Brooklyn Museum, American Folk Art Museum, and Whitney Museum Unions Vote in Favor of Strikes

Unionized staff at three New York City cultural institutions—the Brooklyn Museum, the American Folk Art Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art—voted in favor of strike action if they do not receive satisfactory offers on their contracts, Local 2110 UAW announced today.

Local 2110 UAW, which represents workers at a broad network of museums and cultural institutions across the country, said its members voted overwhelmingly to authorize the union’s elected bargaining committee to call a strike. No strike deadline has been set, as contract negotiations remain ongoing.

“It’s not that we want to strike,” Derrick Charles, a membership associate at the Whitney and union chairperson, said in a statement. “We’d rather be working and doing our jobs but our wages are untenable for making ends meet in New York City.”

One of the museum’s most front-facing employees, Charles works in the lobby selling admission and answering visitors’ questions. He has held the position since 2018 and earns $24 an hour. The 2026 NYC True Cost of Living Measure Annual Report (TCOL) from the New York City government estimates that a single New Yorker without children must earn $34 an hour to meet the city’s current cost of living.

In a statement on behalf of the unionized staff, Local 2110 UAW said all three museums must raise their minimum pay rates, noting that average wages for their staff fall below the $71,000 annual salary that the TCOL report identifies as the minimum required for a single adult to afford to live in New York City.

Staff at the American Folk Art Museum (Afam) voted unanimously to unionize with UAW Local 2110 in June 2024. The union represents employees across various departments, including education, curatorial, visitor services, and IT. The museum has two locations: its galleries on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and a center in Queens.

A spokesperson for the Afam told ARTnews that its leadership is “committed to continuing to bargain in good faith toward a fair and mutually beneficial contract.”

Roughly 200 Whitney employees unionized in 2021, following two rounds of layoffs that reduced the workforce by 20 percent. They ratified their first collective bargaining agreement after 16 months of negotiations, securing layoff protections, minimum pay increases, and an average 15 percent retroactive wage increase, among other provisions. Negotiations for their second contract were marked by a union rally outside the museum’s annual gala on May 19, with members carrying signs that read, among other slogans, “We love fair contracts.”

In response to the strike vote, a spokesperson for the Whitney Museum told ARTnews that it “continues bargaining in good faith and remains committed to arriving at a fair, reasonable contract that respects the needs of all parties.”

Meanwhile, the months leading up to today’s announcement have been fraught for the Brooklyn Museum unions. Last year, museum leadership reversed plans to lay off more than a dozen workers following a $2.5 million grant from the New York City Council. Citing a widening deficit, the Brooklyn Museum had announced plans to cut more than 10 percent of its staff in February 2025, prompting backlash from the two unions representing museum workers, DC 37 Local 1502 and UAW Local 2110. The unions said the cuts had been announced without attempts to negotiate with their bargaining units.

Brooklyn union members rallied outside the museum for weeks, eventually prompting action from city leaders, including a special oversight hearing on February 28. There, Committee on Civil Service and Labor Chair Carmen De La Rosa said layoffs “should be the absolute last resort.”

Elizabeth St. George, an assistant curator at the Brooklyn Museum, said in a statement that she was concerned about health care and job security. “I’ve never expected to get rich as a curator, but I want to be able to rely on having a job with affordable health care and a reasonable salary so I can concentrate on doing the work I love.”

The Brooklyn Museum did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.