Behind the Curtain: COVID‐19 as a Lens to Precarity in Museum Labor

ABSTRACT Using in‐depth interviews with emerging and early professional museum workers in New Orleans, Louisiana, this article expands on scholarship around the perceived and actual value of nonprofit labor. It adds qualitative support to the argument that museum labor is real labor— open to exploitation and abuse while constantly negotiated internally and externally. The findings enhance an understanding of what happens when work asks too much and offers too little, underscoring that the future of the museum field is at risk if the institution is simply for the visitor and never for the staffer.