But, but, but…
But what do art technicians do anyway and why should I care? Art technicians often go under the radar, they are part of the invisible workforce behind art and exhibition production. We are rarely seen by the public eye (like some kind of rare bird), most of us work on a freelance basis with little or no job security (not so rare in the art world, unfortunately). Artists often take on this type of work to make ends meet; ‘teching’ can subsidise studio rent and other artist’s ‘essentials’. Besides learning practical skills on the job, it also offers the opportunity to build valuable work relationships with curators and institutions.
But where do most of the technicians come from? No, not from Mars, less mundane than that; from art schools! Although male students only represent a small percentage of fine art undergraduates, gallery technicians are mostly young, male fine art graduates – at least in my city, this has been the case for years. For one reason or another, female art graduates don’t seem to filter into this line of work.
The table below is from the Higher education student statistics showing the percentages of female, male and other students enrolled on Creative arts & design courses in the academic year 2016/17.
No more buts!
Many contemporary art galleries pledge to programme their exhibitions showing a high percentage of women artists, this effort for equal representation doesn’t affect their decision to employ a heavily male-dominated workforce when it comes to building the same exhibitions.
The above chart is from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation: Art Museum Staff Demographic Survey, from 2015. The survey took place across art museums in the USA. The second left column illustrates the male-female ratio of ‘Preparators/Handlers’.
As the report states ‘Many job categories are highly gender-specific, as shown in Figure 10. Facilities, Preparators/Handlers, Exhibition Design and Construction, … are heavily weighted towards Males.’ The report then goes on to say that Museum leadership roles are approximately equally staffed by male and female employees.
The art industry could and should be a petri dish for forward thinking trends, and be the first to close the gender gap present in jobs involving manual labour. To achieve this change, we need to make visible, the wonderful women already working in these roles and create new outlets for representation, training and networking.
