For decades, the U.S. government has quietly run the equivalent of its own major museum, amassing about 26,000 works — from New Deal murals to Alexander Calder’s Flamingo sculpture — that have been placed in hundreds of federal buildings and lent to hundreds more museums, historical societies and libraries across the country.

But in March, the Trump administration slashed the staff in the General Services Administration who track, maintain and protect that vast and valuable collection from roughly 30 people to fewer than 10, based on interviews with former employees.

Now art experts are concerned that the cuts put this massive portfolio of work, including pieces by some of the United States’ most notable artists, such as Louise Nevelson, Nick Cave and Ellsworth Kelly, at risk.

“Any reduction in staff could severely hinder the care, preservation and accessibility of these artworks,” said Julie Trébault, the executive director of the Artists at Risk Connection, an organization that seeks to protect artists, cultural workers and artistic freedom.

The concerns are twofold.

The GSA collection is roughly the same size as that of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. But where collection management staff at museums typically track, catalog and maintain art held in their main building and a handful of storage spaces, the government collection has been placed in federal offices and private institutions in all 50 states, plus Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

“We oversaw this collection with about 30 people — a skeleton crew compared to those institutions,” Nick Hartigan, a former fine arts specialist with the GSA wrote recently on social media. Like most of the staff, he was let go in March, but remains on paid administrative leave while a court reviews his and other terminations.

A second issue is that many of the artworks are in some of the dozens of federal properties that have been identified by the Trump administration for possible sale.

The Wilbur J. Cohen federal building in downtown Washington, D.C., for example, is one of those up for disposition. It is adorned with large artworks that would be difficult, if not impossible, to move. A wall-sized mural by Philip Guston hangs in the auditorium. The lobby is ornately frescoed. Granite reliefs by one of the few women to be commissioned during the New Deal, Emma Lou Davis, top the entrances.

To ensure the preservation of such immobile works when buildings are offloaded, the GSA fine arts staff would typically negotiate contracts of sale that require the preservation of any art left behind. It is now unclear who would do that job.

“I am particularly worried about the artwork’s maintenance and upkeep and figuring out where things are,” said Charlotte Cohen, a former fine arts officer in the New York and Caribbean region for the GSA. “It’s the legacy of the people of the United States.”

Inventory management of the collection may grow only more complicated under a plan proposed by businessman Paolo Zampolli, a Kennedy Center board member whom President Donald Trump appointed “special envoy for global partnerships” in a March Truth Social post. Zampolli proposes loaning federally owned art to museums in other countries as a way to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States.

“We want to see our American values in other countries,” Zampolli said in an interview. “Not only sending Boeings, but our music, our art and our sports.”

He dismissed concerns about risks to the collection, attributing them to bitter staffers.

“I think this is fake news,” Zampolli said, “a disgruntled let-go bureaucrat or government official or whatever you want to call it, because they never organize anything similar.”

The exact parameters of the staff layoffs are imprecise because the agency has refused to specify the number, calling the issue a personnel matter. A spokesperson for the GSA also did not address how the collection would be managed with a depleted staff, except to say that the agency “remains committed to effective resource utilization as we continue to maintain our art collection and ensure these historical artifacts remain documented, protected and available for display in our governmental facilities.”

The artworks in the GSA’s custody date as far back as the 1850s. Some were commissioned to support artists during the Depression, a practice that has continued for new federal buildings constructed today.

The collection includes about 23,000 artworks that are on renewable five-year loans to cultural institutions — ranging from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the Illinois State Museum. Another 1,500 are in federal buildings, with an additional 1,500 in storage.

The GSA has been shepherding much of the nation’s artwork since its inception in 1949. Other agencies manage their own collections, including the Architect of the Capitol.

The GSA collection has grown in part because of the Art in Architecture Program, established in 1972 to commission American artists as part of federal capital projects. The first piece was unveiled in 1974: Calder’s Flamingo at the Federal Center in Chicago. Since then, GSA has commissioned more than 500 artworks for federal buildings nationwide.

The collection includes artworks commissioned for public buildings built after the Civil War and during the 1930s as part of New Deal programs to help unemployed artists. Reginald Marsh’s murals of the New York City harbor grace the rotunda of the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in Manhattan, for example, and James Lee Hansen’s Young Lincoln stands at the federal courthouse in Los Angeles.

Pieces of the portfolio are never sold; if a building containing art, such as a mural, changes hands or is demolished, the work is either transferred to another building, returned to the GSA or covered by a covenant that commits the new owner to continued upkeep. The works are rarely appraised, so there is no official estimate of the collection’s value. And the art is not insured, so the government has little financial recourse if items are lost or damaged.

“Without sufficient staffing, the risk of losing track of artworks or failing to properly preserve them is a real threat,” Trébault said.

As for Zampolli’s idea to send parts of the federal collection to international locations, a GSA spokesperson said the agency was “working with Zampolli on ways to promote our beautiful works of art.” Zampolli, a real estate broker, has known the president for years and was running a modeling agency in the 1990s when he introduced Trump to his future wife, Melania.

In an interview, Zampolli said the idea for promoting the art took hold after Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia last month. Zampolli came along and met with officials from the Ministry of Culture, who he said were eager to host American artworks as a means of cultural exchange.

A few days later, Zampolli visited the GSA’s warehouse in Alexandria, Virginia, where it stores the 1,500 works that are not on display.

“The ART IS SAFE!” he posted on Instagram, along with pictures of himself holding some of the works stored there. “THE USA GOLDEN ART reserve is ready for this new era.”

Zampolli said that he did not think what he was proposing increased the collection’s vulnerability, but he acknowledged that he was not aware that most of the collection is already on loan to museums and other institutions across the U.S.

“I’m learning,” Zampolli said. He’s now trying to create a master catalog of all federally owned art across several agencies, in service of allowing it to travel the world. “I made a couple calls, and everybody’s very excited. They all want to work with me on that.”