Brooklyn Museum and Folk Art Museum Unions Ratify Contracts

Unionized staff at four New York cultural institutions—the Brooklyn Museum, the Guggenheim Museum, the Jewish Museum, and the American Folk Art Museum (AFAM)—have ratified new contracts, UAW Local 2110 announced. The Brooklyn Museum and AFAM finalized four-year contracts this week; the Guggenheim and Jewish Museum unions ratified their agreements in September. ARTnews has contacted the museums for comment.

The Brooklyn Museum's second contract guarantees annual raises and lifts minimum salaries for full-time positions to between $63,585 and $129,854, depending on position level. The increases take effect retroactively to July 1, and those minimums will rise another 10.34 percent by the end of the contract. Front-facing visitor services and retail associates will earn between $28.69 and $32 per hour by the contract's end.

"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 agreement follows months of tension over the museum's finances. In early 2025, museum leadership announced plans to cut more than 10 percent of its staff while contending with a $10 million operating deficit. The move drew backlash from the two unions representing museum workers, DC 37 Local 1502 and UAW Local 2110, whose representatives said they had not been consulted. The cuts never materialized. Union members rallied outside the museum for weeks, drawing the attention of the New York City Council, which responded with a $2.5 million grant to help offset the shortfall.

At AFAM, the union ratified its inaugural contract after nearly two years of bargaining. The deal guarantees annual wage increases totaling 13.6 percent over four years for all staff. Entry-level employees in the museum store and security and facilities associates will receive raises of between 8 and 22 percent, retroactive to July 1. The contract also establishes a binding grievance procedure, additional pay for employees who take on extra duties or work on-site during emergencies, limits on temporary employees and subcontractors in place of regular staff, and health-care coverage without employee premium contributions.

"AFAM staff voted unanimously to unionize to address pressing concerns about our workplace," Richard Ho, director of information technologies at AFAM and a 25-year museum veteran, said in a statement. "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."

Earlier this year, the AFAM union picketed the museum's annual fundraising gala to protest stalled negotiations and an initial management offer to raise the minimum wage for front-facing staff from $19 to $21.50 an hour without guaranteeing existing benefits.

The Guggenheim settlement closes another fraught round of talks. The union, organized in 2021 and representing roughly 150 curators, conservators, educators, and public programmers, ratified its first contract in 2023. In February 2025, the museum laid off 20 employees—7 percent of its workforce—with director and chief executive Mariët Westermann, in post since 2024, citing a "financial picture" that had deteriorated over the previous decade. Negotiations for the new contract began in December 2025, with the bargaining unit seeking "strengthened job security provisions, including advance notice of layoffs, and improved severance pay." Union chair Drew Reynolds described the February layoffs as having been "implemented chaotically." In March, the union picketed the opening reception for the museum's Carol Bove survey.

The picture elsewhere in New York remains unsettled. The Whitney Museum union is still at the bargaining table, with a strike date set for October 5—three days before member previews begin for the museum's Roy Lichtenstein retrospective. Roughly 200 Whitney employees unionized in 2021, after two rounds of layoffs cut the workforce by 20 percent. Local 2110 said it is also negotiating new contracts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the South Street Seaport Museum, and the Noguchi Museum.