As the government shutdown continues into its third week, museums previously unaffected are beginning to close their doors. This is the latest change in programing amid the ongoing government shutdown, which has seen a number of museum and national park services suspended.
One such example is the National Portrait Gallery (NPG), which postponed events for the exhibition “The Outwin 2025: American Portraiture Today” that was slated to open on October 18. The decision was announced in an October 7 letter from the Portrait Gallery’s acting director Elliot Gruber to exhibition participants.
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The NPG is part of the Smithsonian Institution, which has been relying on surplus funds from previous years to stay open until October 11. Should a decision not be made by then, however, the entire institutional network is expected to shutdown.
Another, the National Gallery of Art (NGA), closed its doors on October 1. There, Houston-based multimedia artist Dario Robleto has two major artworks currently on view: the 45-minute film Until We Are Forged: Hymns for the Elements, commissioned by the NGA for the exhibition “Little Beasts: Art, Wonder, and the Natural World,” scheduled to run through November 2, and the 2017 sculpture Small Crafts on Sisyphean Seas, on view in one of the Dutch galleries in the museum’s West Building.
“I felt prideful about the institution, and also that I got to contribute to that process, because this film would be free and open to the public, and that meant a lot to me,” Robleto told Texas art publication Glasstire. “The film, in its quietly subversive way, is a love letter to the act of care and empathy that this institution is displaying, which runs so opposite of what many people are thinking about the government right now.”
“I’m so glad that even if it’s not being seen right now, it was, and hopefully it will have a few more days”, he added, should the gallery re-open prior to the exhibition’s scheduled end date.