Money, money, money, it’s always funny…
By: Martina Novak
Tags: Art, Money, Money Mindset

A story about being paid in the art world

MN · June 14 2019

The future is now and I am thrilled about it. Like so many others, I have been waiting since 2001 for this to start happening. What’s happening?

Well, first, about two weeks ago, an amazing message appeared on my phone. The best news I have received since almost two decades. The Louvre app informed me early in the morning that the museum will not open that day. The reason? The “front end” staff of “the world’s largest art museum and a historic monument” went on strike and is determined to keep the museum closed for at least a day. What happens next, they will let the world know after the negotiations.

Yeeeeees! Finally!!!

Then, shortly after the Louvre strike, all my inboxes started filling up with bombastic notifications. Pouring in from the US. No apologies and diplomatic word mincing this time. A certain Google Spreadsheet was being created, and it started getting viral. “The Art World Salaries Revealed” it read, enthusiastically. Publicly! Oh yeeeeeeeees!!! Finally!!!!

The titles varied from “Google Spreadsheet Reveals How Much the Art World Earns” to “Here’s How Much Money Museum Employees Really Make”, “Museum workers around the world are posting their salaries on a public spreadsheet to show the industry’s glaring pay gap”, “Museum Workers Share Their Salaries and Urge Industry-Wide Reform”, “The Unsung Heroes of the Art World”, “You Can’t Eat Prestige”, “After #MeToo, it’s Time to Democratize the Art World’s Workplaces”, “Can Only Rich Kids Afford to Work in the Art World?”, “Who Gets Paid?”, “We’re in a very opaque industry that by and large prides itself on being a very opaque industry”, “How a Google Spreadsheet Broke the Art World’s Culture of Silence” and so on.

The number grew in minutes speed. Over 500 “current and former employees of art institutions have anonymously shared their salaries and conditions of employment on a publicly-editable document”. Shortly later, it was over 800. Then 1000. Then over 2000… And counting.

The Americans usually think that they are the world, so the “art world” in those reports actually means the employees of the north American art institutions. “A public spreadsheet” means a document shared privately per e-mail among employees of north American art institutions and some members of the north American art press. But never the less! It’s been written about in all relevant art media online. Yeeeeeeees! At least something. At last something is starting to move. Finally!

The situation in Europe is, by the way, way worse — but never the less — Yeeeeeees!

While the “Workers at the Guggenheim Museum in New York are preparing to unionize” and “MoMA workers have been unionized since the 1970s” but are “still not compensated fairly”, the European art world employees are at large still sitting still, happy to have a job, grateful for… Well, for the “prestige” mainly. For being looked at with an awe at parties when they have the pleasure to answer the question “And what do you do?”; and for having constant undisturbed access to the finest of art most of the time. And for not much more than that.

If you would like to know what exactly the employees of all art institutions worldwide are grateful for, try googling for example a curatorial or “art director” or “art history” jobs in your town, or any other place on Earth.

While you look for the offers online, not only will you find out, firstly, and surprised only if you’re as ancient as me, that while you were not watching, the descriptions “curator”, “art director”, “author”, “editor”, “editor in chief”, “educator” etc. have expanded well into the advertisement business where together with the word “storytelling” they now include all kinds of people and practices whose main job and goal is to sell anything from garden equipment, over holiday deals to cheep clothing. You will also find out that people who have actually spent their 20s in actual real universities and art institutions earning nothing but knowledge and experience in the actual real art world with a goal to one day become actual real curators, art directors, authors, storytellers etc. are now for jobs in which they are required to bring to the table a set of skills and a level of expertise and experience equal to or higher than those of a general manager of a corporation or a bank plus “high proficiency in French, Italian and German is a must” (and lately Chinese while English is of course self-evidently not even considered a language foreign to anyone) are not only offered salaries similar and partly even lower than the “curators”, “art directors”, “authors”, “editors”, “educators” and “storytellers” of the online sales start-ups and recently opened private white labelled “universities”, they are generally being offered worse contractual conditions as well :-)

Because?

Well, because except of the requirement to have “extensive experience & expertise” before you even start your first job, and besides being able to write and publicly speak at high level equally good in multiple languages, there is another “must” absolutely unavoidable if you are to survive in the art world — You must love what you do. And no, it is not enough that you just say to your future employer the usual bullshit about how it has been the dream of your life to work for them while in reality you just want to get the job and negotiate as high as possible salary and as many as possible holiday days. Except the fact that in the art world talking about money is more often than not considered to be vulgar, there is also no one besides of yourself to whom you could ever tell the usual bullshit with any effect. Your “employer”, your “they” are all of them — everyone “out there”, the public, the people. Except that they can’t really be cheated, there is also not much point in you going around explaining to random people on the street how much you really, really love what you do. You’ll actually really have to show it and prove yourself every day of your life on and off job. And so, while your level of experience, expertise, language proficiency and even your salary occasionally might be negotiable in the art world, loving your job never is — it is an actual real must around which there is no way.

This is why a generation after generation of art historians, curators, educators, authors, editors, art directors etc. has not been payed — not at all or not sufficiently, depending mostly on pure luck or/and the range of one’s network. Not because there is no money. Not because their “employer” The Public would not want to pay them, not because there is no system in place by which they could have been properly payed, not even because, like for example in the music industry, some big villain publisher or someone made them sign a shitty contract and legally took all of their money, but mainly because we have never seriously asked for the damn money in the first place! Love was enough. For almost 130 years of the history of art history, love was what has mainly kept “The Unsung Heroes of the Art World” alive and the world itself, you, informed, or if there was more luck educated, sometimes even entertained about art.

And so we, the humanity, ended up in this wonderful 21st century with thousands and thousands of highly skilled totally dedicated work force, unconditionally in love with their “job”, with decades of experience and crazy amounts of knowledge, ready to share it all with everyone in the world, being frustrated beyond frustration and keeping their mouth tightly shut about the very reason of their frustration — the spookiest of all subjects: The Money.

Why?

Because “prestige”. Because “pride”. And manners. And shame. And … so on.

Well, guess what I’m going to do about it.

But for how long are you planing to keep silent?

I guess until one day the now 20somethings come around to say to the art world, hopefully before they turn 30, the same thing I said to it when by my mid 30s I found myself totally burned out by that same art world: For how long do you want me to work my ass off here for free? You know what!? Kiss my ass! I’m out of here.

Me personally, it took me another more than half a decade after that “brave” “Kiss my ass!” to actually get my ass out of there. I’ve managed to fail even at getting out. And I’ve failed even more epically at staying out. I didn’t manage to survive for very long with all the benefits of an “employment” without love, passion and art. 18 months was what I was able to pull off. Barely. Then I went on to try out another almost equally stupid idea. Until a person who has just became very dear to me one wonderful day called me an artist talking down to me and putting me in the same basket with one of the kids from the virtual world . Ok Dorothy, now this here looks very much like your wake up call now. This here my darling most definitely ain’t your Kansas any more. But what the fuck is it? — was my reaction as I slowly started realising that — Congratulations my love, you’ve just hit, well, rather slammed against, the proverbial rock bottom. On the wrong, very wrong side of the rainbow. Congratulations. And beside the fact that it has almost killed me, much worse than working for nothing could have ever killed me in the “art world”, and beside the fact that it was a chain, or rather an avalanche, of by far the most stupid decisions I’ve ever made in my life, I’m not sure if I’m even a little bit proud for at least attempting my “bravery” and “rebellion”. What I am sure of is that I don’t recommend trying it to anyone. And I am sure that I most definitely am not proud for being a coward and not having the cojónes of those who on 27th of May 2019 closed down: The Louvre, itself! 😀🙌🙌🙌🙌🙌

If it is not bad enough that it has never occurred to any of us to loose it at some point and start shouting around “Show me the money!” already long time ago, because, understandably, this would have been “vulgar”, “uncivilised” and definitely a sign of bad manners and bad taste, it is way worse that it has never occurred to any of us to come to an idea to put the damn keys in the doors of our precious “institutions”, lock the damn buildings down and wait, even gracefully if we can’t manage to do it any other way, until somebody somewhere has had a serious talk with someone about our dignity and working conditions in here.

Till this day this still didn’t occur. It weren’t the employees of the art world in the Louvre who have locked the museum down and refused to come to work that Monday. It were the ones who actually physically hold the key. The members of the security staff of the Louvre went on strike. The ones, who unlike you, have fixed contracts, fixed salaries, don’t have to speak 5 languages fluently, don’t have to hold lectures regularly to “contribute to the society” (of course also for free), don’t have to do any research or stay well-informed at all times about all the newest developments in their “industry” (in your free time as well of course, as you anyway don’t have any since art is your life), who don’t have to publish regularly anything except of the pictures of their lunch on social media, who get a payed training in the first months of their new job, because they aren’t required to bring an expertise and years of experience along with a good sounding name of their school and references from “at least 3 relevant names” with them to their first day at work but are payed the same or more than you, and who, if we’d asked them nicely decades ago, would have locked up the damn doors for us with pleasure, no questions asked. Or have you ever met a museum guard who wasn’t an angel to you? I thought so. So, so much about “prestige”. But ok, never the less — something started moving finally in our world. And I am thrilled about it. Absolutely thrilled to see that the “Kiss my ass!”-attitude has finally found it’s way into the art world in 2019. Via the back door, but never the less. Yeeees!

I adore you millennials. From the bottom of my heart. Go! Fly! We’ll catch up. Soon. I hope.

And if you are an “employee of the art world” in your 40s — start talking, I beg you. As it slowly becomes questionable if you have more time left on this planet than the time you’ve already consumed over here, it slowly becomes high time for you to start deciding if you really want to be part of that first generation of humans since humanity who is going to leave this place in a condition worse than the one which you’ve found it in. You still can do something. Actually, you can do a lot. Will you?

Love ya! m