On Wednesday in Manhattan, VIP guests trickled into the Guggenheim Museum to celebrate its buzzy Carol Bove show, while outside, its unionized staff—conservators, archivists, educators, front-facing staff, and others—rallied for a second contract that the group hopes will be more robust.
The 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—7 percent of its staff—across multiple departments, marking its third round of layoffs in five years.
At the time, museum leadership cited an “overall financial picture” that “is not where it needs to be” as the reason for the job cuts, which were framed as part of a broader “reorganization.” The museum’s 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.
Anton Sherin, an archivist at the Guggenheim since 2009, told ARTnews, “I’m a department of one now; the rest of my department was laid off. I’m expected to do multiple people’s job without an increase in pay, and I’m not an isolated case. This is not sustainable—it’s a problem that’s going to catch up to the museum.”
His sentiment was echoed by Simone Sanchez, a visitor experience associate since 2021: “They 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’s just one.”
After handing out flyer detailing the state of negotiations at the Bove preview earlier that day, some 30 unionized employees gathered again at the Guggenheim tonight, brandishing signs that read “Mariët, Do the Wright Thing,” a reference to museum director Mariët 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, “Kandinsky, Can U Pay Me?”
One call-and-response went: “What’s disgusting? Union busting!”
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 roughly $4,700 annually 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.
”The museum has responded with an aggressive rejection to our proposals,” said Maida Rosenstein, director of organizing at Local 2110 at UAW. “They 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.”
A representative for the Guggenheim did not respond to an ARTnews request for comment by publication.
In August 2023, nearly 150 Guggenheim employees ratified their first contract under 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 establishes minimum rates 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 represents staff at New York’s MoMA PS1.)
Guggenheim 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’s umbrella spans workers at the Hispanic Society Museum and Library, Brooklyn Museum, the Whitney Museum, and other arts organizations across New York City.
“I think of a museum as the sum of its people—and we’re a strong community at the Guggenheim—but when it’s understaffed and its workers are underpaid, those workers will hold themselves back,” said Sherin. “This could be a phenomenal museum, but the ideas they’re pushing through is not what it needs.”
