After Pressure, City Saves Jobs at Brooklyn Museum

The Brooklyn Museum will not be moving forward with layoffs of over a dozen workers thanks to $2.5 million in new funds from City Council, which voted unanimously to pass the 2026 Fiscal Year budget yesterday, June 30.

“New York City’s cultural institutions are pillars of their communities, offering New Yorkers of all ages unparalleled access to history, entertainment, arts, and culture,” City Council spokesperson Rendy Desamours told Hyperallergic. “The Council has delivered a budget that provides over $70 million to sustain these organizations.”

Facing a growing deficit, the Brooklyn Museum announced its intent to cut around 47 full- and part-time workers — more than 10% of its staff — back in February, a plan that was immediately met with backlash from its unions and community supporters. At least five non-unionized staff members were immediately laid off.

The two unions representing staff at the museum, DC 37 Local 1502 and UAW Local 2110, rallied outside the institution week after week and urged city leaders to step in, including in a special oversight hearing at City Hall on February 28. At the meeting, Committee on Civil Service and Labor Chair Carmen De La Rosa said layoffs “should be the absolute last resort.”

Unionized workers were eventually offered voluntary buyouts, which 27 people accepted. As a result of those reductions and a $100,000 windfall from the city, Director Anne Pasternak informed staff in March, the museum was pausing layoffs. But if additional funding didn’t materialize, the institution would proceed with cuts affecting approximately 15 workers.

Now, those cuts are officially off the table. Under the city’s $115.9 billion budget for the upcoming fiscal year, Speaker Adrienne E. Adams’s Initiative to Address Citywide Needs allocates $2.5 million for the Brooklyn Museum to “maintain current staffing levels, develop a robust philanthropic pipeline, and create a sustainable plan for the future.”

“Our members called and wrote their City Council members to urge them to provide the funding and avert layoffs,” Maida Rosenstein, director of organizing for UAW Local 2110, told Hyperallergic. “We are very pleased that the funding came through, and particularly appreciative of the efforts of our fellow unionists at DC37 AFSCME.”

In an email to workers last night, reviewed by Hyperallergic, Pasternak said the news was a bright spot but cautioned that the Brooklyn Museum will need to “exercise significant fiscal discipline” in the coming year. During an all-staff meeting in February, the director relayed a budget shortfall expected to reach $10 million, a result of rising expenses and inflation outpacing government contributions, she said.

Union leaders pushed back, attributing the museum’s bleak financial picture to mismanagement on the part of its senior officials and arguing that workers should not bear the brunt of the burden. “They created a deficit and they want to balance that deficit on the back of our unions,” Local 1502 President Wilson Souffrant said at the union’s March 6 rally, addressing a crowd of over 150 people gathered in protest.

The union’s sustained campaign and local government advocacy helped the Brooklyn Museum secure the necessary funds to avoid further staff cuts, even as other city institutions like the Guggenheim Museum announced non-negotiable layoffs.

“Our collective efforts helped secure this critical funding, which will preserve existing jobs and support the important work we do at the Museum,” a Brooklyn Museum spokesperson said in a statement to Hyperallergic.

Still, the collective sigh of relief at the Brooklyn Museum is tempered by the tangible impacts of the turmoil over the last few months. Neither the workers who were laid off nor those who accepted voluntary buyouts will be rehired as a result of the city funding, the museum confirmed.

“We’re super relieved about this,” one current staffer, who asked to speak on the condition of anonymity, told Hyperallergic. “Though it’s still bittersweet thinking about the handful of non-union colleagues who were let go when this all started.”

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