Roughly twenty-four hours after employees began to be notified of the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) Boston’s decision to lay off staff, a picture began to emerge of how new resource allocation articulates possible shifting values at the institution and a lack of good faith between museum leadership, the MFA Union, and the Boston community at large.
The lack of transparency around which positions were identified for elimination and the abrupt communication of the headcount reduction as a solution to the museum’s budget deficit appears to signal two difficult messages: a de-prioritization of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives at the museum and how US labor law has defanged the power of collective bargaining. Against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s targeting of DEI policy at universities and cultural institutions and expanding ICE raids, the layoffs are causing a community-wide crisis of confidence that good faith is guiding leadership at one of Boston’s leading art institutions.
The crisis began the morning of Wednesday, January 27, when the Boston Globe published a story that the MFA Boston would be laying off “6.3% of total active employees,” per the museum’s statement. That afternoon, the MFA Union—the local chapter of the 2110 Auto Workers Union which, per union representative Eve Mayberger, represents approximately 330 of roughly 520 of museum staff and is one of three unions representing staff at the museum—posted on Instagram that they had been alerted “late in the day yesterday” about the layoffs…