Will Strike Authorization Effect Fall Shows at the Whitney, Brooklyn Museum, and AFAM?
Workers at Whitney Museum of American Art, Brooklyn Museum, and American Folk Art Museum (AFAM) say they are ready to strike if they do not receive fair offers on their union contract, according to Local 2110’s director of organizing Maida Rosenstein. Unionized staff at each museum has voted to authorize their elected bargaining committee to set a strike deadline if necessary. All museums have major openings early next month, Cézanne to Modigliani: Gifts of Modern Art from the Pearlman Collection at Brooklyn Museum (Oct. 2), Locating Girlhood: Place and Identity in Early American “Schoolgirl” Art at AFAM (Oct. 9), and Roy Lichtenstein: Like New at the Whitney (Oct. 11) that would be severely impacted by a strike.
The Union wants to raise minimum pay rates for staff and points to average wages for its members that are below the $71,000 per year that the City recently cited as needed for a single adult to afford to live in New York in its NYC True Cost of LIving Measure Annual Report. ”It’s not that we want to strike,” says Derrick Charles, a Membership Associate at the Whitney and Union Chairperson. “We’d rather be working and doing our jobs but our wages are untenable for making ends meet in New York City.” Employed in the Visitor and Membership Services Department, Charles works in the lobby of the Whitney, selling tickets and memberships to visitors and answering questions. He’s been in the position since 2018 and earns $24 per hour.
Anne Pasternak, the Brooklyn Museum’s director, was remunerated $705,906 in 2024 according to the museum’s tax filings. Director Scott Rothkopf was compensated $967,691 at the Whitney Museum, an institution whose net assets are listed as $1,027,457,000, with revenue of $191,356,000, expenses of $96,002,000, and net income of $95,354,000 in 2025. In 2025, AFAM director Jason T. Busch was compensated $331,886.
Voting to authorize a strike does not guarantee workers will strike, but it serves as an important negotiating tool. In June, staff at Solomon R. Guggenheim voted to authorize a strike as the negotiations that had been ongoing since December 2025 had reached a stalemate—workers did not accept a wage increase offer beginning at 3%. Without a strike taking place, an agreement was reached in August, providing an average salary increase of 11% over the lifetime of the two-and-a-half-year contract, better health and retirement benefits, and a grievance procedure with arbitration and a requirement that managers have just cause to fire an employee.
Elizabeth St. George, an Assistant Curator at the Brooklyn Museum, is concerned about health care and job security. “I’ve never expected to get rich as a curator,” she says, “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.”
Richard Ho, Director of Information Technologies for AFAM, who has worked at the Museum for 25 years, says he loves AFAM but stands with his colleagues: “AFAM staff voted unanimously to unionize to address pressing concerns about workplace rights and wages that lag below inflation. Staff should be able to afford to live in the city they work in.”
Amidst a cost of living crisis, Local 2110 is providing thousands of museum workers in New York with strength to negotiate better conditions for their work. Besides Whitney Museum, Brooklyn Museum, AFAM, and Guggenheim, workers at Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Jewish Museum, Hispanic Society, Noguchi Museum and New York Historical are all represented by Local 2110.
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