Last year, Historic Newton was awarded a three-year federal grant through the Institute of Museum and Library Services totaling almost $136,000 to catalogue and preserve its vast collection of historic textiles.

But there’s a new presidential administration now, and President Donald Trump has issued an executive order calling for the “reduction in the elements of the Federal bureaucracy that the President has determined are unnecessary.”

Apparently, that includes much of the Institute of Museum and Library Services and all of that textile preservation grant money.

“We got a letter just yesterday saying that our grant was canceled,” Historic Newton Director Lisa Dady said Thursday afternoon.

That means a part-time staff member recently hired to help inventory, research and digitize more than 3,500 textile objects—including clothing, accessories, bed linens and more—over the course of three years is suddenly without a job.

“The position was fully funded by the grant,” Dady lamented. “When the grant disappeared, we had to lay her off.”

The textiles are currently held in various storage locations, and organizing and preserving all that material is a lot of work. What happens with those textiles now?

“That’s a good question,” Dady said. “It’s kind of fresh for us to figure out what Plan B is.”

One interesting item at Historic Newton is a red and green quilted coat that belonged to abolitionist and women’s suffrage activist Elizabeth Buffum Chace and was later worn by her daughter, Lillie Chace Wyman, who lived in Newton.

Another set—leg gaiters, earmuffs and puttees—belonged to World War I veteran and Italian immigrant Nicolas Lombardi, who raised his family in Nonantum.

There are 350 years of stories in those threads. And textiles are important in historical conservation because they often tell stories in ways books cannot. So, they’re big drivers of community engagement.

“It really resonates with people,” Dady said.

Historic Newton isn’t alone. Museums across the state are at risk of losing funding with the executive order, according to this piece by WBUR.