Foreword
This 2025 Report is published by Museums Moving Forward (MMF), a limited-life organization whose mission is to create a more just museum sector by 2030. MMF conducts and produces this data study and report every two years, analyzing patterns and trends in employment across US art museums and offering exclusive insights. This study is unique in that it delivers data collected firsthand from workers nationwide, across all roles and departments, distinguishing it from other studies of the field. Mirroring the format of MMF’s inaugural 2023 report, this year’s edition introduces longitudinal data to track change over time in key areas.
Understanding the art museum workforce in 2025 requires consideration of the broader forces that are currently shaping the sector, including how diversity discourse is evolving, the intergenerational dynamics in the workplace, and the ongoing museum unionization movement.1
Art museum workplaces are still experiencing the effects of the 2020 racial justice uprisings and a corresponding pressure to address racism and other inequities. Simultaneously they find themselves navigating the recent backlash against diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion (DEAI) efforts and the even more recent anti-DEAI laws.2
Meanwhile, as the percentage of Baby Boomers and Gen X workers in art museums decreases while that of Millennials and Gen Z workers increases, significant generational differences are being expressed within the workplace, all of which we explore in the report.3
These generational gaps are also playing a role in the unionization movement. According to 2024 data from Gallup, 77% of Americans under the age of 34 approve of unions, a higher approval rating among any other age group.4 With 71% of art museum union members being Millennials and Gen Z, these national trends are reflected in the museum sector, too. It is not yet clear what the long-term impacts of these unions will be on the field, as over half (55%) of art museum unions have formed within the last five years. However, from this data we can extrapolate some key findings to better understand why workers are forming unions, as well as what younger workers value and expect from art museums moving forward.
The data for this study was collected between November 2024 and February 2025. There are comparisons throughout this report to MMF’s inaugural 2023 Report. For that study, we collected data between October and December 2022, when workers were still feeling the acute effects of COVID-19 pandemic-era layoffs and the Great Resignation.5
The 2025 data shows improved conditions overall within art museum workplaces in the past two years. Workers report feeling more satisfied across most metrics, with a decrease in burnout and the desire to quit, but some key sticking points—low pay and few promotions—are still sticky. This report includes analysis of pay and promotion rates in addition to a new exploration of household income and living wages based on museum locations. MMF’s core belief is that art museum workers should not have to choose between working in service to a mission and being able to afford basic living expenses. They should be able to do both, with dignity and respect, and sustain themselves for long-term careers in the field.
What does it mean to establish fair pay in the art museum sector? Which workers earn a living wage in art museums? What are the costs that museums bear without a diverse and sustainable workforce in today’s competitive cultural environment? We believe these questions are essential to ask, even and especially in a moment of profound uncertainty, when we know the financial strain on art museums is increasingly acute. The field must listen and attend to the needs of its workers—which are clearly expressed in the data—because workers are as valuable an asset to these institutions as any other. Investing in workers now will help retain the diversity already present in the sector and support the growth of future museum leaders.
In the pages that follow, you will find insights on the art museum sector through an aggregate analysis of the data across all Partner Museums (see the full list here) and individual staff survey respondents. Each section of findings—Workplace Culture, Career Satisfaction, Pay and Promotions, and Discrimination and Harassment—includes a subsection on the impact of unions or worker perspectives of unions. At the end of the report, you will find MMF’s recommendations on how leaders can make more data-informed decisions to move the field forward.
We share this report as a tool for discussion and a catalyst in the evolving discourse on equity in art museums.
— Museums Moving Forward