Worker-led feminist mobilizing for the museum of the future

Abstract

Museum workers have taken a massive hit during the pandemic when many museums closed their doors, cut staff hours, instituted layoffs and furloughs, and pushed more into precarity. For many workers, the effect of the pandemic has highlighted long-standing issues of racial, economic, gender and political inequality. This article engages with how workers are responding to this insecurity by highlighting worker-led feminist mobilizations for transformation in museums based in the United States and the United Kingdom. By focusing on efforts for engaging with the Black Lives Matter movement, decolonizing the museum, unionizing workers and providing mutual aid, this article examines worker-led practices of transformation of the museum amid crisis. A special emphasis is put on how workers articulate the importance of feminist solidarity and collective action in envisioning a more just museum of the future.

“Not just for coal miners”: Unionization in U.S. art museums

“…As museum workers unionize and forge new solidarities, they are redistributing power in the organizational chart, undermining traditional hierarchies that privilege the “intellectual” labor of curators above all others, and breaking down the departmental silos that hinder communication, efficiency, and relations. Middleton and Hagen (2022) also describe how “It is an activist initiative to situate museum professionals as workers and frame them within a labour [ sic ] movement. Organizing people with the identity of worker is a powerful act of solidarity” (p. 3).…”

“…They cite that the largest cultural institutions that received Paycheck Protection Program funding from the federal government reduced their staff by 28%, or more than 14,400 workers (p. 2). Middleton and Hagen (2022), meanwhile, have documented four primary areas of grassroots organizing among rank-and-file museum workers who have reached a tipping point with this leadership; one such area is unionization. The ongoing rapidity of this movement lends urgency to my study.…”

The Identity Of Loyalty To The Surabaya Hero Museum In East Java

“…According to (McCarthy, 2020;Middleton & Hagen, 2022), this experience quality is a subjective response from visitors to what is seen directly or indirectly with products or services from service providers. This involves several elements from the visitors: emotions, extraordinary feelings (fantasy), and various other perceptions.…”