Why 681 Former US Art Museum Workers Left the Field

A new Museums Moving Forward survey of 681 former US art museum workers puts poor management ahead of low pay and burnout as a reason for leaving. Many respondents found better pay and flexibility elsewhere, but the self-selected sample—and an unexplained discrepancy in the report’s data-cleaning arithmetic—set important limits on what the findings can prove.

 
 

What 681 Former Art Museum Workers Reported

Museums Moving Forward, or MMF, fielded its 33-question survey from May 19 through July 7, 2026. Its new report on former art museum workers says 85% of respondents identified poor management as a major or minor reason for leaving the field. Lack of growth opportunities followed at 84%, burnout at 79%, and low pay at 78%.

Those percentages describe the people who answered, not all former US art museum employees. Within the respondent group, 72% said they left voluntarily and 28% left through layoffs, firings, contract endings, or other involuntary circumstances. Yet 44% of those who left voluntarily said they felt pushed out. Nearly half of all respondents, 47%, departed without another job secured; among people who resigned, that share was 34%.

The sample reached workers across museum functions and levels. Collections and exhibitions was the largest department category, at 34%, followed by public engagement at 32%, administration at 21%, communications at 17%, and building operations at 6%. Respondents could select more than one department. That breadth matters because an art museum depends on far more than curatorial work: preparators, educators, visitor-services employees, fundraisers, communications staff, registrars, and facilities teams all help turn a collection into a public institution.

 

The Lunder Conservation Center at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery. Photograph by Amy Vaughters, Smithsonian American Art Museum, via Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported; cropped.

 
 

Poor Management Is a Distinct Finding, Not a Catchall

The headline ranking needs a closer read. Poor management exceeded lack of growth by only one percentage point when major and minor reasons were combined, 85% to 84%. The separation is clearer when the survey asks what counted as a major reason: 66% selected poor management, compared with 56% for limited growth, 55% for burnout, and 53% for low pay.

MMF’s focus groups and open-text analysis describe weak communication during crises, managers hired for subject expertise without people-management training, conflict avoidance, discriminatory conduct, and inadequate protection from retaliation. Respondents frequently located responsibility at the director and board levels. These are participants’ accounts and MMF’s thematic analysis; the survey did not independently audit the museums or evaluate named managers.

The categories nevertheless point to different institutional levers:

• Compensation: salary bands, living-wage benchmarks, and budget choices address low pay.
• Advancement: published job ladders, consistent promotion standards, and development budgets address stalled careers.
• Work design: staffing levels, workload limits, and flexibility policies address burnout.
• Management and governance: manager training, protected reporting channels, executive evaluation, and board oversight address conduct and accountability.

Treating all four as a generic “retention problem” would obscure the report’s most consequential point. Pay can improve while a reporting channel remains unsafe; a new title can arrive without a manageable workload. MMF’s data suggests that retention requires separate tests for material conditions, career structure, daily management, and board accountability.

An Indianapolis Museum of Art conservation technician repairs a Japanese scroll box. Photograph by RichardMcCoy, courtesy of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

 
 

The Survey Shows Experience, Not a National Exit Rate

The published methodology says recruitment ran primarily through MMF’s social media, newsletter, website, personal networks, aligned organizations, and online groups for former museum workers. That is a self-selected sample. It is well suited to identifying recurring experiences among 681 respondents, but it cannot estimate how common those experiences are among everyone who has left US art museums because the total eligible population and a response rate are unknown.

MMF says its quantitative findings are statistically significant at the 95% level. Significance testing can assess differences inside the collected data; it does not remove selection bias from an opt-in survey. The report itself identifies notable compositional differences. Cisgender men made up 11% of the former-worker respondents, compared with 25% in MMF’s 2025 current-worker study. Administration and building operations were also underrepresented relative to that study.

The appendix also contains a small but concrete accounting problem. It says the raw file held 895 complete and partial surveys, then lists 210 removals: 91 blank records, 107 records that stopped after the first question, and 12 duplicates. Those figures leave 685, not the reported final dataset of 681. The report consistently uses 681 elsewhere, including its data tables, but the methodology provides no fourth exclusion category for the missing four records. That gap needs an explanation or correction; it is not, by itself, evidence that the published results are invalid.

Comparison with MMF’s 2025 study of current workers also requires restraint. MMF’s methodology reports 3,018 staff respondents from 91 partner museums and 83 from nonparticipating institutions, while the report introduction gives a conflicting staff total of 3,102; it also lists 71 HR officers and 67 directors. In it, 54% of workers said they had considered leaving the field, down from 68% in the 2023 study. The former-worker survey raises a plausible concern that some improvement among those who stayed could reflect dissatisfied people leaving, but it cannot prove that explanation: the studies surveyed different populations through different recruitment structures rather than following one cohort over time.

 
 

Leaving Often Improved Work, but Not for Everyone

The post-museum results sharpen the retention question. Compared with their last art museum job, 73% of respondents said they now had more flexibility, 64% earned more, and 55% had more opportunities for advancement. Among respondents who had cited low pay as a reason for leaving, 73% reported earning more outside the sector, compared with 64% overall.

Former workers did not all move into a single alternative industry. Twenty-four percent entered galleries, libraries, archives, or non-art museums; another 24% moved to other, predominantly for-profit work. Academia employed 12%, consulting or freelance work 10%, the public sector 9%, other nonprofits 6%, and philanthropy 5%. Ten percent were not working when surveyed.

Nor was departure uniformly advantageous. Forty percent described finding a new job as easy, 35% as difficult, and 25% as neither. Among people who left without a job lined up, 48% found the search difficult, and MMF says that group was more likely to land jobs with lower pay and fewer advancement opportunities than respondents overall. The data supports a “better elsewhere” finding for majorities, not a promise that leaving improves every outcome.

There is also a substantial pool of potential returners. MMF’s narrative puts the share who would return under special circumstances at 63%, although its appendix lists 62% in that category and another 1% as “Other”; 23% would return without qualification, 13% would not return, and 1% would return only as a consultant, freelancer, or volunteer. The conditions respondents named combined personal needs—higher pay, a suitable role, location, advancement—with structural demands such as values-aligned leadership, credible accountability, and reworked governance.

Workers handle a sculpture while dismantling a temporary exhibition at the Museu d’Art de Sabadell. Photograph by Kippelboy, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

 
 

Poor Management Leads, but the National Rate Is Unknown

Among MMF’s respondents, poor management was both the most commonly selected reason for leaving and the leading major reason, with governance and accountability recurring in the qualitative findings. Majorities reported greater flexibility, pay, and advancement outside art museums, although workers who left without another job faced worse searches and outcomes.

The survey does not establish a national art museum quit rate, and its comparison with current-worker studies does not prove that apparent improvement came from dissatisfied employees departing. Its methodology also leaves four removed records unaccounted for in the published arithmetic. For these respondents, decisions to leave were associated with concerns about management, career paths, workloads, and board accountability as well as mission and compensation.