For decades, the United States government has quietly run the equivalent of its own major museum, amassing about 26,000 works — from New Deal murals to Alexander Calder’s “Flamingo” sculpture — that have been placed in hundreds of federal buildings and lent to hundreds more museums, historical societies and libraries across the country.
But in March, the Trump administration slashed the staff in the General Services Administration who track, maintain and protect that vast and valuable collection from roughly 30 people to fewer than 10, based on interviews with former employees.
Now art experts are concerned that the cuts put this massive portfolio of work, including pieces by some of the United States’ most notable artists, such as Louise Nevelson, Nick Cave and Ellsworth Kelly, at risk.
“Any reduction in staff could severely hinder the care, preservation, and accessibility of these artworks,” said Julie Trébault, the executive director of the Artists at Risk Connection, an organization that seeks to protect artists, cultural workers and artistic freedom.
The concerns are twofold.
The G.S.A. collection is roughly the same size as that of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. But where collection management staff at museums typically track, catalog and maintain art held in their main building and a handful of storage spaces, the government collection has been placed in federal offices and private institutions in all 50 states, plus Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
“We oversaw this collection with about 30 people — a skeleton crew compared to those institutions,” Nick Hartigan, a former fine arts specialist with the G.S.A. wrote recently on social media. Like most of the staff, he was let go in March, but remains on paid administrative leave while a court reviews his and other terminations.
A second issue is that many of the artworks are in some of the dozens of federal properties that have been identified by the Trump Administration for possible sale.
The Wilbur J. Cohen federal building in downtown Washington D.C., for example, is one of those up for disposition. It is adorned with large artworks that would be difficult, if not impossible, to move. A wall-sized mural by Philip Guston hangs in the auditorium. The lobby is ornately frescoed. Granite reliefs by one of the few women to be commissioned during the New Deal, Emma Lou Davis, top the entrances.
To ensure the preservation of such immobile works when buildings are offloaded, the G.S.A. fine arts staff would typically negotiate contracts of sale that require the preservation of any art left behind. It is now unclear who would do that job.
“I am particularly worried about the artwork’s maintenance and upkeep and figuring out where things are,” said Charlotte Cohen, a former fine arts officer in the New York and Caribbean region for the G.S.A. “It’s the legacy of the people of the United States.”
Inventory management of the collection may grow only more complicated under a plan proposed by the businessman Paolo Zampolli, a Kennedy Center board member whom President Trump appointed “special envoy for global partnerships” in a March Truth Social post. Mr. Zampolli proposes loaning federally-owned art to museums in other countries as a way to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States.
“We want to see our American values in other countries,” Mr. Zampolli said in an interview. “Not only sending Boeings, but our music, our art, and our sports.”
He dismissed concerns about risks to the collection, attributing them to bitter staffers.
“I think this is fake news,” Mr. Zampolli said, “a disgruntled let-go bureaucrat or government official or whatever you want to call it, because they never organize anything similar.”
The exact parameters of the staff layoffs are imprecise because the agency has refused to specify the number, calling the issue a personnel matter. A spokesman for the G.S.A. also did not address how the collection would be managed with a depleted staff, except to say that the agency “remains committed to effective resource utilization as we continue to maintain our art collection and ensure these historical artifacts remain documented, protected, and available for display in our governmental facilities.”
The artworks in the G.S.A.’s custody date as far back as the 1850s. Some were commissioned to support artists during the Depression, a practice that has continued for new federal buildings constructed today.
The collection includes about 23,000 artworks that are on renewable five-year loans to cultural institutions — ranging from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the Illinois State Museum. Another 1,500 are in federal buildings, with an additional 1,500 in storage.
The G.S.A. has been shepherding much of the nation’s art work since its inception in 1949. Other agencies manage their own collections, including the Architect of the Capitol.
The G.S.A. collection has grown in part because of the Art in Architecture Program, established in 1972 to commission American artists as part of federal capital projects. The first piece was unveiled in 1974: Calder’s “Flamingo” at the Federal Center in Chicago. Since then, G.S.A. has commissioned more than 500 artworks for federal buildings nationwide.
In 1978, for example, the fiber artist Lenore Tawney created a cascade of light blue strings entitled “Cloud Series IV” for the John F. Shea federal courthouse in Santa Rosa, Calif. The building is now on the list to be sold.
Part of the job of G.S.A.’s Fine Arts unit — which once had staff in each of 11 regional offices — is to ensure there are regular checkups for peeling paint, corroding marble and water damage. The handful of specialists left will still be responsible for commissioning new art, arranging restoration efforts, and the relocation and cataloging of objects.
“It’s prosaic work,” Cohen said, “like making sure they are cleaning a Sol LeWitt sculpture at a courthouse in Syracuse with the right water pressure.”
The collection includes artworks commissioned for public buildings built after the Civil War and during the 1930s as part of New Deal programs to help unemployed artists. Reginald Marsh’s murals of the New York City harbor grace the rotunda of the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in Manhattan, for example, and James Lee Hansen’s Young Lincoln stands at the federal courthouse in Los Angeles.
Peer review committees evaluate artists for each commission. They have included Color of Medals by Sam Gilliam, installed at the Veterans Benefits Administration building in Philadelphia, and Bicentennial Dawn by Louise Nevelson, which greets visitors at the city’s federal courthouse.
“It’s the collection of our country,” said Wendy Feuer, an assistant commissioner for the New York City Department of Transportation who oversees its urban design and art installations. She has served as a peer reviewer for the program. “What happens to the art? What happens to the archive? What happens to the whole history?”
Pieces of the portfolio are never sold; if a building containing art, such as a mural, changes hands or is demolished, the work is either transferred to another building, returned to the G.S.A. or covered by a covenant that commits the new owner to continued upkeep. The works are rarely appraised, so there is no official estimate of the collection’s value. And the art is not insured, so the government has little financial recourse if items are lost or damaged.
“Without sufficient staffing, the risk of losing track of artworks or failing to properly preserve them is a real threat,” Trébault of Artists at Risk Connection said.
Artworks have gone missing before, including a 1936 painting “Gulls at Monhegan,” by Andrew Winter. It had been assigned to the U.S. embassy in Costa Rica, but was mistakenly given to a retiring ambassador and then passed down through his family, according to the G.S.A. The agency recovered the artwork after it turned up at an auction house in Portland, Maine in 2001.
As for Mr. Zampolli’s idea to send parts of the federal collection to international locations, a G.S.A. spokeswoman said the agency was “working with Mr. Zampolli on ways to promote our beautiful works of art.” Mr. Zampolli, a real estate broker, has known the president for years and was running a modeling agency in the 1990s when he introduced Mr. Trump to his future wife, Melania.
In an interview, Mr. Zampolli said the idea for promoting the art took hold after Mr. Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia last month. Mr. Zampolli came along and met with officials from the Ministry of Culture, whom he said were eager to host American art works as a means of cultural exchange.
A few days later, Mr. Zampolli visited the G.S.A.’s warehouse in Alexandria, Virginia, where it stores the 1,500 works that are not on display.
“The ART IS SAFE!” he posted on Instagram, along with pictures of himself holding some of the works stored there. “THE USA GOLDEN ART reserve is ready for this new era.”
Mr. Zampolli said that he did not think what he was proposing increased the collection’s vulnerability, but he acknowledged that he was not aware that most of the collection is already on loan to museums and other institutions across the U.S.
“I’m learning,” Mr. Zampolli said. He’s now trying to create a master catalog of all federally-owned art across several agencies, in service of allowing it to travel the world. “I made a couple calls, and everybody’s very excited, they all want to work with me on that.”
Susan Beachy and Will Houp contributed research.
Lydia DePillis reports on the American economy. She has been a journalist since 2009, and can be reached at [email protected].
Graham Bowley is an investigative reporter covering the world of culture for The Times.
Robin Pogrebin, who has been a reporter for The Times for nearly 30 years, covers arts and culture.
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