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The Buffalo AKG Art Museum, formerly the Albright–Knox Art Gallery, has come under scrutiny after the institution laid off 13 employees and reorganized staff to effectively remove union positions.
Buffalo AKG Workers United, the union representing employees in the visitor experience (VEX), facilities management, and food services departments, claims that the western New York art museum is retaliating against staff organizing efforts by eliminating workers from the largest organized department in favor of hiring more non-union roles.
The museum has not yet responded to Hyperallergic’s immediate request for comment.
The staff changes follow more than a year of unionization efforts at the AKG, resulting in its first contract in December. Slated to go into effect at the beginning of April, the reductions will affect three full-time and 10 part-time VEX workers, said Casey Moore, organizing director of Workers United Upstate NY, in an email to Hyperallergic.
As a result of the cuts, the VEX department, which comprises front desk representatives, gallery attendants, and daily operations volunteers, will be reduced by more than half sicne staff began organizing, Moore said, noting that these layoffs follow a previous round of reductions that impacted 15 VEX staffers.
Eleven days ago, the museum posted new job listings for 11 Preservation and Safety Associates, a non-union security guard position.
“At a time when workers’ rights are under attack nationwide, it is appalling to see AKG take a page from Elon Musk’s playbook — undermining its own employees and our hard-won rights,” Moore said, further describing the reductions as “a “thinly veiled attempt to disguise … union busting.”
Andrea Harden, the museum’s director of talent and culture, told Buffalo News reporters in a statement that the staff changes are based on the past 20 months of operational experience since the AKG reopened following a $230 million expansion and renovation, which saw the institution double its exhibition space.
“We concluded that the role of the Visitor Experience Associate was not functioning the way we anticipated,” Harden said.
“As a result of this planned operational change, the Preservation and Safety staff, who have always secured the AKG’s assets and facilities, will stop sharing that task with Visitor Experience Associates and return to taking full responsibility for their original and essential service,” Harden told Buffalo News.
Today, March 7, museum workers and Buffalo community members rallied outside the museum during its First Friday programming with an inflatable Scabby and signs calling on the museum’s director Janne Sirén to stop the layoffs. Another sign accused AKG officials of taking advantage of the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency’s recent staff cuts at the National Labor Relations Board.
Workers at New York City’s Brooklyn Museum have voiced similar criticism of the institution’s decision to lay off 47 workers in the face of a $10 million budget deficit. During a rally yesterday, Brandon Mancilla, a region director for UAW, one of the two unions representing workers at the museum, decried what he called a “culture of austerity.” Last week, the Guggenheim Museum also announced layoffs, impacting 20 workers immediately without salary cuts for senior staff.
Tayia Woolford, an employee at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum since late 2023, lamented the loss of her role in the VEX department in a statement to Hyperallergic.
“The museum told me we were a family,” Woolford said. “Now I’m left in the dust, in the middle of a housing crisis.”
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