Art News: Dark Clouds at the Met, Boston’s MFA

Lots of juicy art news in the new year, so let’s peek into the glass hive. I’ve written off and on about the drive to unionize museum staffs. Two weeks ago, unions grabbed the pot of gold at the end of the phony-baloney rainbow when the Metropolitan Museum of Art staff voted 542–172 to join the United Auto Workers. Counterintuitive, I know, but the UAW has a portfolio of bargaining units that includes boutique left-wing, white-collar culture workers such as the curators, conservators, librarians, archivists, designers, marketeers, visitor-services coordinators, and fundraisers at the Met. Along with bread-and-butter issues, these workers can be mobilized to wail over false values like open borders, which suppress working-class wages, the climate change hoax, Black Lives Matter, Celebrate Your Abortion, Me Too, No Kings, From the River to the Sea, any or all while wearing “pussy hats,” which, ladies and real wannabe ladies, don’t flatter. So, a juicy, fresh plum is now added to the UAW stash. Honk your horns. The Met is among the world’s great museums, if not the greatest.

I’m fine with unions in museums, say, for guards, janitors, food workers, and mechanics, jobs where the work is more or less fungible, but creative workers aren’t in the one-size-fits-all business. Most of the workers in this new bargaining union have discerning judgment and more autonomy than an assembly-line worker. A wall-to-wall union — a bargaining unit covering a broad swath of departments — also marginalizes curators, who, and I’m biased, having been one, are the top creatives. A wall-to-wall union empowers young — and naïve — workers who also aren’t scholars and aren’t likely to have a long-term commitment to the Met. There’s simply more of them.

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Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

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Lots of juicy art news in the new year, so let’s peek into the glass hive. I’ve written off and on about the drive to unionize museum staffs. Two weeks ago, unions grabbed the pot of gold at the end of the phony-baloney rainbow when the Metropolitan Museum of Art staff voted 542–172 to join the United Auto Workers. Counterintuitive, I know, but the UAW has a portfolio of bargaining units that includes boutique left-wing, white-collar culture workers such as the curators, conservators, librarians, archivists, designers, marketeers, visitor-services coordinators, and fundraisers at the Met. Along with bread-and-butter issues, these workers can be mobilized to wail over false values like open borders, which suppress working-class wages, the climate change hoax, Black Lives Matter, Celebrate Your Abortion, Me Too, No Kings, From the River to the Sea, any or all while wearing “pussy hats,” which, ladies and real wannabe ladies, don’t flatter. So, a juicy, fresh plum is now added to the UAW stash. Honk your horns. The Met is among the world’s great museums, if not the greatest.

I’m fine with unions in museums, say, for guards, janitors, food workers, and mechanics, jobs where the work is more or less fungible, but creative workers aren’t in the one-size-fits-all business. Most of the workers in this new bargaining union have discerning judgment and more autonomy than an assembly-line worker. A wall-to-wall union — a bargaining unit covering a broad swath of departments — also marginalizes curators, who, and I’m biased, having been one, are the top creatives. A wall-to-wall union empowers young — and naïve — workers who also aren’t scholars and aren’t likely to have a long-term commitment to the Met. There’s simply more of them.