Working Artists and the Greater Economy was founded in 2008 in New York City by a group of visual and performing artists and independent curators. Since then, our work has developed in service of a single achievable goal — regulating the payment of artist fees in the nonprofit sector — but we emerge 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 the contemporary fight for non-wage compensation as 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 more than $60 billion 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 by 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 have concluded that the task of regulating the field has been left to us. To that end, W.A.G.E. operates two connected programs, W.A.G.E. Certification for institutions, and WAGENCY for artists and art workers.
Launched in 2014, W.A.G.E. Certification publicly recognizes those nonprofits 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 is contracted. To date, 133 institutions have been certified across the U.S. and more than $19 million has been paid out to artists through the program’s administration. Learn more about W.A.G.E. Certification here .
WAGENCY was launched in 2018 to provide artists with a means to request and negotiate W.A.G.E. fees with non-certified 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, critics, curators, educators, 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.
Stay tuned for the integration into WAGENCY of contracts to support the legal self-determination of those who facilitate the conception, fabrication, production, exhibition and circulation of art. 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 .