Brooklyn Museum Pauses Layoffs, But Workers Not Out of the Woods

The Brooklyn Museum is hitting pause on planned layoffs after the City of New York confirmed an additional $100,000 in funding for the current fiscal year. Of the 47 full- and part-time workers initially expected to be cut, 27 accepted voluntary buyouts last week, but the fate of the remaining staffers was unclear until the city stepped in.

“However, we continue to await confirmation of the promised additional funding for next fiscal year,” Director Anne Pasternak warned in an email to staff today, March 24, reviewed by Hyperallergic. If that city money does not materialize, Pasternak said, the museum “will unfortunately need to move ahead with the previously planned reductions by June 30, 2025.”

In response to Hyperallergic‘s request for comment, a Brooklyn Museum spokesperson confirmed the pause in further staff cuts and added that “museum leadership is continuing its productive conversations with the City regarding funding.”

The museum’s unions, workers, and supporters fought for weeks against the institution’s highly criticized plan to lay off more than 10% of its workforce in the face of a $10 million budget deficit. After a series of rallies and a special oversight hearing at City Hall, leadership agreed to voluntary separation packages and retirement incentives — alternatives to staff cuts that District Council 37 Local 1502 and UAW Local 2110, the museum’s two unions, had been advocating for.

“There is no reason why 47 people should be losing their jobs until we exhaust everything possible,” DC 37 Executive Director Henry A. Garrido said at the City Council hearing on February 28, recalling that the museum offered furloughs to workers during a period of financial turmoil in 2016.

Pasternak shared a plan to implement what she described as “difficult cuts and strategic investments” during an all-staff meeting on February 7. In addition to layoffs, she said the museum would cut back programming, freeze hiring for positions that are not “critical for financial growth,” and reduce senior staff salaries by 10% to 20%. The museum’s popular First Saturdays event was paused for two months as part of the cost-saving measures.

Throughout six weeks of protests and negotiations, union leaders stressed their view that workers should not be taking the fall for the institution’s economic troubles. “They created a deficit and they want to balance that deficit on the back of our unions,” Local 1502 President Wilson Souffrant said at a March 6 rally.

The news of the Brooklyn Museum’s tentative pause on layoffs comes as cultural workers across the country brace for instability and job cuts amid rising expenses, unpredictable federal funding, and loosening labor protections. On February 28, the Guggenheim Museum in New York City laid off 20 workers effective immediately, without salary cuts for senior staffers. This month, unions representing workers at the Asian Art Museum and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco pushed back against possible layoffs in light of a city budget reduction proposal.