Protest at Guggenheim Art Opening

The Guggenheim has two main union groups: curators, conservators and other staff are represented by UAW Local 2110, while art handlers and facility workers are part of IUOE Local 30. Local 30 ratified its first three-year contract in February 2021 after more than a year of tense negotiations, and Local 2110 ratified its first contract in August 2023 after two years of talks. This union activity is part of a larger trend across U.S. cultural institutions. Workers at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, for example, went on a nearly three-week strike in 2022 to win their first contract and recently settled a dispute over longevity pay. Recent labor relations at the Guggenheim have been tense. In April 2025, the union protested the abrupt layoff of 20 staffers, 14 of whom were union members. That protest also took place during the opening reception for a major exhibition, mirroring the current demonstration. Inside the museum, Carol Bove's exhibition is the first museum survey of her 25-year career, transforming the entire Frank Lloyd Wright-designed rotunda. The show debuts a new monumental series of her "collage sculptures," made from steel, alongside earlier works like drawings and installations. Bove's installation incorporates interactive elements, inviting visitors to play chess at artist-designed tables or handle materials from her studio in a tactile library. For the first time in decades, the exhibition also partially reveals a mural by Joan Miró and Josep Llorens Artigas that was built into the museum's ramps in the 1960s.