Museum employees unionize at LACMA

Employees at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art announced Wednesday that they are forming a union, LACMA United, representing more than 300 workers from across all departments, including curators, educators, guest relations associates and others. The move comes just six months before the museum is scheduled to open its new $720-million David Geffen Galleries, and just a few days before it holds its most high-profile event of the year — the LACMA Art + Film gala, co-hosted by Leonardo DiCaprio, and honoring artist Mary Corse and director Ryan Coogler.

“As we near completion of the new home for our permanent collection, ensuring the stability of our staff is equally crucial to LACMA’s future. Many employees are struggling with wages that have not kept up with the rising cost of living in the sixth-most expensive city in the world,” workers wrote in a letter addressed to the museum’s executive team and the board of trustees. “At the same time, employees in virtually every department continue to absorb expanded responsibilities and workloads, often without additional compensation, due to high turnover, limited resources, and positions that have been vacated or frozen.”

The union asked the executives and trustees to voluntarily recognize LACMA United by Nov. 5.

“Museum leadership has received the letter from LACMA United,” responded Michael Govan, the museum’s CEO, in an email. “We are reviewing it carefully and very much look forward to continuing to support our amazing staff.”

In addition to increased compensation, the union is asking for expanded benefits and more institutional transparency when it comes to protocols and resources.

“We realized that there was a feeling among employees that we all very deeply care about the museum, we all very deeply care about the collection, about the art, and we would like that care also reflected towards the employees,” said Aurora van Zoelen Cortés, a curatorial assistant in the contemporary art department, in an interview.

Cortés noted that these concerns are not confined to LACMA. In what Cortés considered a meaningful coincidence, a publication, “2025 Report on Workplace Equity and Organizational Culture in US Art Museums,” created by the nonprofit industry organization Museums Moving Forward, was also released Wednesday. That report, which surveyed 3,100 staff respondents and 91 museums nationwide, found that “inequities in pay, promotions, and workplace culture remain entrenched across the field.”

The report also found that nearly half of all respondents have looked for another job, and more than half have considered leaving the field altogether. The top three reasons given have remained unchanged since 2023: low pay, burnout and a lack of growth opportunities.

Among the report’s other key findings: More than a quarter of full-time workers don’t make a living wage — a number that rises to 69% for entry-level workers; the median annual income for full-time art museum workers is $65,000, with 26% of workers making less than $50,000 annually; and museum workers are predominantly white.

“Unionizing was, for us, the way to move that needle,” said Cortés, adding that LACMA employees were inspired by other successful unionization campaigns in the city’s cultural sector in recent years, including at the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures and Foundation, and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and La Brea Tar Pits. All are part of AFSCME Cultural Workers United District Council 36.

LACMA is the largest museum in the Western United States, and it has spent more than a decade working to fund and build a new home for its permanent collection, which consists of more than 150,000 objects spanning 6,000 years of global art history. The new Peter Zumthor-designed David Geffen Galleries took longer to build than initially expected, with delays exacerbated by supply chain issues during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the discovery of fossils beneath the construction site.

The new building is now expected to make a splashy opening in April, and LACMA has lately announced a spate of exciting and high-profile acquisitions including more than 100 works of Austrian Expressionism worth “well over” $60 million, gifted by the family of art dealer Otto Kallir; and its first paintings by Vincent van Gogh and Édouard Manet, as part of a large gift from the Pearlman Foundation. It also recently announced the installation of “Split-Rocker,” a monumental topiary sculpture by the artist Jeff Koons, which will anchor the new building.

The unionizing employees are focused on asking LACMA to match its lofty goals for the collection and the new building with a commitment to elevating working conditions for the staff that makes it run.

“Building an environment around care is really important,” said Cortés. “And we’re using that as our core value.”