The Brookline Arts Center is now W.A.G.E. (Working Artists and the Greater Economy) Certified! We join the Mass Art Museum, Rose Art Museum, and Now + There as the fourth organization in the Boston area to be certified by W.A.G.E.

In joining W.A.G.E.’s certification program, the Brookline Arts Center is making a public commitment to compensate artists in keeping with W.A.G.E.’s payment standards.

In their own words:

“Since its founding in 2008, W.A.G.E.’s work has developed in service of a single achievable goal — regulating the payment of artist fees in the nonprofit sector — but we emerge from a long tradition of artists organizing around the issue of remuneration for cultural work in the United States that dates back to the 1930s.”

“We see the contemporary fight for non-wage compensation as part of a wider struggle by all gig workers who supply content without payment standards or an effective means to organize. In the context of contemporary art, where the unpaid labor of artists supports a more than $60 billion-dollar industry, W.A.G.E.’s 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.”

We, at the Brookline Arts Center, believe that equity in the arts can only be achieved if careers in the arts become economically sustainable so that they are open to all, not only members of the privileged classes. We are thrilled to be supporting W.A.G.E.'s extremely important work and joining a group of organizations committed to just compensation for artists.