MMF: Publications | Exploring the tensions in US Art Museums

August 27, 2025

Liz Levine, MMF’s Head of Programs

MMF’s 2023 Data Study Report found that art museum workers were profoundly dissatisfied with their workplaces and careers, more dissatisfied on many metrics than US workers overall. This finding resonated with many, myself included, who saw their struggles within art museums reflected in the data. But the full data shows us a more complex picture. There is a tension workers feel between their disappointment in and love for museums. To quote the 2023 Report: “art museum work is meaningful, as workers have overwhelmingly said in this study. Yet such workplaces are plagued with structural inequities that are not only detrimental to workers but also in deep conflict with stated institutional priorities about equity and diversity.”¹ The two essays in this publication series explore and expose these tensions, informed by the voices of art museum workers themselves.

Hannah Heller and Gwendolyn Fernandez are both long-time organizers with Museum Workers Speak (MWS), the activist collective that formed in 2015 and has led mutual aid efforts through the Museum Workers Relief Fund since 2020. In their essay, “Museum Workers Reflect on Their Visions for Museums ‘Post’ Covid: I love museums, but…,” they analyze the qualitative data from the open-ended responses to their Relief Fund’s 2024 application. Their conclusion gives voice to MMF’s quantitative findings. Hannah and Gwendolyn note that “palpable throughout the data is a tension between a profound belief in the potential of museums and feeling regularly mistreated and disappointed by the realities of low-paying jobs, toxic work environments, and a failure to meet the ideals set forth in mission statements.” Their essay helps us see that workers love museums and are demanding change so that they can sustain careers in them. 

To better understand the context from which this tension arises, we asked Nizan Shaked—who has written extensively about the relationship between art museums, the art market, and broader economic and sociopolitical structures—to respond directly to Hannah and Gwendolyn’s analysis. In her essay, “Listening to Museum Workers Speak,” Nizan explores the needs voiced by cultural workers and offers a historical perspective on their predicament. Art museums are, at once, a site of disruption and creativity stewarded by passionate staff and a financial enterprise where “confidence in the art market is stabilized by centuries of public collecting [by museums], just as currency is stabilized by national banks.” It is in this context that while some workers make below a living wage and find inspiration in the labor actions of Amazon delivery drivers and Starbucks baristas, their institutions court the attention of ultra-high-net-worth individuals whose names might adorn galleries and endow leadership positions. 

Nizan grounds her critiques in what she hears from Museum Workers Speak. It is not enough, she argues, to try to find stability by holding onto status quo modes of operating. Those practices, even with the best of intentions, will never get us what museum workers want and need. Her proposal for how to extricate us from this cycle—a tax on the secondary art market to create a public funding pool for museums—may be easy to dismiss as impossible in the current political climate. However, what I find in her proposal is a recognition of the tension inherent in the current marriage between capital and art, the effect of which is widespread precarity for both workers and institutions. Even if you may have other ideas of how we get there, I encourage you to seriously consider Nizan’s call, quoting the artist Tourmaline that “now is the time to dream as big as the problems are.” 

The organizing efforts of MWS present a model for how to enact Nizan’s funding proposal. Hannah and Gwendolyn write, “we believe solidarity is the key to resisting capitalist structures and building institutions that care for people and not just collections.” Solidarity makes possible a new kind of art museum: one that is responsive to the needs of those most marginalized by its current structures, that prioritizes shared leadership, and that centers transparency in decision-making processes. These are not just words in an aspirational mission statement; they are actionable strategies to yield material outcomes. As Gwendolyn shares during our conversation, “because we showed up and did something together, we gave out $125,000, which is pretty cool.” 

*To read the articles and our moderated conversation, you can click through the right-hand table of contents on web or the drop-down menu on mobile. 

Endnotes

_{[1] Jen Benoit-Bryan, Diane Jean-Mary, and Mia Locks, “Workplace Equity and Organizational Culture in US Art Museums 2023 Report,” Museums Moving Forward, 2023, 90, https://museumsmovingforward.com/data-studies/2022-2023.}