Smithsonian Tries to Remain Open Despite Government Shutdown

The federal government of the US may be shut down, but the National Gallery of Art and the institutions run by the Smithsonian - 19 museums in New York and Washington DC, as well as the National Zoo - have managed to remain open, for now.

According to a statement from the federally funded Smithsonian Institution, it has sufficiently leftover funds from past years to keep all the museums and the zoo still open. “We don’t know about tomorrow and beyond,” a Smithsonian spokesperson told Hyperallergic, an art and culture website.

In New York, the state government stepped in to reopen the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island on Monday. Both are run by federal agencies and had been closed since January 17. “We don’t want to lose the income,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said during a press conference at the Statue on Jan. 18, according to Reuters. “And symbolically, you can shut down the government, but you can’t shut down the Statue of Liberty.”

New York State will pay $65,000 per day to the federal employees who run the two sites as long as the government shutdown continues.