With the Trump administration cutting funds to arts and culture — a survey by the American Alliance of Museums found that one-third of U.S. museums have lost government grants or contracts since President Donald Trump took office — the Brooklyn Museum on Eastern Parkway in Prospect Heights received a significant financial boost.
At a Nov. 20 press conference in the museum’s pavilion and lobby, Assembly Member Robert Carroll and state Sen. Zellnor Myrie presented the 200-year-old institution with a $10 million check they secured in the 2024–25 budget. The funding will go exclusively toward capital projects and critical building and infrastructure upgrades.
Anne Pasternak, the Shelby White and Leon Levy Director of the Brooklyn Museum, expressed gratitude to the Brooklyn lawmakers.
“We’re profoundly thankful to the State of New York — and to Assembly Member Robert Carroll and State Senator Zellnor Myrie — for their steadfast support in advancing the next chapter of the Brooklyn Museum,” Pasternak said. “This important capital investment helps us continue transforming our historic building so we can better serve our audiences, welcome more visitors, and share the power and beauty of art with our growing community.”
Carroll and Myrie, joined by Zinerman, emphasized the importance of securing capital support for one of Brooklyn’s landmark cultural institutions, which houses more than 140,000 objects representing cultures across the world and spanning more than 6,000 years.
Carroll, who represents the 44th Assembly District, told Brooklyn Paper that he has been coming to the museum his entire life and believes state and local governments must fund institutions like it.
“Making sure that we’re stewards of this Museum for years and years to come is essential in providing capital to make sure that this Museum is in good repair and can serve the millions of people who come to it every year is so vitally important, as the federal government is ripping money from arts funding as well as critical funding throughout the country,” Carroll said.
Myrie, whose district includes Crown Heights, East Flatbush, Park Slope, Prospect Heights, Prospect Lefferts Gardens and Windsor Terrace, said he grew up just a few blocks from the museum and spent much of his childhood there.
“Having this in our neighborhood as a signal of us being worthy of the highest and world-class art culture, it meant a lot for someone that looked like me,” Myrie said, noting that the museum’s programming goes beyond the arts with events such as First Saturdays, which offer free art, music and dancing.
“The Brooklyn Museum is the people’s museum. This is where an average person, people that are from our communities, people from all over the world, can come and enjoy world-class art and culture without having to pay world-class art and culture prices,” Myrie said. “So we got to continue to support this institution.”
Zinerman, who represents the 56th Assembly District, including Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights, said the museum had always been part of her life.
Photo by Gabriele Holtermann
“I remember coming here as a little girl, holding my mother, who was an early childhood teacher’s hand,” Zinerman said, praising the museum’s leadership.
“We know the hard work that you do. We know that it is not always fashionable to do what’s right, and we know that in these times, we’re worried about money and funding and people not investing in historic places because they want to rip them apart and build something new,” she said. “What you have done is expand the vision of what a 21st Century institution could be, and you are leading the way.”
The Brooklyn Museum is open Wednesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. One of its current exhibitions is “Monet and Venice,” New York’s largest museum show dedicated to the artist in more than 25 years. The ticketed exhibition, on view through Feb. 1, 2026, features more than 100 artworks, books and ephemera by the French Impressionist, including 19 of his Venetian paintings.
