W.A.G.E. was founded in New York City in 2008 by a group of visual and performing artists and independent curators. Catalyzed by the shared experience of non-payment for cultural work, what began as a series of informal discussions is today a small but mighty nonprofit organization that remains laser focused on one form of inequity that holds in place so many others: the exploitation of labor.
W.A.G.E. emerges from a long tradition of artists organizing around the issue of remuneration for cultural work in the United States that dates back to the 1930s . We see today’s fight for artist compensation as being part of a wider struggle by all gig workers who supply content without payment standards or an effective means to organize.
In the context of contemporary art, where the unpaid labor of artists supports a multibillion dollar industry, W.A.G.E.’s mission is to establish sustainable economic relationships between artists and the institutions that contract our labor, and to introduce mechanisms for self-regulation into the art field that collectively bring about a more equitable distribution of its economy.
Self-regulation is central to our approach because artist compensation has never been mandated at the city, state, or federal levels by government agencies or the private foundations that provide financial support to nonprofits through the grant making process. In this context, and in the face of accelerated privatization, deregulation and defunding, we concluded that the task of regulating the field was left to us.
In its early days, W.A.G.E.’s message gained traction via consciousness raising. Using our skills as artists, we W.A.G.E.-raged in panel discussions and symposia at museums, galleries, conferences, festivals, summits, and art fairs. By 2010, our efforts had grown to include data gathering, negotiation, and later, policy development with the introduction of our flagship program, W.A.G.E. Certification. Over the following decade, W.A.G.E.’s work evolved in service of a single achievable goal: regulating the payment of artist fees in the nonprofit sector.
With our attention still squarely on supporting working artists, we recognize that in today’s economy artist fees are only half the picture. Real economic equity must also encompass our full participation in the workforce, not just as practitioners but also as art and cultural workers. To that end, W.A.G.E. operates two connected programs, W.A.G.E. Certification for nonprofit institutions, and WAGENCY for artists and art and cultural workers.
Launched in 2014, W.A.G.E. Certification publicly recognizes those nonprofit institutions demonstrating a history of, and commitment to, voluntarily paying artist fees that meet W.A.G.E. standards. It is the first model of its kind as well as the first in the U.S. to establish national compensation standards and a clear set of guidelines for the conditions under which artistic labor should be contracted.
To date, more than $24 million has been paid out to artists by 149 W.A.G.E. Certified institutions across the U.S. since 2014. The widespread use of the W.A.G.E. Fee Calculator by artists and institutions alike indicates that W.A.G.E. standards have largely become industry standards, demonstrating that structural change is possible in the art system. Learn more about W.A.G.E. Certification here .
WAGENCY was introduced in 2018 to provide artists with a means to request and negotiate W.A.G.E. fees with uncertified institutions. Prefiguring the wave of unionization that began to sweep the field in 2020, WAGENCY was designed to increase the bargaining power of individual artists by collectivizing the leverage of its membership .
Today, WAGENCY is open to anyone working in the art field. It provides tools for calculating and negotiating equitable pay in occupations across the industry including artists, artist assistants, art handlers, arts administrators, arts writers, curators, educators, figure models, interns, studio managers, visitor service workers and others. WAGENCY’s power lies in the commitment of its members to actively participate in changing the terms on which they engage their labor and to do so in solidarity with their peers. Learn more about WAGENCY here .
W.A.G.E.'s complete history, including organizational milestones, summits, collaborations, events, open letters, videos, annual certifications and more, is chronicled in the TIMELINE .