Unionized staff members at four of New York City’s most prominent cultural institutions—the Brooklyn Museum, the Guggenheim Museum, the Jewish Museum, and the American Folk Art Museum (AFAM)—have successfully ratified new labor contracts, UAW Local 2110 announced today. The agreements mark a major turning point for museum workers across the city, bringing an end to months of tense bargaining, public demonstrations, and looming strike threats driven by concerns over inflation, job security, and health care affordability.
According to the union, the Brooklyn Museum and AFAM finalized their respective four-year contracts this week, while the unions representing workers at the Guggenheim and the Jewish Museum ratified their agreements earlier in September. ARTnews has contacted all four institutions for comment regarding the newly approved contracts.
The new agreement at the Brooklyn Museum represents the institution’s second collective bargaining contract with its unionized workforce. The deal guarantees consistent annual raises and establishes significantly higher minimum salaries for full-time positions, bringing them to a range between $63,585 and $129,854, depending on the specific position level. These financial increases take effect retroactively to July 1, and the established minimums are slated to rise by another 10.34 percent by the conclusion of the contract. Additionally, front-facing visitor services and retail associates will see their hourly wages scale up to between $28.69 and $32 per hour by the end of the agreement.
“We are pleased to have negotiated a second contract that preserves the quality of our health care and provides significant wage increases,” Elizabeth St. George, an assistant curator at the Brooklyn Museum, said in a statement. “It was important to us to maintain affordable health care, including keeping an out-of-network option.”
The successful ratification at the Brooklyn Museum follows a tumultuous period marked by severe financial anxiety and internal friction. In early 2025, museum leadership shocked workers by announcing plans to eliminate more than 10 percent of the staff as the institution struggled to cope with a mounting $10 million operating deficit. The announcement triggered immediate and fierce backlash from the two labor unions representing the museum’s workforce—DC 37 Local 1502 and UAW Local 2110—whose representatives emphasized that leadership had moved forward with the cuts without consulting employees.
Ultimately, the planned layoffs never materialized. Union members maintained a steady and visible presence outside the museum, rallying in protest for weeks. The sustained public pressure eventually caught the attention of the New York City Council, which stepped in with a $2.5 million grant designed to help bridge the museum’s financial shortfall and protect staff positions.
Meanwhile, at the American Folk Art Museum (AFAM), workers have ratified their inaugural union contract following nearly two years of arduous bargaining. The landmark agreement guarantees annual wage increases totaling 13.6 percent over four years for the entire staff. Entry-level employees working in the museum store, as well as security and facilities associates, will secure immediate raises ranging between 8 and 22 percent, retroactive to July 1.
Beyond compensation, the AFAM contract establishes a formal, binding grievance procedure and guarantees additional premium pay for employees who take on extra duties or are required to report on-site during an emergency. The agreement also places strict limits on the museum’s reliance on temporary employees and outside subcontractors to fill roles that should belong to regular staff, while securing health-care coverage that requires no employee premium contributions.
Richard Ho, director of information technologies at AFAM, who has dedicated 25 years of service to the institution, reflected on the milestone in a statement. “AFAM staff voted unanimously to unionize to address pressing concerns about our workplace,” Ho said. “I’m happy that we were able to reach an agreement that will make the Museum a more sustainable place to work for all of us. I’m proud that our entire staff stayed involved and supported each other throughout this process.”
The road to the AFAM contract was similarly fraught with friction. Earlier this year, union members picketed the museum’s annual fundraising gala to draw public attention to stalled negotiations. Protesters openly denounced the museum’s initial proposal, which sought to raise the minimum wage for front-facing staff from $19 to $21.50 an hour while simultaneously stripping away guaranteed existing benefits.
These newly finalized agreements effectively bring a tense chapter of labor negotiations within New York’s cultural sector to a close. In late September, unionized staff members at the Brooklyn Museum held a joint strike-authorization vote alongside their counterparts at the Whitney Museum and AFAM. Throughout those votes, union organizers consistently cited overriding concerns regarding job security, the preservation of affordable health care, and wages capable of keeping pace with New York City’s notoriously high cost of living.
At the Guggenheim Museum, where approximately 150 curators, conservators, educators, and public programmers organized a union in 2021, workers ratified their historic first contract—a two-and-a-half-year agreement—in 2023. The institutional landscape shifted again in February 2025, when the museum announced the layoff of 20 employees, accounting for roughly 7 percent of its workforce. Mariët Westermann, who assumed the role of the museum’s director and chief executive in 2024, pointed to a broader “financial picture” that had steadily deteriorated over the preceding decade as the driving factor behind the cuts.
Negotiations for a subsequent Guggenheim contract officially kicked off in December 2025. During these talks, the museum’s bargaining unit pressed heavily for “strengthened job security provisions, including advance notice of layoffs, and improved severance pay,” according to statements released by the union. Drew Reynolds, the union chair, publicly criticized the handling of the February staff reductions, describing them as having been “implemented chaotically.”
The tension at the Guggenheim spilled out into public view in March, when union members picketed the museum’s high-profile opening reception for a survey of work by artist Carol Bove. Demonstrators used the event to protest what they characterized as the museum leadership’s repeated rejections of reasonable union demands.
According to updates from UAW Local 2110, the Jewish Museum’s union successfully ratified its second collective bargaining agreement in September as well, further consolidating the wave of labor stability washing over the city’s museum network.
While several major institutions have reached terms, labor disputes continue to evolve elsewhere in the city. The unionized staff at the Whitney Museum remains actively engaged at the bargaining table, operating under the shadow of a looming October 5 strike date. That deadline falls just three days before member previews are scheduled to begin for the museum’s major Roy Lichtenstein retrospective. Roughly 200 Whitney employees originally unionized in 2021 following two successive rounds of layoffs that slashed the museum’s workforce by 20 percent.
UAW Local 2110, which represents cultural and academic workers across the United States, noted that its organizing and bargaining efforts extend well beyond these four institutions. The local union reported that it is currently at the negotiating table securing new contracts for workers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the South Street Seaport Museum, and the Noguchi Museum.
