W.A.G.E. x AICA-USA: Tools in Hands, a participatory introduction to WAGENCY
August 1, 2025, 1PM EST
Virtual Event
Join W.A.G.E. and AICA-USA online on Friday, August 1 from 1-2 pm EST for Tools in Hands, a participatory introduction to WAGENCY. Not a formal trade union, umbrella group, or guild, WAGENCY is an organizing infrastructure designed to increase workers’ individual bargaining power and build collective leverage in the arts. W.A.G.E. core organizer Lise Soskolne will walk us through how to use its calculation tools, followed by a participatory discussion facilitated by Jasmine Amussen (President, AICA-USA) about the per word payment model for art writers and critics, and the challenges to accounting for the time investment required by this kind of highly skilled labor, particularly at the lower end of the pay scale.
ABOUT W.A.G.E. & WAGENCY
W.A.G.E. (Working Artists and the Greater Economy) was founded in 2008 in New York City by a group of visual and performing artists and independent curators. Our mission is to establish sustainable economic relationships between artists and the institutions that contract our labor, and to introduce mechanisms for self-regulation into the art field that collectively bring about a more equitable distribution of its economy.
Not a formal trade union, umbrella group, or guild, WAGENCY is an organizing infrastructure designed to increase workers’ individual bargaining power and build collective leverage in the arts. WAGENCY provides tools for calculating and negotiating equitable pay in occupations across the supply chain. With divisions for artists, artist assistants, art handlers, arts administrators, critics, curators, educators, interns, studio managers, and visitor service workers, its power lies in the commitment of its members to actively participate in changing the terms on which they engage their labor and to do so in solidarity with their peers.
ABOUT AICA-USA
AICA-USA is the United States section of the Association Internationale des Critiques d'Art (hence our acronym), which was founded in 1950 in Paris to revive the critical discourse that had suffered under fascism and the Second World War and to develop international co-operation in the fields of artistic creation and cultural development. At present there are 63 member nations representing more than 5,000 art critics. Headquartered in New York, AICA-USA is one of the association's largest national sections with over 500 distinguished critics, curators, scholars, and art historians working throughout the United States.