On May 1, 2012, the Occupy movement, which grew out of Occupy Wall Street and demonstrations in other parts of the world, has asked people to join in a “day without the 99%,” general strike, and more to protest the growing disparity of wealth in our society, a financial system that rewards the rich and exerts outsize influence on government and electoral politics, and the destruction to our planet caused by industry and disastrous environmental policies. Arts & Labor, a working group of Occupy Wall Street that organizes around labor issues in the arts, supports this call and asks artists, art workers, and all other people to join us in making May 1 a day of creative, festive, and nonviolent reclamation of public space, replacing our society’s emphasis on private profits with public solidarity and mutual aid.

Art has historically been treated as a realm of imagination, innovation, or utopian promise apart from the workaday world. But art today also mirrors the growing inequality in our society. Few other fields exhibit such striking contrasts of wealth and increasing want. Although those who produce, maintain, educate, and run the art world often work in close proximity to extreme wealth, the riches, glamour, and record-breaking auction prices reported in the media disguise the realities they face.

Like many workers today—especially freelance, adjunct, and temporary ones—those who work in the arts face cuts to or already live without healthcare, childcare, job security, unemployment benefits, pensions, or retirement plans. The situation gets all the more grim when the rationale of austerity threatens limited existing social services with further cuts. Many cultural workers are one ambulance ride away from financial ruin. This vulnerability links what has been labeled the “creative class” with all other workers, students, and the unemployed: the 99% excluded from the growing concentration of wealth.

In the field of contemporary art alone, to become an artist in the neoliberal system of galleries, museums, art fairs, and biennials, artists increasingly feel obligated to obtain an expensive education that puts them in debt—sometimes well over $100,000. And this debt, which mirrors the larger student debt crisis in this country, is particularly insidious because it is incurred to gain accreditation in a field that still includes a high degree of risk with slim chances of sustainable returns.

Although artists were once able to live and work in affordable enclaves, the burgeoning size of the art world now plays a role in profound changes to our cities. Several decades ago, the real estate industry saw how the “improvements” artists made to low income and minority neighborhoods could pave the way for development, making these neighborhoods appealing to higher-income transplants who eventually priced out artists and the original inhabitants. These practices privilege speculative investment over affordable housing and have contributed to the current housing crisis, marked by widespread foreclosures.

With contemporary art treated in many precincts as a luxury commodity or high-end form of entertainment, cities around the world rushed to build a Museum of Contemporary Art, designed by a well-known architect. Despite their aims to boost local economies, these efforts often furthered the cycle of development and displacement. These institutions also became increasingly more indebted to corporate sponsors and wealthy trustees—the 1% who have benefited most by the rise of finance capital, rampant deregulation, and the powerful real estate industry.

As a new collector class rose in the ‘80s and ‘90s, pumping money into the art market, public institutions like museums were increasingly defunded, forcing them to rely on tax-free private donations. As public coffers are drained and institutions get mortgaged to private interests, the question arises, Whom does this benefit? And at what cost?

Joining with others on May 1 and reiterating the concerns raised by the Occupy movement last fall, we call for reducing student debt and for greater transparency and equitable practices in our institutions. As part of a larger struggle to protect the rights of workers, we call for an end to the exploitative use of interns, which allows institutions to profit from uncompensated labor and ensures only those with independent financial means can work in the arts. We call for city administrations to stop rezoning plans that profit the real estate industry and eradiate affordable housing. And we demand our government and industries fund public institutions and services rather than continuing to cater to the wealthiest in our society.

On May 1, we ask those who work in the arts to assemble with all others to work toward greater equality and to create sustainable ways of living on this planet. Let us free art from the vagaries of financial speculation and privatization and restore its promise of a better world. By sharing its power to enrich all of our lives, let us make it part of our struggle to reclaim the commons.

For schedules of May 1 events in NYC, see http://occupywallst.org/article/nyc-full-schedule-permitted-and-unpermitted-may-da/ and http://maydaynyc.org/may-day-2012#schedule

Outside the VIP opening on February 28, the golden auction hammer threatens to crush a teamster. Photo: David Martinez.

Some members of Arts & Labor, Occupy Museums, Occupy Sotheby’s, and Arts & Culture, acting autonomously, paired with locked-out Sotheby’s art handlers from Teamsters Local 814 to bring their struggle to the Whitney Biennial, of which Sotheby’s is a major corporate sponsor. Many gathered outside the museum on the night of the VIP opening, February 28, for a loud demonstration denouncing Sotheby’s treatment of its workers. Signs including “Occupy Wall Street,” “Quit Sotheby’s” and “CULTURE Day 1 of Biennial + BARBARISM Day 210 of Local 814 Lock Out = Sotheby’s” were accompanied by a giant, inflatable fat cat and two giant, walking silver locks courtesy of Occupy Museums.

Two giant, walking locks from Occupy Museums arrive at the VIP opening. Photo: David Martinez.

The line of protestors, which also included supporters from other labor unions in the city, was visible from the main stairway and the fat cat loomed over the windows looking into the cocktail reception in the basement. Those waiting in the red-carpet VIP line seemed most amused by the chant: “Who are the V-I-Ps? Work-ers! Work-ers!”

After mic-checking the opening party on February 29, a Sotheby’s art handler explains the lockout and asks for support.

The following evening, February 29, brought an action less visible to those standing in line. Invited guests paired up with art handlers and union activists to take as their plus-ones. Smuggling their dates in, they got the locked-out Sotheby’s workers off the street and into the exclusive confines of the museum opening. Inside, the group convened on the fourth floor, which has been designated the performance area for the biennial and outfitted with bleachers facing an open, floor-through dance stage. After some smaller conversations, an assembly began with a mic check and banners were unfurled that read “Quit Sotheby’s” and “Occupy Wall Street.” Participants, sympathetic listeners, and surprised celebrants gathered around.

Participants gather in the assembly on the fourth floor as others look on from the bleachers off-frame during the February 29 opening.

The first to speak, a locked out art handler, stated: “I am from Sotheby’s. I have worked there for four years as an art handler. Sotheby’s is a major sponsor of the biennial and the poster child for anti-worker practices in the art world. Even though they made over $700 million dollars in [revenue; $171 million in profit] they are trying to destroy the lives of their art handlers and get rid of our union. We are not on strike. We have been forced out of our jobs and without paychecks for over seven months. Our families have no healthcare. This kind of oppressive greed should not be tolerated in the art world. By receiving support from Sotheby’s the Whitney is complicit in Sotheby’s war on workers. We are simply asking the Whitney museum to do the right thing: Stop doing business with Sotheby’s while the lockout is on. The Whitney takes money from the public–they have an obligation to support socially responsive practices in the art world. Whitney: Stop taking money and stop doing business with Sotheby’s until they end the lockout! Thank you.”

Then a speaker stood up to announce: “I have a statement from one of our great art writers and activists. Her name is Lucy Lippard. In an email today, she says: ‘I have been inspired by Occupy Wall Street and the Arts and Labor group just as I hope some of you have been inspired by our long past efforts in the Art Workers Coalition in the late ‘60s and Political Art Documentation Distribution in the early ‘80s and the Ad Hoc Women’s Art Committee, which set a precedent when we picketed outside and did actions inside the 1970 Whitney Annual. Santa Fe Occupy is pretty small but we’re in it together. Que Viva! –Lucy Lippard.’”

More statements of solidarity followed as a Biennial curator looked on from the stands. The final speaker declared, “as workers, as artists, as art workers . . . We love art. We love the people who make it. We love the people who come look at it. We love the museums who show it. We demand that there are fair practices. That workers are recognized no matter what they do. Thank you for coming to this exhibit. Thank you for remembering who it was who put it on the walls.”

After the end of the assembly the “Quit Sotheby’s” banner is left as a gift to the museum.

After the assembly concluded, the lovely rose-decorated “Quit Sotheby’s” banner was laid out on the floor and inscribed in the corners to read: “A gift to the Whitney Museum from Teamsters local 814, Arts & Labor, Occupy Museums / Not for sale.” It was still resting there when participants filed out at the end of the night.

For more photos of the February 28 demonstration, visit the Gothamist.

Dear Whitney Museum of American Art,

We are Arts & Labor, a working group founded in conjunction with the New York General Assembly for #occupywallstreet. We are artists and interns, writers and educators, art handlers and designers, administrators, curators, assistants, and students dedicated to exposing and rectifying economic inequalities and exploitative working conditions in our fields through direct action and educational initiatives. We are writing to call for an end to the Whitney Biennial in 2014.

Biennials were born in the nineteenth century, in an era when many nations were young and wished to showcase their greatest cultural products and achievements. The Whitney annuals grew out of this, championed by the patron and sculptor Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, in a period when American art had little critical or financial support.

Much has changed since the founding of the Whitney Studio in 1914 and the advent of the current biennial format in 1973. The absorption of contemporary art into museums, the rise of a speculative art market, and the need for artists to obtain advanced degrees to participate in the current system have changed how art is produced and exhibited.

We object to the biennial in its current form because it upholds a system that benefits collectors, trustees, and corporations at the expense of art workers. The biennial perpetuates the myth that art functions like other professional careers and that selection and participation in the exhibition, for which artists themselves are not compensated, will secure a sustainable vocation. This fallacy encourages many young artists to incur debt from which they will never be free and supports a culture industry and financial and cultural institutions that profit from their labors and financial servitude.

The Whitney Museum, with its system of wealthy trustees and ties to the real estate industry perpetuates a model in which culture enhances the city and benefits the 1% of our society while driving others into financial distress. This is embodied both in the biennial’s sponsorship – represented most egregiously in its sponsorship by Sotheby’s, which has locked out its unionized art handlers – and the museum’s imminent move to the Meat Packing District, a neighborhood where artists once lived and worked which is now a gentrified tourist destination that serves the interests of the real estate industry.

We therefore call upon the Whitney in its centennial year to end the biennial and to support the interests of art workers over the capital interests of its trustees and corporate sponsors. As the Declaration of the Occupation of New York City states, “We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments.” Art institutions have come to mirror that ethos. We therefore call upon the Whitney to terminate its collusion with this system of injustice and use its resources to imagine sustainable models of creativity and culture that are accessible not just to Americans but to people around the globe.

Sincerely,
Arts & Labor