Marabou is grateful to have participated in #ArtWorkersLab @PS122gallery which served “as a shared resource and experimental setting to support developing ideas, projects, and resources by and for workers across the culture industry.” Marabou shared the gallery space with installations by Antonio Serna – Documents of Resistance, New Poetics of Labor and photography of The Abangguard by Maureen Catbagan. From Jan 24-Feb 23, a series of programs were hosted at PS122 organized by Culture Workers Education Center (CWEC) and Museum Workers Happy Hour (MWHH).  

Programming included 6 Museum Worker Manifesto Sessions organized by MWHH and led by workers from museums across NYC. The Manifesto is described as:  

“a vision for the kind of mutual support we intend to give and receive from the museum community, be it employers, co-workers, contractors, specialists, visitors, community members both local and international.   

The manifesto will be rooted in ethics, accountability, equity, and workers rights. We expect the highest of standards and compliance from the leading cultural institutions. We also want to create a space to reimagine museums as spaces of dialog and action that de-center narratives of settler-colonial and Eurocentric hegemony that maintain white supremacy, hetero-normativity, and ableism.”  

CWEC organized a session thinking about the precarity and exploitation of freelance labor in the art and cultural sector led by Kerry Downey.

Art Workers Lab served as a place for cultural workers to convene and collaborate through discussion and workshopping with goals of worker empowerment and tangible change toward equity and justice.

More to come about Art Workers Lab and the Museum Workers Manifesto!