Workers at the Hispanic Society Museum and Library in New York’s Washington Heights neighborhood have been on strike since late March. Strike began after a year of fruitless negotiations between the administration of the museum and the unionized workers. According to union members, represented by United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 2110, there has been no progress since early April.
“We haven’t had any contact with them since the start of the second week, when we had a nine-hour bargaining session,” said John O’Neill, curator at the Hispanic Society and member of the bargaining committee. “It was at the start of the second week. So basically things are where they are, where they were, and there’s been no movement from them.
Despite the failure of negotiations, the workers maintained a picket line in front of the museum, in addition to other actions. On April 26, the union picketed the home of Philippe de Montebello, chairman of the board of directors of the Hispanic Society and former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They also received support from several elected officials, including New York City Council members Carmen De La Rosa and Shaun Abreu. On April 28, the Society for Iberian Global Art published a open letter addressing the current situation at the Hispanic Society and calling for a resolution.
The Hispanic Society houses one of the largest collections of Latin American, Spanish and Portuguese art and literature in the world. Its museum building has been closed for renovations since 2017. The museum was supposed to reopen last month, but the strike and construction delays have pushed back that reopening indefinitely.
“The Hispanic Society – a beloved institution – has been closed long enough, failing in its mission to engage with broad audiences, starting with its local community,” a museum spokesperson said in a statement. communicated. The arts journal. “In recent years there have been many efforts to change what was perceived as an insular and unwelcoming attitude. However, it is fair to acknowledge that this new direction has been met with some resistance from a few long-serving staff members. »
The employees of the establishment have formed a union in 2021. UAW Local 2110 also represents employees of museums and cultural institutions in the northeast, including the Museum of Fine Arts, BostonTHE jewish museumthe Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Artand the guggenheim museum.
The Hispanic Society strike is now the longest strike in recent history in the culture and heritage sector in the United States. Last fall, workers at the Philadelphia Museum of Art strike for 19 dayseventually leading the museum workers and administrators to agree to a new contract.
Of the standoff at the Hispanic Society, UAW Local 2110 Organizing Director Maida Rosenstein says that “unfortunately, there are people in the cast of the characters [there] who just seem very unaware of what they have on staff,” she adds, “These are long-serving professionals who made the difficult decision to unionize because the board cut their pension plan and they felt they had to move on. What’s at stake here are people’s health benefits.
