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PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Maribel Cosme-Vitagliani, Executive Board Member of DC37 Local 1502 from Brooklyn Museum
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Maribel Cosme-Vitagliani, an employee at the Brooklyn Museum and executive board member of DC37 Local 1502, testifies about the importance of museum workers and the risks of understaffing in cultural institutions. She emphasizes the need for increased funding to ensure fair wages, job security, and workplace safety for museum professionals.
- Highlights the specialized knowledge and expertise required in museum roles such as conservation, collection management, and art handling.
- Describes recent layoffs at the Brooklyn Museum and the potential dangers of understaffing, including increased risk of injury and slower response times to emergencies.
- Urges the city council to increase funding for cultural institutions to support both community services and fair treatment of museum workers.
Maribel Cosme-Vitagliani
4:10:40
Hi.
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I'd like to also thank Chair Rivera and the council members for your advocacy for cultural institutions and their workers.
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My name is Maribel Cosme Vitaliani and I've been an employee at the Brooklyn Museum for almost seven years.
4:10:54
I've also been an executive board member for DC thirty seven local fifteen o two for the last three years and for the record.
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My father is also a DC thirty seven member in local three seventy four at the New York Public Library, so we are a proud Union family.
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I'm here to talk about how museums are essential pillars of the community, culture, and history of the city.
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At the Brooklyn Museum, our workers foster meaningful conversations about art and culture, both modern and ancient.
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I work in the conservation lab at the Brooklyn Museum where my department is responsible for preserving the museum's encyclopedic collection of over a 40,000 works of art representing roughly six hundred years of history.
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This work is essential for exhibitions and the museum's overall function.
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And also to note my colleagues and I across conservation, collection management, and art handling have highly specialized knowledge, training, education, and expertise in order to do our jobs.
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When the museum announced layoffs of 47 staff members in February of this year.
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My colleagues and I were deeply concerned for the safety of our workers as well as the art.
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We have nine art handlers in our museum who've moved who move hundreds of artworks a week for the care and maintenance of a collection that is a cultural gem of our city.
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The threat of reducing our already understaffed team poses serious danger and risk of injury.
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Just in the last nine months, we've had two injuries among our art handlers due to the understaffing, overlapping scheduling of projects, and inflexible deadlines.
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Fewer staff also means slower response times and emergencies such as water leaks, fires, and or structural failures.
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Can I continue?
Carlina Rivera
4:12:42
Yeah, just wrap up so we can get
Maribel Cosme-Vitagliani
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to the Structural failures and storage areas of exhibition spaces, many of which have occurred within the last year.
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Conservation, collection management, our handling teams play a key role in emergency preparedness plans, but with too few workers they may not be able to respond quickly enough to prevent irreversible damage to collections and or potential injury to staff and visitors.
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I urge the city council to please increase funding of cultural institutions so that museums can continue to serve our communities while ensuring fair wages, job security, and workplace safety for the professionals who sustain them.
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Thank you for your time.