Aim Higher. Work Faster. Make Museums Better.

One of my new sheroes is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the recently elected congressperson from New York.

Representative Ocasio-Cortez wants to aim higher and work faster to solve problems for her constituents.

With that spirit in mind, here are three areas of museum work that I think we can all make better by aiming higher and working faster.


1) LIVING WAGES FOR ALL MUSEUM WORKERS
It is unconscionable that museums do not pay all their employees and interns living wages.  I've heard all the excuses for low museum pay, and they all sound like bunk.  Unpaid internships and substandard wages are not the way to run any organization, let alone organizations that claim to have a higher social purpose.

One step to address this challenge: Stop "salary masking"! Commit to transparency by requiring salary ranges in all job postings.  Kudos to professional organizations like ACM, AASLH, and MAAM for being leaders in this effort.



2) JOINING OUR WORK TO OUR COMMUNITIES  
Does the staff, board, and programming of your museum truly reflect the communities your institution wants to serve? If not, why not?

One step to address this challenge: Start conversations with communities IN those communities, not your museum! Attend community events as a participant, not an "expert."  True engagement is an ongoing process, not a one-time focus group meeting -- and that process might begin with a simple and sincere Facebook or email message.



3) VALUING PEOPLE OVER SCREENS
Museums seem more willing to pay (or overpay) for screen-based opportunities over staff-facilitated activities, even though many studies show that visitors to cultural institutions often prefer non-screen based experiences.

One step to address this challenge: consider WHAT you want visitors to take away from an experience before immediately jumping to HOW you will deliver that experience. You may find an elegant non-screen based solution or a great "phygital" (mixed physical and digital) opportunity to explore.


I hope you aim higher and work faster to face whatever museum challenges you encounter in 2019!



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Museums and Museum Groups -- STOP COVERING YOUR A*S!

Why don't ALL museum job ads have salary ranges included?  Why don't ALL Museum Groups that host museum job ads require salary ranges be included in those ads?  The museum profession talks a good game concerning gender pay equity, fair pay, and diversifying the museum workforce. But talk, as they say, is cheap.  I expect more, and better, from the museum world than high-minded platitudes, so I want Museums and Museum Groups to:

STOP COVERING YOUR ADS!

Back in October last year, I wrote a blog post over my dismay in finding many (but not all!) museum groups still allowing ads for unpaid internships and job postings without salary ranges to be publicized through their websites and publications. I contacted the leaders of AAM, AAASLH, and NEMA to find out why they are still "covering their ads" and either got no definitive response or got a list of excuses ranging from "not wanting to upset museum members" to the concern that if salary range requirements were instituted, that museums would take their job postings "elsewhere."

I'll state again that I expect more, and better, from the museum world than such weak responses, especially when requiring salary ranges on job postings is such a tiny, tiny difficult step toward resolving pay and diversity inequities in museums, compared to the REALLY HARD steps the museum profession says it wants to take toward a fairer and more representative museum workplace.

The good news is that there are museum organizations that do require that salary ranges be included in museum job ads, and for that, they should be recognized and congratulated. The New York City Museum Educators Roundtable (NYCMER) has such a requirement and the website Museum Jobs (a project of Museum Hack) also requires that every posting includes salary ranges.  Laura Huerta Migus, the Executive Director of the Association of Children's Museums (ACM) is also in the vanguard of museum groups by requiring salary ranges for job ad postings.  Laura was kind enough to share her thoughts with me on this subject and has graciously allowed me to quote her words here:

This is also a best practice that we’ve been adhering to for ACM’s own job postings since 2014. We don’t publish any job announcements without the actual salary range.  This has been a very important strategy, not just from an equity perspective, but also as an employer. In particular, it helps us understand if the job description (including skill requirements) matches the salary and if we need to reconsider the job description and/or minimum required skills. This has happened more than once over the past four years that I have been at ACM. For example, for our communications manager listing, we worked from the existing job description and published the salary and the respondent pool was all over the map, from new college grads to seasoned communications professionals who were seeking to take this position as a contract for their personal business. This wide spectrum of responses told us two things: 1) the salary was not high enough to attract the mid-level professional we were looking for, and 2) the job description did not have the right balance of responsibilities to appeal to the kind of candidate that we needed. So, we took down the job description, rewrote it, adjusted the salary, and reposted. The result is that we got a great (and diverse) candidate pool with the level of experience that we were looking for, and ultimately made a great hire. That said, we do have work to do to sustain a strong staff and be a competitive employer, but it is work we are making progress on for sure!

So why make such a big deal about a (seemingly) small thing like salary ranges on museum job ads?  I'll stop here and refer you to the influential "Nonprofit AF" blog and a post by Vu Le about what he calls "Salary Cloaking." Le outlines many reasons why not posting salary ranges is just plain bad business for non-profits, but let me just pick out a few of his salient points:

• It wastes everyone’s time

• It perpetuates the gender wage gap

• It starts a relationship off on a lack of trust and transparency

I really believe the museum world can do better than this, so I am going to contact (again!) the leaders of the large national museum groups that are lagging behind in requiring that salary ranges be included on museum job ad postings.  I'm going to send them a link to this blog post and ask them (again!) to change their policies and procedures and STOP COVERING THEIR ADS! 

I hope you will take a minute to contact the folks below and the leaders of other museum organizations you are associated with to let them know what you think.


PLEASE EMAIL THESE MUSEUM LEADERS

American Alliance of Museums (AAM):  Laura Lott

American Association for State and Local History (AASLH): John Dichtl

New England Museum Association (NEMA): Dan Yaeger


Let's resolve this one small issue AND start tackling some of those bigger employment issues in the museum world!


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One Way to Address the Museum "Pay Problem" (TODAY!)

Although many museums and not-for-profit organizations have underpaid (and it could be argued, undervalued) their staff for years, there has been a recent flurry of online articles bemoaning this fact --- including here on the ExhibiTricks blog, at AAM's Alliance Labs blog, and at the Nonprofit: AF blog.

"Why all this sudden interest?" you may ask.  "Nobody goes into museum or non-profit work for a big payday."

That's true, to an extent, but deliberately inadequate pay contributes to the museum world's lack of diversity, and, for organizations that like to place their high-minded social credentials front and center, it is just downright demeaning and unfair to hard-working staff not to pay them a living wage.

So what to do?  (Besides the usual rationalizing and hand-wringing and pearl-clutching so common in the non-profit world?)

HERE'S MY SIMPLE SUGGESTION: Refuse to publish help wanted ads from museums and other cultural institutions that do not list clear salary ranges in their job postings, or from those organizations that offer unpaid "internships."

That's it.

Personally, if I ran the circus, I would also not accredit such organizations or let their representatives present at professional conferences, but let's start with baby steps and something simple(r) to implement.

If you'd like the museum world to start cleaning up its classified ads, and by extension its pay problem, then I urge you to email and speak with the leaders of every museum organization you know.  I've listed a few organizations and their leaders (with links to their emails) below to get you started.

You could just write something like: "As a member concerned with fair pay and diversity in the museum field, I ask you to stop accepting job ads that do not list clear pay ranges or ads for unpaid internships."  (Feel free to cut-and-paste this text directly into your own email.)

I am disheartened that we are losing emerging and diverse members of the museum profession because of poor pay and bogus unpaid work situations.  So let's stop hiding and rationalizing and start doing something.  I've just sent emails to everyone listed below, won't you join me?


PLEASE EMAIL THESE MUSEUM LEADERS

American Alliance of Museums (AAM):  Laura Lott

New England Museum Association (NEMA): Dan Yaeger


UPDATE: Hooray! ASTC, ACM, and AASLH all now require salary ranges on job postings!

But AAM and NEMA still do not, so contact Laura Lott and Dan Yeager and ask them to "catch up" to the rest of the museum world.



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Is Your Museum Guilty of Weaselly Pay Practices? Answer These 6 Questions to Find Out!

I attended the excellent NYCMER (New York City Museum Educator's Roundtable) Conference yesterday.  Even though I enjoyed myself and learned a lot, discussions about museum pay and the relationship between museums and their workers, interns, and freelancers kept coming up that really bugged me.

It is shameful how many museums continue to underpay their employees, rationalize free internships, and skirt labor laws with their weaselly compensation practices.

So, based on my 2017 NYCMER Conference experience, I offer these six questions below -- for museum managers and administrators, as well as employees (or potential employees) to make sure YOUR museum sets a positive example for the field:


• Are your internships paid or unpaid?  (Every museum internship should be paid. Period. You can rationalize it any way you want, but if you are offering unpaid internships for the "experience" you are ripping people off, AND contributing to the lack of diversity in the museum field.)

• Do all your job listings list salary ranges? (If not, what are you ashamed of?)

• Is there pay parity between departments? (Do you really want to make the argument that development staff should be paid much more than exhibits or education staff?)

• Can your full-time staff actually support themselves on the salary you pay them? (Or do they need second jobs?)

• Do you delay (or "slow pay") contractors or freelancers? (Your institution expects work to be done in a timely way, so why shouldn't contractors have the same expectation about their pay?)

• Are you choosing employees because of their spouse's benefits, or deliberately holding down scheduled hours to avoid paying benefits?  (Not only are you skirting unfair labor practices if you are doing this, but you are a weasel if you are doing this!)


The museum industry prides itself in supporting high intellectual and social goals, so shouldn't it support basic rights around compensation for its workers as well?  Which of the areas in the questions above can YOUR museum improve on?


Don't miss out on any ExhibiTricks posts! It's easy to get updates via email or your favorite news reader. Just click the "Sign up for Free ExhibiTricks Blog Updates" link on the upper right side of the blog.

P.S. If you receive ExhibiTricks via email (or Facebook or LinkedIn) you will need to click HERE to go to the main ExhibiTricks page to make comments or view multimedia features (like videos!)