The new corporate MFA
GRACING THE front lawn of Boston's Museum of Fine Arts are two huge and streamlined American Cup yachts with 90-foot masts. They are a fitting introduction to the new MFA, which features the boats and art of multimillionaire Bill Koch, the automobiles of fashion king Ralph Lauren, lavish parties for wealthy donors, and the half billion dollar expansion of the museum that is to come.
Along with most other large art institutions in this country, the MFA has gone the way of profits, expansions, and popularity. Publicists, developers, and wealthy patrons rule at the top of the museum hierarchy. In all but tax status, the museum has become part of corporate America, building wealth by whittling away the salaries and benefits of its low-wage workers.
Having embraced corporate culture, the museum has also taken on some of its worst characteristics. This has become especially evident in the workplace. While museum director Malcolm Rogers and his colleagues in management make huge salaries with large raises, the rest of the museum staff has faced layoffs and cuts in salaries and/or benefits. Scholar curators have found themselves to be expendable pieces of the machine. Many staff members have gone years without a raise. The museum's low-wage security guards are now fighting for their life in contract negotiations.
The present standoff between the museum and their security guards has lasted half a year. These same guards serve at the museum's high-end parties and watch over their expensive treasures. They barely get by from week to week on what the MFA pays. According to salary.com, which compares all the security guards in the Boston area, they are in the lower 25th percentile for pay of all guards in Boston. By most standards, the MFA guards' annual income places them among the ''working poor."
Yet Rogers claims they are highly paid. He has stood firm on taking away huge hunks of their wages and benefits even as he sees another banner year for the museum with the cash registers clinking far above expectations for the year.
The MFA's sizable profits in 2004 are detailed in museum board minutes of September 2004, telling of large MFA gains all across the board with their total assets increasing by almost $90 million dollars. Yet the museum had deliberately misled its own workers into believing that the MFA had hit upon hard times. Meanwhile, Rogers enjoyed a $55,000 raise to his $512,000 salary, while insisting that the layoffs were a ''painful last resort" and salary cuts were part of ''tough economic times."
Because Rogers has cut 40 percent of the full-time gallery guard force since he came to the MFA, a majority of these guards are now part-time. Since they can't work 40 regular hours, they have to work overtime to make ends meet. But Rogers wants to cut any overtime pay except that over 40 hours (and that only because he has to pay it by law). This will cost many of these guards thousands of dollars. Not much money for Rogers, but for people who live from week to week, it's huge.
These scenarios come right out of the corporate notebook. But the public, which troops into the museum in ever-increasing numbers, still expects something different from an institution dedicated to the higher ideals of humanity. Indeed, state Senator Dianne Wilkerson, state Representatives Byron Rushing and Gloria Fox, and City Councilors Felix Arroyo and Chuck Turner, five community leaders who represent the area of the museum, came to see Rogers. They told him to get the takeaways off the table. They reminded him that the cuts from the guards' salaries would just about equal the raise in his salary. They told him that taking money away from his low-wage workers was not bargaining in good faith. Rogers, standing firm in his corporate ideals, ignored them.
Those leaders see in the security guards of the MFA the only department in the museum which represents the multicultural mix of their neighborhoods. The people who come to the museum from all over the world also see that mix. It reflects their own diversity and gives them a chance to ask questions of someone who understands their own language. Likewise, many guards have backgrounds which allow them to speak knowledgably about the art in the museum. The guards take pride in their work and are happy to be the frontline ambassadors of the MFA. They should not be treated with economic contempt.
The sad thing is that we have to be talking about things like this. It should never happen in an institution like the MFA. The museum should be setting examples for corporations like Wal-mart, instead of taking lessons from them.
Michael Raysson is president of the Museum Independent Security Union at Boston Museum of Fine Arts. 
