PROPOSAL TYPE
Working Group
SEEKING
- Seeking Additional Presenters
- Seeking Specific Expertise
RELATED TOPICS
- Leadership
- Reflections on the Field
- Labor
ABSTRACT
Building on conversations started at the AASLH 2025 Conference in Cincinnati, the proposed working group will utilize the data from AASLH’s National Survey of Public History Practitioners from the perspective of museum labor.
DESCRIPTION
In the follow-up to the 2025 Conference, I am looking to form an AASLH Working Group on Museum Labor. As a first step, we are hoping to hold a joint session with NCPH’s Labor Task Force to explore areas for future collaboration as well as to identify unique needs for each organization (AASLH and NCPH). This would be a multi-year working group that focuses conversations on issues that are prevalent in museums and history organizations nationwide: salary levels, benefits, burnout and high turnover, etc. The working group will explore areas for conversation about potential reforms to include unionization, shared benefit models, four-day work weeks, staff retention, and more. Critically, the working group will seek to engage museum leaders in conversations about how to implement potential reforms in a way that is beneficial both to the institution and to staff.
The working group will explore the contradiction between new expectations from the museum labor force and “the way things have always been done” at our institutions. Can greater organizing and advocacy by museum labor provide new energy for cultural organizations rather than pose a threat? Can living wages and protections against topic workplaces, burnout, or high turnover coexist within a vibrant and sustainable museum economic model?
I am seeking additional participants for the working group and to engage NCPH’s Labor Task Force in this effort and conversation.
If you have a direct offer of assistance, sensitive criticism, or wish to pass along someone’s contact information confidentially, please get in contact directly:
Aaron Noble, Public Employees Federation/New York State Museum, [email protected]
All feedback and offers of assistance should be sent by November 15, 2025. If you have general ideas or feedback to share, please feel free to use the comments feature below.