Can Artists Organize? The Story of WAGE
The New Yorker examines the economic relationships between artists and institutions
Department of Art Professor and Chair Andrea Fraser heads Work Artists and the Greater Economy, or WAGE,a New York-based activist, nonprofit organization with the mission to establish sustainable economic relationships between artists and the institutions that contract artist labor; to introduce mechanisms for self-regulation into the art field that collectively bring about a more equitable distribution of its economy. The New Yorker spoke with Fraser and UCLA alumnus Devin Kenny about the economics and organization of being an artist in the 21st century.
"In 2016, the multidisciplinary artist Devin Kenny’s work was screened in a video program at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and Hito Steyerl, one of the show’s more established artists, forfeited her fee so that others could have higher compensation. “I thought that was so epic,” Kenny said. “It was a small amount, but it actually benefitted me greatly and made a big impact.” Kenny had graduated from the M.F.A. program at U.C.L.A. just three years before. He received his degree without incurring egregious debt, unlike many of his peers. And yet, in terms of finances, Kenny is like many artists who tend to blur the boundary between work and life. When I asked if the moca fee was for production costs or for his cost of living, he said, “What’s the difference? I’m constantly making art, so that money—whether it’s going towards a medical bill or a sandwich or an art supply—is going towards art.”
Kenny credits the activist nonprofit organization Working Artists and the Greater Economy (better known as wage) with raising his consciousness about the inequity in the art world. The information about artist fees and negotiating tools available on their Web site became resources that he could use to measure his worth. “When you’re just beginning, you feel very nervous about communicating your needs. You need to know how to negotiate, and you need to know the value of the work that you do and how that work adds value to whatever institution is showcasing it,” he said. “Examples that crystallize it for me, beyond an art-world experience, are viral content. People perform particular actions that circulate, and then they don’t have a means to capitalize off of the wild popularity of the thing that they made or are featured in. Particularly, I’m thinking of black youth who make particular platforms desirable to be a part of, whether it be Twitter or Instagram or Facebook or YouTube, and they are largely not being compensated. So that’s an even more concrete example that’s part of mainstream culture, where this is a person who’s famous but broke.” In the art world, he said, “Institutions pay you with exposure, and there is a certain currency to being an emerging artist. However, it doesn’t protect you from exploitation.”
wage’s primary focus since 2014 has been on granting a certification to arts nonprofits that pay artists according to standardized rates. wage uses each organization’s total operating expenses to calculate appropriate fees in fifteen categories, including participation in solo or group exhibitions, performances, commissioned and existing texts and talks, screenings with in-person appearances, and day rates for performers. Sixty-one organizations have been certified so far, and, last March, Philadelphia’s Institute of Contemporary Art became the first museum to join the list.
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There are many artists on wage’s board. Andrea Fraser, the board’s president, directly addressed artist exploitation in a performance piece, in 2003, in which she sold herself to an art collector. On the phone from Los Angeles, Fraser emphasized that what separates wage from its predecessors is its focus on a fee-for-service model, in which simply choosing to participate in an arts organization’s programming and exhibitions justifies compensation. “But,” she clarified, “I don’t really see wage as following a model of trade-union development. It seems to me closer to the model of a professional guild. Professional fields have developed standards and codes of ethics and other mechanisms to protect their legitimacy and to protect the public trust in professionals. It’s on the basis of those internal standards and codes of ethics that professional fields won the right to self-regulate.”
Fraser told me that she thinks wage’s interests, while inspired by the A.W.C. and other initiatives, are specific to the twenty-first century. “When the Art Worker’s Coalition was working, there were three or four museums in New York that they had to focus on.” Since the late sixties and early seventies, she explained, “that field has become a kind of industry. It has become a sector of society that has a huge economic base. It has an extensive division of labor with many different levels of professionalization.” Each of these, she pointed out, has standards of operation, including the American Association of Museum Directors’ code of ethics and standards for compensation, museum rules for accessioning and deaccessioning, and standards adhered to by registrars, conservators, librarians, and archivists. Even curatorial work has been professionalized, with the proliferation of curatorial degree programs. “It exploded into a whole discourse and field of study,” Fraser said. “And it’s all based on the work of artists—on the contributions of artists providing content for these exhibitions. But,” she laughed at the irony, “artists are the only ones who don’t get paid in many cases.” "—Sarah Cowan, Dec. 14
This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the New Yorker website.
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