Occupy Wall Street Plans Protest at Art Fair
Finn, Christina. “Occupy Wall Street Plans Protest at Art Fair.” The Journal, 21 Apr. 2012, https://www.thejournal.ie/occupy-wall-street-plans-protest-at-art-fair-422715-Apr2012/.
Full text:
THE OCCUPY WALL STREET movement has moved from the financial world to the art world.
Members of the subgroup, Occupy Museums, plan to stage a full-on protest at the Frieze Art Fair in New York.
The New York’s Carpenter’ Union has complained that the art fair are not using union labour on Randall’s Island where the art fair is being held in May.
A letter was sent to the art fair’s main sponsor, Deutsche Bank, claiming that Frieze were using contractors who did not pay the area standard wages to all their employees including providing or fully paying for health benefits and pension.
The Art newspaper reports that the Occupy Museum members are also demonstrating against what they call “the rampant financialisation of art”. The members state that there is a “one-sidedness” in the art world and that they wished to move away from the traditional art critique of these type of fairs and “un-Frieze art”.
This is not the first time the Occupy Wall Street protesters have supported local trade unions who feel mistreated by the art world establishment.
They also joined ranks with the Professional Art Handlers. Sotheby’s art handlers protested that the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) should sever ties with the auction house. Sothebys Bad for Art state that despite record profits and growth, Sotheby’s auction house has outsourced art handling jobs to temporary workers and locked out its professional art handlers with no pay.