[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/IMG_0451-copy.jpg?w=768″]<\/p>\n
\n\tOn Wednesday in Manhattan, VIP guests trickled into the Guggenheim Museum to celebrate its buzzy Carol Bove show, while outside, its unionized staff\u2014conservators, archivists, educators, front-facing staff, and others\u2014rallied for\u00a0a\u00a0second\u00a0contract that the group hopes will be more robust.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Guggenheim staff, who voted to join UAW Local 2110 in 2023 after more than two years of negotiations with management, are back at the bargaining table under renewed urgency. Last year, the museum cut 20 jobs\u20147 percent of its staff\u2014across multiple departments, marking its third round of layoffs in five years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tAt the time, museum leadership cited an \u201coverall financial picture\u201d that \u201cis not where it needs to be\u201d as the reason for the job cuts, which were framed as part of a broader \u201creorganization.\u201d The museum\u2019s union said it had not been given advance notice of the layoffs. In February 2025, a grievance was filed against the museum, and contract negotiations have since positioned job security as a top priority.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tAnton Sherin, an archivist at the Guggenheim since 2009, told ARTnews<\/em>, \u201cI\u2019m a department of one now; the rest of my department was laid off. I\u2019m expected to do multiple people\u2019s job without an increase in pay, and I\u2019m not an isolated case. This is not sustainable\u2014it\u2019s a problem that\u2019s going to catch up to the museum.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHis sentiment was echoed by Simone Sanchez, a visitor experience associate since 2021: \u201cThey got rid of a third of the visitors service team. Where there used to be five or six people on the floor, some days there\u2019s just one.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAfter handing out flyer detailing the state of negotiations at the Bove preview earlier that day, some\u00a030 unionized\u00a0employees\u00a0gathered again at the Guggenheim tonight, brandishing signs that read \u201cMari\u00ebt, Do the Wright Thing,\u201d a reference to museum director Mari\u00ebt Westermann and Frank Loyd Wright, the architect behind its iconic structure. Alluding to an artist whose work is well-represented in the Guggenheim collection, another read, \u201cKandinsky, Can U Pay Me?\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tOne call-and-response went: \u201cWhat\u2019s disgusting? Union busting!\u201d \n\t\u201dThe museum has responded with an aggressive rejection to our proposals,\u201d said Maida Rosenstein, director of organizing at Local 2110 at UAW. \u201cThey say the current contract is fine when workers are living check-to-check. No one will get rich if they increase wages; workers will make a living wage.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tA representative for the Guggenheim did not respond to an ARTnews<\/em> request for comment by publication.<\/p>\n \n\tIn August 2023,\u00a0nearly 150\u00a0Guggenheim employees\u00a0ratified their first contract\u00a0under the auspices of Local 2110 of the United Auto Workers (UAW). The three-year agreement guarantees a minimum 9 percent wage increase over the next two and a half years, along with higher retirement contributions, four weeks of paid family leave, and funding for career training. The contract also\u00a0establishes\u00a0minimum\u00a0rates for both full- and part-time employees. (Art handlers and facilities workers at the Guggenheim joined a separate union, the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 30, which also\u00a0represents\u00a0staff at New York\u2019s MoMA\u00a0PS1.)\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tGuggenheim employees rode a wave of cultural-worker unionizations that gained momentum in the wake of the job insecurity brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic. In January, employees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York officially voted to join Local 2110, forming one of the largest bargaining units at a cultural institution in the country. Today, Local 2110\u2019s umbrella spans workers at the\u00a0Hispanic Society Museum and Library, Brooklyn Museum, the Whitney Museum, and other arts organizations across New York City.\u00a0 [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/guggenheim-union-rally-carol-bove-new-contract-1234775718\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/IMG_0451-copy.jpg?w=768″] On Wednesday in Manhattan, VIP guests trickled into the Guggenheim Museum to celebrate its buzzy Carol Bove show, while outside, its unionized staff\u2014conservators, archivists, educators, front-facing staff, and others\u2014rallied for\u00a0a\u00a0second\u00a0contract that the group hopes will be more robust.\u00a0\u00a0 The Guggenheim staff, who voted to join UAW Local 2110 in 2023 after more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1808269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1808269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1808269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1808269\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1808269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1808269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1808269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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Union negotiators are seeking, among more, higher wages and lower benefit costs. According to the union, entry-level staff at the Guggenheim earn just $24 an hour, and half of all museum employees make less than $71,000 annually. Workers earning under $75,000 per year must pay\u00a0roughly $4,700\u00a0annually for family coverage and about $1,600 for individual coverage. For museum professionals with longer tenures who earn more than $75,000, family coverage exceeds $6,200 per year, while individual coverage tops $2,000. The union also claims that employees must also cover co-pays and annual deductibles out of pocket, in addition to salary deductions for premiums.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI think of a museum as the sum of its people\u2014and we\u2019re a strong community at the Guggenheim\u2014but when it\u2019s understaffed and its workers are underpaid, those workers will hold themselves back,\u201d said Sherin. \u201cThis could be a phenomenal museum, but the ideas they\u2019re pushing through is not what it needs.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n