You have seen the headlines. “Kate Fowle, former MoMA PS1 director, joins Hauser & Wirth.” “Pace Gallery hires Hirshhorn Museum curator Mark Beasley to head up its new ‘live’ art programme.” In recent years, there has been a steady march of high-profile US museum curators into the commercial sector. But look a bit deeper, and you will find the trend does not stop at the curatorial department. Mid-level registrars, senior event producers, visitor services associates, video editors, retail assistants and even museum educators are making the shift too. And their transitions may have an even bigger impact on—and reveal more about—the future of museums than those of their more famous peers.
The museum-to-gallery pipeline has been operational for decades. In 2004, Gregor Muir made a stir when he left Tate to lead Hauser & Wirth’s London gallery. Such moves are de rigueur today. Just this year, Marissa Passi joined Hauser & Wirth as its learning coordinator from New York’s Museum of Arts and Design; Jonathan Gardenhire, formerly MoMA PS1’s assistant director of individual giving, became an associate director at Hauser & Wirth; and Pamela Eisenberg Taite was named the director of events at David Zwirner after nearly seven years at the Guggenheim.
These shifts accelerated—especially in the US—after the onset of the pandemic, when museums began slashing budgets and shrinking teams. “My salary got cut, and I was absorbing a lot more responsibilities for less money,” says Joya Erickson, the former head registrar at PS1. She left the museum in 2022, after seven years, to join Pace. In the process, she went from being a full-time team of one wrestling with retrofitted software to working with 12 registrars and a dedicated shipping department with access to a proprietary art-inventory database.
Museum sources say the movers’ salaries went up anywhere from 20% to 300% when they joined the commercial sector; it is not unusual for curators’ pay to double. But money is not the only factor at play. Some candidates expressed a desire to work with artists more directly; others relished the opportunity to operate at a faster pace in a less structured environment. Several museum professionals say their decision was informed by broader changes they observed in the field. PS1, for example, became less appealing to Erickson as it began to stage fewer exhibitions and shift its focus from large-scale art objects to archival material and conceptual fare. Institutions striving to become more fiscally responsible and socially engaged “are being smart and sensitive”, she notes. “But at the same time, what do those of us who were trained to manage those complex logistics do? We go to the galleries.”
Similar trends can be identified in the fundraising, strategic planning and development divisions. Because millennials are less likely than their parents to donate to museums, many institutions are shifting some of their focus from philanthropy to retail and event rentals in order to generate income. (According to an October report from CCS Fundraising, arts and culture comes in at number two in a list of baby boomers’ giving priorities; among Gen X, millennials or Gen Z respondents, it does not appear in the top three.) Development experts who specialise in wooing wealthy collectors and donors find, however, that their skills are still in ample demand at galleries.
It feels like, as the climate of museums shifted and became more corporatised, it became harder to advocate for the artistRebecca McGrew, former curator at the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College
Negative feedback loop
Some museum veterans say that the stress of the pandemic also put strain on the culture of their institutions, making them more open than they had been before to alternatives. “It feels like, as the climate of museums shifted and became more corporatised, it became harder to advocate for the artist,” says Rebecca McGrew, who worked as a curator at the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College for 25 years, before joining Vielmetter Los Angeles this summer in the newly created role of senior director of institutional relations.
The issue has the potential to create a negative feedback loop as more people leave. “If you work somewhere that feels like every pipe is leaking in every direction, it creates a culture that doesn’t feel stable,” says Mia Locks, the executive director of Museums Moving Forward (MMF), an advocacy group dedicated to improving equity and working conditions at museums. “That is more costly to the institution than even a short-term brain drain.” In a recent survey of nearly 2,000 museum staff, MMF found that 68% of employees have considered leaving the museum field due in large part to low pay, burnout and lack of opportunities for growth.
“I felt underpaid but not overworked. I felt underappreciated,” says one former museum worker who made the switch. “Galleries reach out and say: ‘You are so special. We are going to pay you so much money, and you are so smart, and you work with artists so well.’ When someone makes you feel that way, you are going to respond.” But, the staffer adds, there are key differences—especially for curators—between museums and galleries. “At the museum you work with artists, and at the gallery you work for artists. That is a very different relationship. No matter what anyone says, at the end of the day, everyone is doing sales at the gallery.”
Few of the sources I spoke to feared that the museum-to-gallery trend would ever become so widespread that museums would be unable to find qualified staff. “The people who believe in the work museums do will continue to seek that out,” says Bryan Barcena, who left the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles to become a director at Regen Projects in 2021. (He left Regen in March 2023 to establish a publishing consultancy, and after our interview was conducted, he joined Artforum as an associate editor.) So what about longtime, historically underpaid employees with technical expertise, like registrars? “Registrars,” Barcena quips, “should all move to galleries.”
As far as Erickson is concerned, if she were ever to return to the museum world, she would favour a private institution such as Amant in Brooklyn or the Pinault Collection. “They aren’t dealing with the politics or budget issues other museums have to deal with,” she says.
• Julia Halperin is a journalist and co-author of the Burns Halperin Report