Against Artsploitation Unionizing the New Museum

Against Artsploitation Unionizing the New Museum
By Dana Kopel
Designed by Be Oakley
Published by GenderFail
October 2022
Edition of 250
48 Pages
Risograph (Flat Gold and Blue)

OUT OF PRINT

Against Artsploitation Unionizing the New Museum is a museum tell-all of Dana Kopel's horrible experience unionizing the New Museum. This text tells the honest tale of creating the New Museum Union and dealings with so-called "progressive" New Museum upper management. This essay was first published in the Baffler Issue No. 59 September 2021 and is now reprinted a year later to give this vital text a new life as a risograph printed publication. Kopel's account provides critical insight into unionization and resources for others looking to organize their workplaces.

From the essay, "This museum union movement represents a major shift in the self-conception of museum workers and the nonprofit sector more broadly, a refusal to accept unsustainable conditions as the trade-off for working in a creative or prestigious field. It’s a powerful rejection of the toxic myth that “if you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life”—and, to an extent, a rejection of the art world’s exceptionalism, the all-too-common assumption that art workers are fundamentally different from workers in other industries and thus don’t need or deserve the rights and benefits that a union provides."