News
175 Workers Face Lockout at Canada's National Gallery
The National Gallery of Canada may lock out 175 of its employees next month if negotiations between the museum and the union that represents the workers are not successful.
Labor
Art
Unemployment as Artwork
WASHINGTON, DC — In a tiny storefront in DC’s Shaw neighborhood, Paul Shortt grimaces as his gray dress pants rip along the seams. They’re clearly inadequate for his large, bearlike figure, but he loops a belt through and leaves the pants unbuttoned.
News
Sotheby's Lays Off Staff Amid Restructuring
Sotheby's auction house underwent a round of layoffs today as part of an internal restructuring, CNBC reported. The cuts, which come three days after the company announced a major partnership with eBay, were announced in a companywide meeting at 9am this morning, Hyperallergic has learned.
Interview
A New Street Art and Graffiti Museum in New Jersey?
This week, Jersey City's Mana Contemporary made the surprise announcement that they will be creating a street art and graffiti museum in a 100,000-square-foot former ice factory near the Holland Tunnel entrance.
News
Whitney Museum to Offer Year of Free Admission to Construction Workers
At a hard-hat tour of the Whitney's Renzo Piano-designed building in downtown Manhattan earlier this month, it was announced that the institution plans to extend a year of museum membership to the project's construction workers.
News
After Negotiations, Frieze New York Agrees to Union Labor
After two years of protests regarding its use of non-union labor, Frieze New York announced today that it will be employing union workers for the 2014 iteration of the art fair on Randall's Island.
News
NEA Captures Data on Artists with Day Jobs
Not long ago we wrote about a study that took up the question of who is an artist, examining some of the ways in which defining creative workers is difficult. On Monday the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) added to the conversation by releasing a new data set called "Keeping My Day Job: Identif
News
Sydney Biennale Boycott Grows
Four more artists have joined the boycott of the Biennale of Sydney, and the protest of arts organizations connected to Transfield, a company that manages mandatory offshore detention centers for asylum seekers in Australia, is growing.
News
African Artists Protest "Indentured Servitude" at Korean Museum
African artists hired by a Korean museum have been laboring under conditions "similar to indentured servitude," South Korean newspaper the Hankyoreh reports. Their allegations about the circumstances under which they lived and worked at the museum are appalling.
News
UK Arts Workers Underpaid, but Satisfied
An organization called ArtsHub has conducted an arts jobs survey in the UK, and the results make clear just how difficult and unsustainable it is to work in the arts.
Art
Five Things I Learned While Teaching a Class on Arts and Labor
In August and September I facilitated a class focused on labor issues within the arts. Specifically, we looked at how and when artists receive or don’t receive payment for their work, and the broader implications of compensating artists. Because there was such a great mix of students in the class wo
News
Study Finds That Artists Are Happy Being Artists
Stereotypically, artists are known for being moody, brooding, depressed types. But a new study of working artists in Europe finds that they're actually much happier with their jobs than their non-artist counterparts.