The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York introduced on Friday that it’s going to lay off 20 staff in an effort to enhance its monetary scenario. The cuts, which signify round 7% of the museum’s workers, are in response to “quite a lot of challenges felt throughout our subject, in the US and overseas, together with rising prices, variable attendance ranges and adjustments in worldwide tourism”, a Guggenheim spokesperson stated in an announcement.
In a letter to workers quoted by The New York Occasions, the museum’s director and chief government Mariët Westermann wrote that the choice was mandatory as a result of the establishment’s “total monetary image is just not the place it must be”. The layoffs will have an effect on workers in six departments, together with training, publications, archives and development. Curators and executives is not going to be affected, and senior leaders is not going to take pay cuts as a part of the try and reign in prices.
“In recent times, we’ve taken proactive steps to adapt our monetary and operational fashions to this altering atmosphere,” a museum spokesperson added. “Whereas these efforts are creating the situations for long-term development and sustainability, our present monetary image requires us to make the troublesome resolution to scale back staffing and reorganise some groups to place the museum properly for the longer term. Our impacted colleagues have proven dedication and dedication to the museum and its mission, and we thank them for his or her onerous work.”
The workers reductions introduced Friday come after two earlier rounds of layoffs on the Guggenheim, by which upwards of 30 folks have been let go. In 2023 the museum additionally joined a number of high-profile museums within the US in elevating the worth of common admission to $30. Nevertheless, the museum’s attendance has been gradual to rebound after the Covid-19 pandemic: in keeping with The Artwork Newspaper’s annual survey of museum customer figures, 861,374 folks visited the Guggenheim in 2023, 33% fewer than in 2019.
Employees on the Guggenheim are among the many many museum staff within the US who’ve unionised over the previous decade. In 2019, amenities staff together with installers, artwork handlers and engineers fashioned a union beneath Native 30 of the Worldwide Union of Working Engineers (IUOE). And in 2021, staff together with curators, conservators, educators, customer providers representatives and others organised a union beneath Native 2110 of the United Auto Employees (UAW). In accordance with a consultant for UAW Native 2110, nearly all of staff laid off on Friday are members of the union; representatives for IUOE Native 30 didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
“There have been 14 folks in our union who have been laid off with out discover and have been additionally denied any union illustration within the conferences by which they have been knowledgeable about their layoff,” says Maida Rosenstein, the director of organising for UAW Native 2110. “The museum refused to launch the names of the individuals who have been laid off to the union or to offer us some other data. The union has already filed a grievance over this and has demanded data and bargaining with the museum over the layoffs.”
The Guggenheim is just not the one New York establishment affected by persistent monetary hardships popping out of the pandemic. The Brooklyn Museum has introduced plans to terminate 47 staff (round 10% of its workers) by 10 March in an effort to rectify a funds deficit of almost $10m. As a part of that effort, senior leaders will take wage cuts of as much as 20%. Earlier this week, round 100 folks together with native politicians and colleagues from different museums rallied outdoors the Brooklyn Museum to protest the mass layoffs.
