The Art of Equal Pay is an initiative organized by Michele Pred to confront and combat the racial and gender pay gaps for visual artists. Our team includes Autumn Breon, Carmen Rios, and Hadley Dynak.
The Art of Equal Pay encourages women-identifying and non-binary artists across the country to raise their prices up to 15% in order to decrease the gender and racial wage gaps in art. If you’re interested in participating in the action, sign up here!
Arts professionals, art collectors, gallerists, feminist and art-oriented organizations, and individual art lovers can also sign the pledge in support of women artists.
We understand that not every artist is in a position to raise their prices and/or fees—and that an individual solution cannot necessarily solve a systemic problem. We’ve therefore launched a survey to collect data from artists of all genders in order to gain more information about the wage gaps in art and how they impact artists who are marginalized based on their race, gender identity, and sexual orientation. Please take our survey today!
We launched in February 2020 at Frieze LA. Due to the pandemic, we started holding zoom events that presented artists, curators, collectors in discussions about Equal Pay. In the first month, we featured weekly zoom events, later we held events on Black Women’s Equal Pay Day, Indigenous Women’s Equal Pay Day, and Women’s Equality Day and presented nine zoom events in total. Since that time we have presented several activations and performances at Upstate Art Weekend in New York 2021, Kansas City 21C Museum and Hotel, and at Frieze London 2021. We have also presented our Equal Pay billboards in Houston and New York. See photos below.
In 2022 we are planning a touring Equal Pay exhibition that will commence in Saint Louis and later travel to Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco. Your contributions will help support the exhibition, billboards across the country, and future public presentations.
