In Manhattan, dignitaries flocked to the Guggenheim Museum on Wednesday to celebrate a bustling Carol Bove exhibition, while outside, the museum’s union staff — conservators, archivists, educators, front-of-house staff and others — gathered to push for a second contract that the group hopes will be more robust.
After more than two years of negotiations with management, Guggenheim staff voted to join UAW Local 2110 in 2023 and are now back at the negotiating table with a new sense of urgency. Last year, the museum laid off 20 people, or 7% of its workforce, across multiple departments, the third round of layoffs in five years.
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At the time, museum leadership cited “the overall financial situation” as “not where it needs to be” as the reason for the layoffs, and viewed it as part of a broader “reorganization.” The museum union said it had not received advance notice of the layoffs. A grievance was filed against the museum in February 2025, and contract negotiations have since made job security a top priority.
Anton Sherin, archivist at the Guggenheim since 2009, tells us art news“, “I’m a department now; the rest of my department has been laid off. I’m doing multiple people’s work without increasing my pay, and I’m not an isolated case. This is unsustainable – and this is a problem that will catch up with museums.
His sentiments are echoed by Simone Sanchez, visitor experience assistant since 2021: “They cut a third of the visitor services team. There used to be five or six people, now there’s only one person left.”
After handing out fliers detailing the negotiations at a Beauvais preview earlier in the day, about 30 union employees gathered again at the Guggenheim Museum tonight, waving signs that read “Marit, do Wright things,” referring to museum director Marit Westerman and Frank Lloyd Wright, the architect behind its iconic building. Another article alluded to an artist whose work figures prominently in the Guggenheim collection, “Kandinsky, can you pay me?”
One caller responded: “What’s disgusting? Union busting!”
Union negotiators are seeking higher wages and lower benefit costs. Entry-level employees at the Guggenheim earn as little as $24 an hour, and half of the museum’s employees make less than $71,000 a year, according to the union. Workers making less than $75,000 a year must pay about $4,700 a year for family coverage and about $1,600 for individual coverage. For longer-tenured museum professionals earning more than $75,000, family coverage is more than $6,200 per year and individual coverage is more than $2,000. The union also claims that in addition to payroll deductions for insurance premiums, employees must pay copays and annual deductibles out of pocket.
“The museum vehemently rejected our suggestion,” said Maida Rosenstein, organizing director for UAW Local 2110. “They said the current contract was good when workers were living paycheck to paycheck. If they increased wages, no one would get rich; workers would be paid a living wage.”
Representatives for the Guggenheim Museum did not respond art news Request to comment.
In August 2023, nearly 150 Guggenheim employees ratified their first contracts with the support of United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 2110. The three-year deal guarantees wage increases of at least 9% over the next two and a half years and provides for higher retirement contributions, four weeks of paid family leave and funding for job training. The contract also sets minimum wages for full-time and part-time employees. (The Guggenheim’s art conservators and facilities staff are affiliated with a separate union, Local 30, the International Union of Operating Engineers, which also represents staff at New York’s MoMA PS1.)
Guggenheim employees are part of a wave of cultural workers unionization that is gaining momentum in the wake of job insecurity brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic. In January of this year, employees at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art formally voted to join Local 2110, forming one of the largest bargaining units among American cultural institutions. Today, Local 2110’s membership includes staff from the Hispanic Institute Museum and Library, the Brooklyn Museum, the Whitney Museum, and other New York City arts organizations.
“I think a museum is the sum of its people, and we are a strong community at the Guggenheim, but when museums are understaffed and workers are underpaid, those workers are hesitant,” Schelling said. “This may be a remarkable museum, but the idea they’re pushing is not what it needs to be.”
