that you want, from computers to astronomy.

I learned how to use a computer at the Brighton Memorial Library, learning how to get library books on my Kindle is on my to do list for today.

Anything you want to add to that?

Isn't that amazing?

I mean, I'm a little biased, but I do think that, libraries are absolutely amazing and they are such an important part of our community and our culture.

And I, as someone who has devoted my entire professional career to bringing information and resources and the things that that people need to live a better life to my community, I really take offense at this cut, cut, cut until they bleed, because I feel like it's very difficult to not see that as you know, the world's wealthiest man, not understanding that we were already bleeding when the when the cuts began.

Whose blood is it matter?

Who is blood?

Who's going to bleed?

It's the people who are already bleeding like this is this is absolutely to me.

And I take this very personally.

This is an attack on, the the people who need the most support.

These are the this is really punching down to the absolute highest level.

This is an attack on the people that need resources the most.

And I, I really take offense at it, honestly, not just, you know, professionally, but personally.

We are trying so hard to bring resources to people that they desperately need in order to survive in some cases and to say that that's that's frivolous in some way or to imply that that is a waste of money, especially when it's these very wealthy few people who are saying that I yeah, I have an issue with it.

And, I mean, it's important to remember that just five years ago, during Covid, cultural institutions were shuttering their, their doors.

And, we are five years on, we are still not up to the level of attendance and school visitation that, we were in 2019.

So we were just beginning to get our heads above water and then to have this, this action, this anti-intellectual action, is just another blow to the cultural community.

Could be.

Yeah.

I, I, I'd like to say as an economist rather than as a museum director, there are very few things that are more expensive to society, include to the wealthiest in society than an under vaccinated, undernourished and under literate population.

And this we're talking today about under literate.

But all of these issues are issues that are pervasive right now.

And if you look at the long term impacts of under investing in those areas, it is profound.

And it causes for the entire life of the individual, additional costs burden on the government or a lack of revenue to the government because the individual is not being as productive as they would and therefore not paying the taxes they otherwise could.

So what motive do you ascribe then, to this government's actions in this regard?

I, I hesitate to use any Abhar ad hominem, statements, but I would say that the actions are very shortsighted.

and they do not reflect a fundamental understanding of economics.

I think tariffs is another great example of that.

If I may.

and so I would say a lack of understanding and a desire to act quickly with, profound misunderstanding about how difficult it is to undo things when you've caused damage to them.

let me get some perspective from listeners on the subject of the role of government.

Hoover in Pittsford on the phone.

Hey, Hoover, go ahead.

Yeah.

Thanks for taking my call.

and, about full disclosure, I'm a member of two of the three organizations sitting at the table with you, and I'm also a colleague on the board for the library with Emily.

So, I've been involved in some of this in the past.

and Emily won't recognize my name because it's it's my nickname.

But anyway, I'll talk to her when I see her.

Here's the deal.

In my view, stability is important in our institutions.

Stability is important in our families.

Stability is important in our communities.

What I'm what I don't see out there is the advocacy by the people who can really make a change.

I just want to say that there's a guy who a wonderful man, Cornell Law, grad, local member of our community, Barbara Carnival, who was a conservative Republican.

And he said some of the greatest things about government relationships.

And one of the things that he advocated the day he left, I went to his banquet.

When he retired from Congress, he said, I believe in incrementalism.

And he expressed that by saying, we're going to make changes.

Of course we're going to take things away.

We're going to give things.

But we should be doing this incrementally with evaluations of where the cuts or where the, new funds should be going and for what reasons.

Incrementalism is the way that we should be changing what this current administration is interested in.

But they're not they're taking a hatchet and it's it's terrible.

And you guys all, you know, been talking about it for the last 45 minutes.

So, yes.

I wish Barbara Carnival was here.

You know, he's Joe Morrell.

He's got his seat now.

I don't know what Joe's philosophy is.

I've met him a few times.

I've been in meetings with him.

But we need to get our people moving on.

This and the state and our governor, they may have to make some reordering of their priorities and do some incremental funding or, reductions in certain things that are not needed because these programs are really needed.

Our libraries are one of the most critical institutions in this city and in the county.

The other three organizations at the table, they're fine.

They're very contributory to the culture and education of our community.

And again, I'm a member of two of the three of them, but without our libraries, we are in trouble.

And Emily is a is the brand new executive director of our library system.

We are so fortunate in this community to have her sitting at that table every day and in that position every day.

So, Emily, thank you again for doing your work and the rest of you, thank you.

And, Kevin, your shows are tremendous.

Thank you for taking my call.

Thank you.

Hoover.

so who Hoover's point is really interesting.

It's a whole side conversation about political philosophy.

But incrementalism is at the heart of the tradition of conservatism in this country.

That is true.

So when we talk about what it means to be a conservative in 2025, it just means something entirely different.

unless you're a sort of a holdout, small C conservative, like, you know, like my father who's looking around, not recognizing the landscape, incrementalism is at the heart of it.

And this is not an incremental set of actions.

That's true.

On the flip side of that point, though, from Hoover, let me just read this, and then I'll let our guests respond here, because we're down to our last couple of minutes.

Danielle says the issue is the US is crazy in debt, so much so that people think it will be impossible to ever pay off.

And another says, assuming all the good intention of these organizations, how do we justify these expenditures when our nation is dealing with a burdensome budget deficit?

So, you know, Hoover's talking about the vital nature, but some listeners are saying we've got this huge debt to say nothing of an annual deficit.

What do we do about that?

Let me go back to the economist, and I'll let you all jump in here.

30s apiece.

Bruce Barnes, the floor is yours.

If we used all of the cuts to reduce the deficit rather than and there were no tax cuts that were happening at the same time, then I think there would be a great deal more integrity to the entire process.

We didn't need 30s.

Peter, wispy.

What do you think?

Well, I think the, I think it's important for us like we do feel rather powerless.

This has come since Monday, essentially.

but we need to have a loud voice.

We need to contact our government representatives and shout from the rooftops that this is something that can change.

Should change.

We've we've, you know, had deficits, we've erased deficits, and then we've built deficits back up again.

It it's a it's something we're able to do as a, as a country.

if we have principled representatives, three branches of government, all doing the, the duties that they're empowered to by the Constitution.

And, you know, we can pull ourselves out of this, without tax breaks to those who don't necessarily need it.

30s.

Hilary Olson, go ahead.

So, going back to Hoover's point, this is the exact opposite of a thoughtful process.

you know, I've never seen something.

So it is it's a hatchet or a chainsaw versus a scalpel.

you know, I would say that cultural organizations are vital to a good Rochester cultural organizations are part of the quality of life.

What's why people want to live here.

And it's why people thrive here.

Not everybody thrives.

But we're working on that.

And that's.

That is where actually, frankly, libraries come in and other places like that.

So it is not they're not a nice to have.

They're necessary.

30s what do you want people to do?

All right.

I would like you to, first of all, go to your library and go to your museums and thank all the people that work there for, you know, we're feeling a little stressed out right now.

So, just visit us, but also speak up and tell, tell the people who are making decisions and advocating on our behalf how much this really means to you.

Because like you said, it's not a nice to have.

This is I have to have.

I want to thank Emily, class director of the Rochester Public Library in the Monroe County Library system.

Thank you for being back with us.

Thanks to Hilary Olson, president CEO of the Rochester Museum and Science Center.

Thank you for being here.

Bruce Barnes, the running Donna Fielding, director of the George Eastman Museum.

Thank you for being here.

And our thanks to Peter Wispy, who is the Philip K Wareheim curator of collections at the Genesee Country Village Museum.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you from all of us at connections.

Thank you for listening.

If you're watching on YouTube on the center's YouTube page, thank you for watching.

We are back with you tomorrow on member supported public media.

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