By Beth Do
Last October, the New Museum and the newly minted New Museum Union agreed on a labor contract, ending almost a year of negotiations. The five-year contract ensures new workplace safety measures and establishes a new wage structure for union members.
2019 has been a big year for museums unionization in the United States: the New Museum is one of several major cultural institutions in New York City to unionize in 2019, voting in January to join Local 2110, a United Auto Workers union group that also represents workers at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), and the New-York Historical Society.[1] The Tenement Museum followed in April,[2] and the Brooklyn Academy of Museum (BAM) in June.[3] Engineers, art installers, and maintenance staff at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum voted over the summer to form a union with Local 30 of the International Union of Operating Engineers, which also represents MoMA PS1.[4]
This movement is not limited to New York City. In Seattle, WA, security workers at the Frye Museum officially voted to unionize in June,[5] and staff at the Vancouver Art Gallery in Canada held a strike in February to protest contract negotiations.[6] Nor is this movement limited to museums. Rather, it reflects a revival of labor rights nationwide, also evidenced by a similar waves in digital media companies,[7] teacher strikes,[8] and even medical residency programs.[9] This growing interest in unionization across sectors “challenges the notion of who should belong in, or could benefit from, a union, and whether museum employees are not, or should not consider themselves, part of the same movement as teachers or taxi drivers or firefighters.”[10]
New York museums have historically led the charge in the domestic art scene. In an industry marked by high staff turnover and the ever-present threat of expansion (and consequent fundraising goals), any major decision by an actor in the New York art scene inevitably invites discussion and opprobrium.[11] For all these august institutions, the next step is negotiating contracts with their respective workers.
Both critics and supporters have closely followed the unionization movement at the New Museum. Founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker, the New Museum is Manhattan’s only dedicated contemporary art museum and is well-known for its emphasis on radical collaboration, empowerment, and transparency.[12]Its contract was birthed after months of bargaining, a protest, a vote to strike, and even an anti-union firm’s involvement. According to Dana Kopel, a senior editor at the New Museum, “[it] could be a harbinger of really profound change.”[13]
Some ask why workers in the rarified world of art workplaces need unions. To those critics, Maida Rosenstein, president of UAW Local 2110, replies: “You can’t eat prestige.” Retail employees at the New Museum make $15.50 an hour — only fifty cents above minimum wage — and have not seen a raise in almost three years. Executive salaries, however, have increased roughly 20% annually from 2015 to 2017.[14]
The advocacy by art workers groups is one component, building on broader calls for transparency in the art world — a trend exemplified by a circulating document earlier this year by the group Art + Museum Transparency in which museum workers anonymously disclosed their salaries, exposing the deeply entrenched system of pay inequity.[15]
Their
next crusade? The eradication of unpaid internships.[16]
[1] United Auto Workers Local 2110 Homepage, The Technical, Office and Professional Union (Nov. 15, 2019, 8:30 AM), http://www.2110uaw.org/.
[2] Hakim Bishara, Tenement Museum Workers Vote to Unionize, Hyperallergic (Apr. 18, 2019), https://hyperallergic.com/495807/tenement-museum-workers-vote-to-unionize/.
[3] Hakim Bishara, Brooklyn Academy of Music Employees Vote in Favor of Union, Hyperallergic (June 13, 2019), https://hyperallergic.com/505184/bam-union-vote/.
[4] Colin Moynihan, Guggenheim Workers Vote to Join a Union, the Museum’s First, N.Y. Times (June 29, 2019), https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/28/arts/design/guggenheim-union-vote.html.
[5] Alex Greenberger, Frye Art Museum Security Workers Vote Unanimously to Form Union, ARTnews (June 18, 2019), https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/frye-art-museum-union-formed-12813/.
[6] Alex Greenberger, Vancouver Art Gallery Workers’ Strike Ends as Agreement Is Reached, ARTnews (Feb. 11, 2019), https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/vancouver-art-gallery-strike-end-11883/.
[7] Matthew Sedacca, Unions Are Gaining a Foothold at Digital Media Companies, N.Y. Times (Dec. 26, 2017), https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/26/business/media/unions-digital-media.html.
[8] Zachary B. Wolf, Why Teacher Strikes are Touching Every Part of America, CNN (Feb. 23, 2019), https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/23/politics/teacher-strikes-politics/index.html.
[9] Jennifer Bernstein, Washington’s Struggling Medical Residents Need a Raise, The Nation (Oct. 9, 2019), https://www.thenation.com/article/medical-strike-seattle/.
[10] Eileen Cartter, Why Do Museums Need Unions?, GARAGE (July 10, 2019), https://garage.vice.com/en_us/article/mb8yaq/why-do-museums-need-unions.
[11] Colin Dwyer, The Met Is Set To Snap Nearly 5 Decades Of Pay-As-You-Wish Tradition, NPR (Jan. 4, 2018), https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/01/04/575751847/the-met-is-set-to-snap-nearly-5-decades-of-pay-as-you-wish-tradition.
[12] Mission Statement, New Museum Union (Nov. 15, 2019, 8:00 AM), https://newmuseumunion.org/mission.
[13] Colin Moynihan, Workers at New Museum in Manhattan Vote to Unionize, N.Y. Times (Jan. 24, 2019), https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/24/arts/design/new-museum-vote-to-unionize.html.
[14] Id.
[15] Art and Museum Salaries, Art + Museum Transparency (Nov. 15, 2019, 9:00 AM),
https://medium.com/@artandmuseumtransparency
[16] Michelle Miller Fischer & Art + Museum Transparency, Culture Workers, Just Say No to All Unpaid Internships, ARTnews (July 16, 2019), https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/unpaid-interhips-art-museums-transparency-oped-12974/.
