Demystifying Museum Compensation: A Look Inside the “Art + Museum Salary Transparency” Spreadsheet
By: Lauren Scharf, Museum Council Marketing Committee Member
“We weren’t transgressing any HR rules or doing anything illegal, but we were actually empowering each other by being collegial, working in solidarity, and sharing knowledge that can help demystify the process of compensation within our field.”
In recent years, the issue of salary equity has become a crucial discussion topic in the museum field. Low wages—combined with an increasingly competitive job market—have made it more and more challenging for many individuals to sustain a career in the field, further contributing to a widespread lack of diversity among museum staff. The problem is clear, but the solutions are far less obvious.
In May 2019, a group of museum professionals made bold strides towards advancing this conversation. Michelle Millar Fisher (then Assistant Curator of European Decorative Arts at the Philadelphia Museum of Art), along with a team of anonymous colleagues from other institutions, launched an open-source Google spreadsheet titled Arts + All Museums Salary Transparency 2019, encouraging museum employees to post their institution, job title, salary, and other related information. The spreadsheet became an almost instantaneous phenomenon nationwide, even garnering attention from The New York Times and inspiring a similar movement among Philadelphia baristas. To this date, the spreadsheet has more than 3,200 entries from museum workers across the globe, ranging from minimum wage floor staff to six-figure executive director salaries, and everything else in between. But the conversation is far from over.
Read our interview with Michelle and one of her fellow Art + Museum Transparency colleagues (referred to as “P” for anonymity) to learn more about how this movement started, what they’ve learned from the experience, and where they plan to go from here.
A screenshot of the “Arts + All Museums Salary Transparency 2019” spreadsheet.
What motivated you to start the salary spreadsheet? Why is the issue of salary transparency important to you?
Michelle: The spreadsheet came from an informal conversation between colleagues and friends at the end of May. We were discussing our salaries as part of a conversation on the state of employment in the museum field. And we realized that, in doing so, we weren’t transgressing any HR rules or doing anything illegal, but we were actually empowering each other by being collegial, working in solidarity, and sharing knowledge that can help demystify the process of compensation within our field. We thought that if we did this at a larger scale, it could help people outside of our immediate colleagues and friends.
We’re often told that if you work in the arts, you do it for love and not for money. But of course, that doesn’t align with making the field more accessible, inclusive, diverse, and thoughtful—not only in the galleries and public-facing spaces, but also in staff and human resources policies. In creating this spreadsheet, we sought to demystify compensation because it’s often incredibly low or nonexistent, which perpetuates many inequities in the field that are in direct contradiction with museums’ missions.
Why did you decide that spreadsheet was the best method for sharing this information? Were there any other options you considered?
Michelle: We did not consider any other options. We thought that having a publicly editable document was a good way to create a non-hierarchical conversation. We were also directly inspired by Joshua Boldt, a former adjunct instructor at the University of Georgia, who created the Adjunct Project in 2012 to expose inequities in pay between adjuncts and tenure-track professors.
Is this the first time you’ve done something like this?
Michelle: I was a member of the union at MoMA around 2015, where we vigorously protested for healthcare. Many of us in the Art + Museum Transparency group have been adjuncts at various institutions and have been part of those unions, or are otherwise active in political or collegial ways. But I believe this is the first time any of us have used a Google Doc in this sense.
Did you discuss the spreadsheet with your colleagues from the Philadelphia Museum of Art before it was published? What was their reaction?
Michelle: No, we did not. We didn’t want to put anyone in a difficult position. None of us thought the spreadsheet would get this many entries, so we didn’t think it would be as public as it was.
Has the PMA responded in any official capacity?
Michelle: They have and they haven’t, though it did not go unnoticed by any means. The interesting part is that people noticed it in different ways depending on their roles at the museum. Many colleagues from all levels of the museum expressed solidarity, and some of them felt deep anguish at being underpaid over many years. But there were also some members of staff who viewed the project with a great level of suspicion.
It’s also important to note that not everyone in the Art + Museum Transparency group is an employee of the PMA. We are all really keen to make sure that the spreadsheet does not get connected to any one specific institution, because this is absolutely a field-wide issue.
Has this sparked any meaningful conversations with coworkers or with peers at other institutions?
P: In my experience, the spreadsheet has become this kind of instant solidarity action, almost like a code word. If you meet someone else who has contributed, there’s this understanding that you’re both on the same page. And I think that’s really powerful in an industry that can be very alienating. There’s this mentality where people are convinced that their issues are their own, and not things that can be acted on as a collective. This spreadsheet gives people a common reference point and helps break down those walls.
I’ve also heard several people attest to real, actionable tools that the spreadsheet has offered them as far as negotiating salaries. For people who are on the job market and interviewing at different institutions, being able to get insight into their internal culture and pay structure can be extremely empowering. It can be that one tool that can really transform the conversation when you’re interviewing.
“I don’t know if I see myself staying in this field. I’ve been hearing that from a lot of people who look at the cold, hard data and not only feel undervalued, but also that other people were horribly undervalued.”
What's the most surprising reaction you've heard since the spreadsheet was published?
Michelle: I think the largest surprise, to me, is that I wasn’t surprised in the end. When the spreadsheet reached around 2,000 salaries, the most surprising part was looking through them and thinking, “I don’t know if I see myself staying in this field.” I’ve been hearing that from a lot of people who look at the cold, hard data and not only feel undervalued, but also that other people were horribly undervalued.
P: My biggest surprise was also kind of a non-surprise of just how quickly the spreadsheet has become commonplace and part of the conversation. It initially felt like this transformative event, but now that it exists, it’s just part of the landscape. I’ve been surprised by how quickly the industry has acclimated to the reality that all of this information is available. It is a radical act in some ways, but it should also be a commonplace thing to have salary transparency in the field.
Were you surprised by the reaction? And the attention it’s received?
Michelle: Yes and no. I don’t know that we would have been quite as brave had we known that it would go so viral. But that’s probably a good thing! It was definitely surprising to see how quickly it became a large, public conversation.
Now that you have this momentum, what do you plan to do next? What do you hope this accomplishes?
Michelle: We are committed to making sure that this conversation doesn’t disappear. We published a second spreadsheet in July, which looks at unpaid internships as one of the foundational reasons why compensation is so poor in our field, and has contributed over many decades to suppressing wage expectations. We’ve also been very active on our Twitter account, where we’ve been highlighting both good and bad practices in the field. We all feel very strongly about making sure that this conversation is not just a Tweet or an op-ed, but a lived ethics in our field.
P: Going forward, we’re committed to maintaining the two spreadsheets and making them functional and accessible, because we think that they are really the cornerstones of the conversation and tools that should exist. We’re still encouraging folks to submit their information to both. Beyond that, we’re committed to being part of the landscape now, and we’ll see where that takes us in the future.
Have you heard of any changes that have come about as a result of this?
Michelle: I think it’s certainly galvanized conversations within the field. For example, I know of an entire museum Learning & Engagement department that sat down having read this and had a conversation around issues of workers’ compensation. The spreadsheet has been the precipitating factor for these types of discussions.
Interview responses have been edited for length and clarity.