Where Are Our Museums When Communities Need Them?

Last Friday, major art institutions across Minneapolis, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Science Museum of Minnesota, Museum of Russian Art, and others, closed their doors in solidarity with a statewide general strike protesting ICE operations. Thousands gathered in subzero temperatures to demand accountability after ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Macklin Good on January 7. The week before, ICE agents had detained a five-year-old boy on his way home from preschool.

These weren’t fringe galleries or activist spaces. These were major, established cultural institutions, exactly the kind of museums we have in Orange County. They made an institutional decision to align with their communities in a moment of crisis, declaring that it was “imperative that institutions value our shared humanity during these turbulent times.”

What have Orange County’s art institutions said about the ICE operations happening in our own backyard?

Nothing.

ICE in Orange County: The Context

This silence is particularly striking given what’s been happening in our county since June 2025. Major ICE raids began in Santa Ana, Anaheim, and other Orange County cities. On June 9, 2025, protesters clashed with federal agents outside the Santa Ana Federal Building after a day of raids across the city, at Home Depot locations, business parks, commercial areas. Federal police used tear gas against protesters.

The raids continued through the summer and fall. In June, a U.S. citizen attorney named Heidi Plummer was detained by ICE while walking through Centennial Park in Santa Ana after attending a family member’s funeral. Federal agents have been spotted at car washes in West Anaheim, at immigration court in Santa Ana, pulling people from their vehicles in residential neighborhoods.

By October, advocates were reporting that ICE had arrested more than 7,100 people in the Los Angeles area. The economic impact has been severe, 45% of agricultural workers stopped showing up to work, California’s GDP dropped 0.25%. Business owners in Santa Ana reported precipitous drops in customer attendance. Street vendors disappeared from La Cuatro (4th Street Market).

This isn’t ancient history. As recently as late December 2025, ICE agents were conducting operations in Santa Ana neighborhoods, including one across the street from a middle school. And now ICE activity has been reported increasing in areas like Anaheim.

The Museum Survey: Radio Silence

I searched for any public statements from Orange County’s major art institutions about these events. Here’s what I found:

Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA): Nothing.

Bowers Museum: Nothing.

Laguna Art Museum: Nothing.

Muzeo Museum: Nothing.

No statements on their websites. No social media posts addressing what’s happening in their communities. No closures in solidarity. No know-your-rights cards at admission desks. No resources for affected families. No acknowledgment that anything unusual is happening at all.

The contrast with Minneapolis couldn’t be starker. When communities there faced crisis, their cultural institutions showed up, literally and institutionally. Meanwhile, in Orange County, our museums have continued business as usual while federal agents conduct raids in the very cities where these institutions are located.

Why the Silence?

There are real pressures at work here. This regime has made clear its hostility toward institutions that don’t comply with its agenda. Museums rely on federal funding, tax-exempt status, and the goodwill of boards that may include members sympathetic to current policies.

OCMA is now part of UC Irvine, a public institution dependent on state and federal funding. The Bowers receives an annual grant from the city of Santa Ana and is governed by a 32-member board. These are institutions with complex stakeholder relationships, financial dependencies, and powerful interests to navigate.

It’s also worth acknowledging that Orange County is politically complex. Some board members may actively support these ICE operations. The Huntington Beach City Council voted to disregard state sanctuary laws and direct police to work with ICE. Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes stated his department would “cooperate with ICE to the fullest extent provided by the law.”

But acknowledging these pressures isn’t the same as excusing the silence. Museums in Minneapolis faced similar complexities, they’re also dependent on funding, also have diverse boards, also exist in politically varied regions. They found a way to take a stand.

What’s at Stake

The question isn’t just about ICE. It’s about what cultural institutions understand their role to be.

Art institutions love to talk about their mission to serve communities, to be spaces for dialogue, to preserve memory and resist erasure. But when actual communities are experiencing actual crisis, when memory is being actively erased through deportations and fear, where are they?

Compare this to Los Angeles area institutions. The Japanese American National Museum issued a statement condemning “the erosion of civil rights as evidenced in the attacks on birthright citizenship, the recission of workplace protections for marginalised communities, the rollbacks on protections for immigrants.” The Vincent Price Art Museum distributed know-your-rights cards, which, according to their director, became “a hot commodity on campus.”

Meanwhile in Orange County, the most civic action seems to be coming from cities themselves. Anaheim, Santa Ana, Costa Mesa, and Irvine have created resources on their city websites about ICE operations. But their art institutions? Silent.

Questions Worth Asking

So here are the questions hanging in the air:

Do Orange County art institutions believe they have any civic responsibility beyond providing cultural programming?

When do museums decide that what’s happening in their communities warrants institutional response?

Are they genuinely afraid of federal retaliation, or are they simply uncomfortable with controversy?

Do their boards believe that ICE operations are acceptable, or do they just prefer not to discuss it?

What exactly do they mean when they say they serve “the community” and which community are they talking about?

These aren’t rhetorical questions. The answer matters for how we understand these institutions going forward.

The Minneapolis Model

What Minneapolis demonstrated is that museums can act institutionally without compromising their mission. They can be civic leaders while still being cultural spaces. They can take moral positions while maintaining their role as places for art and education.

The Walker Art Center didn’t stop being an art museum when it closed for a day. The Minneapolis Institute of Art didn’t lose its collection. What they did do was signal to their communities: we see you, we stand with you, and we understand that our institutional privileges come with civic responsibility.

They made clear that when constitutional rights are being violated, when families are being torn apart, when communities are living in fear, cultural institutions have a responsibility to respond.

What We Remember

Museums claim to preserve memory. But memory isn’t just about the past, it’s about what we choose to witness in the present. Future historians will look back at this moment and ask: where were the institutions? What did they do? What did they say? Orange County’s art institutions should know that silence is also a statement. Neutrality in the face of crisis is a political choice. Business as usual when communities are experiencing extraordinary circumstances is a form of complicity.

The Japanese American National Museum understands this viscerally, their own community was subjected to mass incarceration within living memory. When they issued their statement, they weren’t being political radicals. They were being institutional truth-tellers.

Orange County’s museums have a choice. They can continue pretending that what’s happening in Santa Ana and Anaheim is somehow separate from their mission. Or they can acknowledge that cultural work happens in context, that institutions exist in communities, and that this moment demands more than silence.

The Minneapolis museums showed one path. They closed for a single day. They made one clear statement. They used their institutional platform to say: this matters, our communities matter, and we won’t pretend otherwise.

Orange County’s art institutions should be asked: What will your institutional memory be of this moment? What story will you tell about where you stood and what you did when communities needed you to show up?

Because right now, the answer is silence.

And that silence speaks volumes.

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Sources:

ArtNet, Minneapolis museums close in solidarity: Hyperallergic, The Art Newspaper, NPR, Fox News, Al Jazeera Orange County ICE operations: Voice of OC, Orange County Register, KTLA, L.A. Taco, New University Los Angeles museum responses: The Art Newspaper