Grasstops, or Punching Down

Nikki Columbus

Remember Time’s Up, the nonprofit that emerged out of the #MeToo movement, and then imploded in 2021? It turned out that instead of working to empower young women to fight sexual harassment and gender discrimination, the group’s stated mission, the organization’s leaders were more interested in protecting their powerful male friends, like former governor of New York Andrew Cuomo. As the New York Times reported in August 2021, the CEO and chair sought a “grasstops” approach to institutional change—i.e., top-down as opposed to grassroots. While the neologism is risible, there’s nothing funny about the attitude it describes: working hand in hand with people who are part of the problem.

In 2018, a museum-field offshoot of Time’s Up was started—with the same grasstops strategy. Rather than building support from the ground up to demand far-reaching changes at museums (the majority of whose employees are female), the senior white women in the group sought chummy conversations at the executive level. Bringing a list of suggestions to the C-suite without exerting any pressure was never going to accomplish very much, but these women didn’t want to antagonize their bosses (the majority of whom are men) by asking for more than they would be willing to give. Regardless of gender, senior curators and directors are invested in the status quo and maintaining the networks through which they have risen.

Crucially, the leadership of Time’s Up Museums was uninterested in opening the group to museum workers outside the director and curatorial offices. Presumably, this would have meant confronting their liberal white feminist agenda with difficult questions of race and class. Yet BIPOC women are disproportionately affected by the issues that Time’s Up was originally created to confront. Analyses of complaints filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission have shown that nearly 30% of all charges of pregnancy discrimination are made by Black women, although they comprise only 14% of the female workforce in this country. Black women are almost four times more likely to be sexually harassed, and Indigenous women are twice as likely to experience sexual assault.

These outrages aren’t external to the art world and museum culture; rather, they are endemic. More than three years after Jeffrey Epstein’s death, New York’s Museum of Modern Art continues to condone this child sex trafficker and his wealthy clients. Leon Black remains on MoMA’s board despite giving Epstein $158 million and standing accused of rape and trafficking himself. Glenn Dubin, another trustee, has been charged with rape by at least one of Epstein’s victims. But he’s there on the board, and one of the galleries proudly bears his name. The museum wants you to turn a blind eye to the white oligarchs who pour cash into the white cube, distracting visitors with a smokescreen of “diversity” acquisitions and “political art.” Don’t be fooled.

The Nonperformativity of Antiracism

Recall how, at the start of the pandemic, museums were among the first organizations to start laying off employees en masse—largely low-paid, part-time female and Black and brown workers—before virtue-signaling their way through the summer of protest that followed.

During that period of despair and revolt, junior staff at numerous museums addressed open letters to their administrations, demanding structural change and racial justice in the workplace. In response, museums have scrambled to show more works by BIPOC artists and hire senior curators of color and Chief Diversity Officers. But these exhibitions and hires have done little to improve the working conditions of rank-and-file museum employees or alter the museum structure and culture as a whole.

Sara Ahmed first wrote about the “nonperformativity of antiracism” nearly two decades ago. In contrast to J. L. Austin’s “performative utterances,” which carry out an action, she argues that institutional language promoting diversity is intended to do the opposite: to not accomplish what it names. “The work of such speech acts seems to be precisely how they function to hinder rather than enable action,” she writes. “In other words, the failure, or the nonperformativity, of antiracist speech acts is a mechanism for the reproduction of institutional authority, which conceals the ongoing reality of racism.”

Translating this across to the museum world: All those hires and acquisitions described above aren’t bad. But they can halt the work that needs to be done by acting as if they are enough. As the Instagram account Change the Museum (@changethemuseum, begun June 2020) regularly testifies, museum workers are treated appallingly, especially junior employees of color—belittled, micro-aggressed, fired. It’s no wonder that workers have sought to unionize and have succeeded, despite deep resistance from administrators.

Bottoms Up!

You probably haven’t heard the story of Caitlin Halloran, who worked in visitor engagement at MoMA PS1. In May 2018, Halloran was fired for discussing workplace concerns—the museum was taking the money put in tip jars for event staff—and suggesting that employees join a union. She went to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which ordered MoMA PS1 to distribute a “notice to employees” explaining that Halloran’s actions were entirely legal and in no way a just reason for termination. Unfortunately, she didn’t get her job back.

Entry- and mid-level workers like Halloran are behind the wave of unionization that has swept across arts institutions in the last few years: New York’s New Museum, Whitney, and Guggenheim; Philadelphia Museum of Art; MFA Boston; Art Institute of Chicago; the and Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, among others. In every case, the union was fought by the museum administration, who hired expensive firms to file legal challenges—while simultaneously claiming they couldn’t afford to raise wages and improve benefits.

Museum leaders still refuse to negotiate with their unions in good faith. Workers at the Philadelphia Museum of Art went on strike for two weeks in October 2022. Among other sticking points, the union was asking for four weeks of paid family or medical leave in place of zero. 1 Although the Brooklyn Museum has a center for feminist art, its largely female union has held multiple rallies after filing a charge with the NLRB for unfair labor practices.

Meanwhile, Time’s Up Museums retooled itself as Museums Moving Forward (MMF) in 2020, receiving over $700,000 from the Ford and Mellon Foundations, among other funders. Like the earlier group, MMF is almost entirely made up of senior curators—setting it apart from earlier groups interested in reforming the arts and culture sector, such as (De)Institutional Research Team ((D)IRT), NYC Museum & Culture Workers (NYCMCW), and the People’s Cultural Plan (PCP), just to name a few. These groups have drawn their members from artists and art workers more generally. Without the financial backing of major foundations, they created influential actions small and large—from (D)IRT’s alternative guide to the Whitney Biennial (which focused on land extraction, labor exploitation, and art washing), to NYCMCW’s regular “happyhours” for workers to meet and exchange ideas, to PCP’s massive plan for New York City’s arts funding. MMF, on the other hand, has chosen to take the nonperformative route of compiling surveys and statistics rather than taking action. They are currently researching what’s wrong with museums—as if we didn’t already know: white supremacy, toxic philanthropy, vast pay differentials, and plutophilia.

In November 2022, ninety-two museum leaders from around the world issued a statement about their most urgent concern right now: climate activists. That’s right, directors are worried about aluminium cans nicking the panes of glass that protect the museum’s paintings. The irony is off the scales. Thanks to the philanthrocapitalism that keeps these institutions afloat, these “irreplaceable objects” of “world cultural heritage” already have a decreasing chance of surviving the impending environmental apocalypse. God forbid museums prioritize their workers over their objects, but even the art is secondary to cossetting the trustees and donors.

1 The federal Family and Medical Leave Act gives many workers the right to take twelve weeks of unpaid time off; New York is one of the few states that provides twelve weeks of paid leave. Note, however, that the wage benefit is only 67% of an employee’s regular pay and is capped.1 The federal Family and Medical Leave Act gives many workers the right to take twelve weeks of unpaid time off; New York is one of the few states that provides twelve weeks of paid leave. Note, however, that the wage benefit is only 67% of an employee’s regular pay and is capped.

2 It is true that other successful campaigns began with surveys, such as Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E., started in 2008), which gathered information before launching its model for minimum payment standards at nonprofit arts organizations. However, these issues had not been widely discussed and publicized at the time.

February 2023