Since 2019, art workers in over 25 museums have formed unions in response to precarious life conditions, including oppressive workplace environments, lack of living wages, and basic benefits. This phenomenon echoes a national surge in labor organizing. This panel event will consider how the culture sector can often exploit the idea of a "calling" to the arts to mask low pay, inequitable conditions, and uncertain advancement. It will also explore how this aligns with trends in the larger global economy, outlining a historical materialist framework of art labor in capitalist art systems.

-Lee Painter-Kim