Next summer, the United States will mark a somber anniversary. In August of 1619, the first recorded group of African people destined for sale in the colonies arrived in Jamestown, Virginia. Although, as Michael Guasco argues at Smithsonian.com, the date is not as important as …
Here’s the weekly jobs roundup for the week of August 20th! Northeast Lunder Institute Administrative Coordinator [Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME] Curatorial Research and Interpretation Associate [Art Bridges- Terra Foundation Initiative- MFA, Boston, MA] Senior Curator/ Manager, Living Collections [Museum of Science, Boston, …
Following three months of contract negotiations and protests over labor issues at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the MoMA Local 2110 Union reached an agreement this Friday for their new contract with the management of the institution. The five-year contract sets salary minimums and includes a new structure for providing pay increases as well as amendments to MoMA’s health care plan. The new contract will offer a seniority step program that offers raises after certain periods of time, a benefit the museum had previously sought to discontinue, as well as guidelines for tuition benefits, paid family leave, and commission and sales benefits for employees in MoMA’s Retail and Visitor Engagement Department. Protests began after the union’s previous contract expired on May 20th of this year with no new one in place. Contract negotiations came at a time of the final push of their massive expansion plan. This expansion plan added fuel to the fire for many due to the museum attempting to offer less while demanding more from their workers in the run-up to the opening.
MoMA Local 2110, also known as PASTA ( Professional and Administrative Staff Association of the Museum of Modern Art,) have long been protesting during contract negotiations, the most recent of which was in 2015 and a full strike in 2000. However, most museums are unable to unionize and/or are too small to successfully negotiate worker contract leading to the pandemic of low salaries and underpaid employees in the museum world. For most of us in or entering the museum field, we are choosing to do what we love, knowing the monetary gratification may not be there. But does that mean it shouldn’t be? Shouldn’t museums be paying their employees livable wages? The answer of course is yes. But why is that not always the case?
The problem of low museum salaries has grown over-time and is both a results of institutional and societal issues. Institutionally, issues of salary equity, with many long term employees still sustaining on archaically low wages, driving down the pay of new hires. Also at issue, the limited overall funding available to many museums as staff are often included with heat and electricity in the museum’s overhead. However, many of the issues in low museum salaries come down to the gender gap and the historical view of museums as “pink-collar” workplace and the hierarchical nature of many institutions. The idea that many women working in museums have family money, or a spouse that can support their career, has long been stereotype of the museum field. Yet, most of us entering the museum field now are young, single, and professionally educated. We cannot rely of the spousal income subsidy to follow our dreams but must juggle student loan payments while we search the oversaturated job market. So what can we do? Negotiate. Calculate a living wage, plus loan, payments and quality of life. We cannot be afraid as young professionals to negotiate a salary and not just leap upon the first job offer received. Most importantly, as emerging professionals we must advocate for professional associations, unions, and museum service organizations that will set and promote national salary standards for museum positions.
This week, the British Museum announced that it would return eight looted artifacts of antiquity to Iraq’s National Museum. These objects, including a 4,000 year old clay-fired cone inscribed in cuneiform, were illegally taken from the country following the US-led Iraq invasion in 2003. While thousands of priceless …
Here’s the weekly jobs roundup for the week of August 13th! Northeast Associate Curator of Education and Experience [Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA] Museum Educator [USS Constitution Museum, Boston, MA] Public Art Curator [Arlington Commission for Arts and Culture, Arlington, MA] Development Assistant [JFK Presidential …
I recently had the pleasure of going on a tour of the New-York Historical Society‘s special exhibit on Citizenship, entirely curated and presented by Teen Leaders. The exhibit is located on Governor’s Island, a park in New York Harbor that hosts a variety of art installations, food trucks, performances, and other events and activities. A decommissioned military base, exhibits are hosted in the homes of former military officers, making for an interesting backdrop for an exhibit on citizenship.
The Teen Leaders are part of a multi-year Student Historian Internship program at the museum. After completing a summer as a Student Historian, returning students can become Student Curators or Educators. Using New-York Historical’s collection as the basis for their research, last year’s crop of curators created a survey of US history through the lens of citizenship – who has it, who determines eligibility, and how those questions have shaped the United States of America.
The exhibit moves through ideas about who was originally granted citizenship, when different groups of people agitated for full citizen rights, and moments when factions took action to rescind rights from certain groups. The exhibit does not shy away from discussing complicated moments from the United States’ past, and takes care to include a wide representation of “Americans”. Native American citizenship is covered, as well as the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Sedition Act, and the 14th and 19th Amendments.
Once the objects are selected (and reproduced), labels written, and the exhibit is hung, a second group of Teen Leaders focusing on Education arrive for the summer. These teens take the curators’ work and develop interpretive content for the exhibit that they lead families in all summer, including theatrical presentations and hands-on activities. It was these students that we interacted with as we went through the exhibit, and their enthusiasm and intellectual curiosity was equally on display.
The Teen Educators led us in activities that asked us to engage with the material presented. We created scrapbooks about rights and responsibilities of citizens; connected new images of America to parts of the exhibition; read and responded to quotations about education in America; created flags that represented our own personal identities and values; and even watched an interactive theatrical performance featuring historical figures. The creativity and variety of the activities really encouraged audiences to think deeply about the topics covered, but also contained enough variety to be appropriate for every age range.
What struck me most as I read the labels and played the games was how well these Teen Leaders grasped the importance of their subject. These students have not shied away from the complicated history of who gets to be an American, and done it deftly with fewer than fifty images, highlighting people and events that challenged or upheld the status quo. It was a welcome reminder that teenagers are ready to work with difficult concepts, whether in the classroom or in an informal learning environment. As emerging museum professionals we should keep their abilities in mind as we plan their field trips and learning experiences.