Staff at the American Folk Art Museum (Afam) voted unanimously on Thursday (6 June) in favour of forming a union. The election was held just a month after cultural workers at the museum formally announced their intent to organise. The union will include staff across various departments including curatorial, retail, education and information technology.
The staffers’ motivations for organising include advocating for fair wages, better benefits and sustainable working conditions, among other issues.
“I did get the pleasure of being onsite in Manhattan when the votes were counted and it was so exciting to see a unanimous vote from my colleagues across the museum in every department,” says Eve Erickson, executive assistant to the director and chief executive and an administrative manager at Afam. “I am really looking forward to working with my colleagues across the museum to collectively ratify a contract that benefits everyone and builds a better future for the museum.”
Staff of the American Folk Art Museum following the 6 June vote to unionise Courtesy the American Folk Art Museum Union
The museum has two locations: its public galleries on the Upper West Side, near Lincoln Center; and a facility in Queens. The museum was created in 1961 and was previously known as the Museum of Early American Folk Arts. In 2001, the institution officially changed its name to the American Folk Art Museum and expanded into a purpose-built building next-door to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), though due to financial difficulties it ultimately had to sell that building to MoMA in 2011. The distinctive building, by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, was subsequently demolished by MoMA. The Afam collection includes more than 8,000 objects spanning from the 1890s to now.
"I love the museum, its exhibitions and programmes, but I want employment here to be sustainable over a longer period. We’ve seen too many great colleagues leave,” says Jean Seestadt, the museum’s manager of events.
“This obviously is a very strong vote,” says Maida Rosenstein, director of organising at United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 2110. “There is a lot of unity among the staff of the museum and we’re all looking forward to productive collective bargaining with the museum.”
“We respectfully acknowledge the results of [Thursday’s] election, and we continue to look forward to productive negotiations,” a spokesperson for Afam tells The Art Newspaper.
The UAW Local 2110 represents a number of the museums around New York City and across the Northeast that have unionised in recent years, including the Dia Art Foundation, the Jewish Museum, the Museum of Fine Art in Boston and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass Moca). In April, staff at Mass Moca went on strike for three weeks, until they reached a new wage agreement.