Advocacy & Public Policy Committee News Alerts v. 12 n. 5, May 2026

Advocacy & Public Policy Committee News support the committee's mission to monitor governmental activities and social justice issues affecting the professional interests of ARLIS/NA and to keep the ARLIS/NA membership informed. The monthly alerts are intended to be conversation starters, help members keep up on public policy issues and alert members to new developments. The articles compiled in the News Alerts bring to the forefront recent news from a range of perspectives designed to elicit discussion; they are not compiled to represent the views of ARLIS as an organization or the members of the Advocacy and Public Policy Committee.

Previous issues can be found here: https://www.arlisna.org/news/appc-news-alert 

Art & Activism

• Benzine, Vittoria. “All 3.5 Million Pages of the Epstein Files Are Now on View at This Pop-Up Exhibition.” Artnet News, May 12, 2026.

• Cascone, Sarah. “As Democracy Falters, a New York Museum Champions Activism.” Hyperallergic, May 20, 2026.

• Cieslik, Emma. “Satirical Video Game Lampoons Trump’s Iran War Chaos.” Hyperallergic, May 11, 2026.

• Di Liscia, Valentina, and Isa Farfan. “Rollicking Protest Against Bezos’s Met Gala Erupts in Manhattan.” Hyperallergic, May 5, 2026.

• Larkin, Daniel. “An Artist’s MFA Show Confronts Columbia University Over Gaza.” Hyperallergic, May 22, 2026.

Venice Biennale Protests:

• Nayyar, Rhea. “Venice Biennale Scraps ‘Golden Lion’ Awards as Turmoil Continues.” Hyperallergic, May 1, 2026.

• Cassady, Daniel. “The Biennale Isn’t a Court. Tell That to the Protesters.” ARTnews, May 6, 2026.

• Nayyar, Rhea. “Israeli Pavilion Artist Made Legal Threats Before Venice Biennale Jury Resigned.” Hyperallergic, May 6, 2026.

• Bishara, Hakim. “Historic Strike Disrupts Biennale as Thousands March in Venice.” Hyperallergic, May 8, 2026.

• Greenberger, Alex. “Venice Biennale Artists Decline Consideration for Golden Lions Chosen by Public Vote.” ARTnews, May 9, 2026.

Copyright & Licensing; Open Access 

• Ha, Anthony. “AI-generated actors and scripts are now ineligible for Oscars.” TechCrunch, May 2, 2026.

• Ha, Anthony. “Research repository ArXiv will ban authors for a year if they let AI do all the work.” TechCrunch, May 16, 2026.

• Nayyar, Rhea. “Ansel Adams Trust Decries Dealer's Sale of Photo Colorized Using AI.” Hyperallergic, May 26, 2026.  

• Newman, Jared. “The Internet Archive at 30: Can the Web’s Memory Bank Withstand the AI Era?” Fast Company, May 14, 2026.

Funding 

• Comeau, Tina. “Municipalities raise questions and concerns over museum and library funding in Nova Scotia.” The Tri-County Vanguard, May 8, 2026. 

• “Getty Awards $1.8M to Increase Access to Black Visual Arts Archives.” Getty News, May 13, 2026.

• Kulkarni, Akshay. “Correctional service moving to cut prison librarians at federal institutions.” CBC News, May 11, 2026.

Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Access (IDEA) 

• Benzine, Vittoria. “A New Landmark Survey Aims to Bring Transparency to Museum Collecting Practices.”  Artnet News, May 11, 2026.

• Doran, Anne. “The Founders of Open Restitution Africa (ORA) on Their New Open Data Platform.” ARTnews, May 11, 2026.

• Jacobs, Julia. “Women’s Museum Bill Sinks Amid Dispute Over Trump and Trans Issues.” The New York Times, May 22, 2026. [paywall]

• Nayyar, Rhea. “Stonewall Monument Named Among Most Endangered Sites in the US.” Hyperallergic, May 21, 2026.

Intellectual Freedom/Access to Information

• Graham, Ginnie. “Broken Arrow library removed displays on LGBTQ+ topics, race after senator forwarded complaint.” Tulsa Flyer, May 14, 2026.

• Qin, Amy. “‘Things Were Going Dark Left and Right’: The Race to Save US Government Datasets before They’re Deleted.” The Guardian, May 7, 2026.

• Small, Zachary, and Robin Pogrebin. “Is Museum Wall Text the Next Political Battleground?” The New York Times, May 21, 2026. [paywall]

• Solomon, Tessa. “Canadian Museum of Human Rights Threatened With Legal Action Over Palestinian Nakba Show.” ARTnews, May 19, 2026.

Technology and Digital Privacy 

• “Colorado Legislature Again Amends Landmark AI Law.” Electronic Privacy Information Center, May 14, 2026.

• Fernholz, Tim. “Elon Musk has lost his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI.” TechCrunch, May 18, 2026.

• Klosowski, Thorin. “Broken Promises: RIP Instagram’s End-to-End Encrypted DMs.” Electronic Frontier Foundation, May 12, 2026.

• Klosowski, Thorin. “Victory! End-to-End Encrypted RCS Comes to Apple and Android Chats.” Electronic Frontier Foundation, May 12, 2026.

• Klosowski, Thorin. “Canada’s Bill C-22 Is a Repackaged Version of Last Year’s Surveillance Nightmare.” Electronic Frontier Foundation, May 11, 2026. 

• Lacroix-Couture, Frédéric. “Quebec moves forward with project to improve AI's understanding of Francophone culture.” CBC News, May 31, 2026.

• Lo, Leo S., and Cynthia Hudson Vitale. “Tracking the AI Evolution in Research Libraries: Findings from ARL’s 2026 AI Quick Poll.” Association of Research Libraries, May 8, 2026.

• Lomas, Natasha, Romain Dillet, Kyle Wiggers, Lucas Ropek. “So you've heard these AI terms and nodded along; let's fix that.” TechCrunch, May 9, 2026.

• Perez, Sarah. “Google Search as you know it is over.” TechCrunch, May 19, 2026.

• Sims, Daniel. “Google Chrome has been silently pushing a 4GB AI model to your device without asking.” TechSpot, May 5, 2026.

Workplace

• David, Nicholas. “Cal Academy Wants to Lay Them off. They’re Coming in to Work Anyway.” Mission Local, May 5, 2026.

• Nayyar, Rhea. “Seattle Art Museum Workers Move to Unionize.” Hyperallergic, May 18, 2026.

• Short, Aaron. “American Folk Art Museum Workers Picket Gala, Calling for Higher Wages.” Hyperallergic, May 7, 2026. 

• Stromberg, Matt. “CalArts President Booed During Commencement Speech.” Hyperallergic, May 20, 2026.

Special News Alert: 47th Presidential Administration and Cultural Heritage

• Battaglia, Andy. “DOGE Cuts to NEH Were Unconstitutional, Court Rules.” ARTnews, May 8, 2026.

• Cassady, Daniel. “House Democrats Move to Block Trump’s Proposed Arlington ‘Triumphal Arch.’” ARTnews, May 29, 2026.

• Doran, Anne. “Federal Panel Considers Plan to Paint Granite Eisenhower Executive Office Building White.” ARTnews, May 8, 2026.

• Durón, Maximilíano. “National Trust Names America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places, Including Sites Targeted by Trump Administration.” ARTnews, May 20, 2026.

• Farfan, Isa. “Trump Border Wall Crews Damage 1,000-Year-Old Native Etching in Arizona.” Hyperallergic, May 1, 2026.

• Gill, Jordan. “Archives See Surge in Americans Requesting Family Records to Access Canadian Citizenship.” CBC News, May 4, 2026.

• Moody, Josh. “Trump’s Accreditation Overhaul Advances.” Inside Higher Ed, May 22, 2026.

This issue of News Alerts was compiled by Caroline Clavell, Torie Quiñonez, Madison Sussman, and Sarah Wade.