Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E) Archived Websites
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Abstract
This collection contains websites related to Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.), mostly documenting their web presence from 2015-2017. W.A.G.E. was established in 2008, to work for fair and regulated compensation for visual and performing artists in the non-profit arts institutions. The majority of their work operates around their W.A.G.E certification program and WAGENCY. The website includes historical information about the organzation; members of the certification program and how to become a member; and events, writings, and videos highlighting their activist work pressuring arts organizations to pay their freelance artists equitably.
Historical Note
Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.) was established in 2008 out of a series of discussions with artists and curators on their experiences with non-payment from art institutions. Out of these meetings, they wrote the wo/manifesto on economic inqualities in the arts sector. In 2010, they launched the W.A.G.E. Survey Report "to gather information about the economic experiences of visual and performing artists exhibiting in non-profit exhibition spaces and museums in New York City between 2005 and 2010." This led to the W.A.G.E. Certification program to recognize arts institutions that commit to paying artists a minimum standard payment. W.A.G.E. received non-profit status in 2011 and partnered with Artists Space to hold programming and investigate their artist compensation practice. In 2016, W.A.G.E. began its collaboration with Decolonize This Place, "an action-oriented space working around Indigenous struggle, Black liberation, Free Palestine, global wage workers and de-gentrification." In 2018, WAGENCY was launched, which certifies artists when they successfully negotiate fees and/or withhold art when organizations do not pay standard renumeration. In 2019, they released a report on the first 5 years of W.A.G.E. certification, W◼A◼G◼E◼ D◼A◼T◼A◼. As of 2022, 108 institutions are certified.
Arrangement
Arranged by date added to Archive-It.
Scope and Contents
This collection contains websites related to Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.), mostly documenting their web presence from 2015-2017. The website contains information on their wo/manifesto; mission; history of the organization and history of artist organizing; board members; fundraising efforts specifically their Wages 4 W.A.G.E. campaign; writings on artist compensation; news; and events. A major focus on the website includes the 2010 W.A.G.E survey on artist payment from non-profit arts institutions and guidance on W.A.G.E. certification program and how to get certified. Many of their events and videos focused on publicizing the results of the survey and getting artists and institutions involved in the certification program. Other events include exhibitions and performance art exhibited by W.A.G.E. members, as well as conferences, meetings, and symposia focusing on activism in the arts sector. In 2016, they began publicizing their work on the WAGENCY program.
Subjects
Organizations
Conditions Governing Access
Open to researchers without restrictions.
Conditions Governing Use
This collection is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use materials in the collection in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).
Preferred Citation
To cite the archived website in this collection: Identification of item, date; Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E) Archived Websites; MSS 616; Wayback URL; Fales Library, New York University.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
http://www.wageforwork.com/ was selected by Lisa Darms in September 2015 and captured through the use of Archive-It. Archive-It uses web crawling technology to capture websites at a scheduled time and displays only an archived copy, from the resulting WARC file, of the website. Additional websites in the collection were likely added to capture embedded and linked materials from the http://www.wageforwork.com/ domain. https://culturalworkersorganize.org/events-2/art-workers-organize/ was added in September 2022. The accession number associated with this website is 2022.048.
Physical Characteristics and Technical Requirements
Due to technical or privacy issues, archived websites may not be exact copies of the original website at the time of the web crawl. Certain file types will not be captured dependent on how they are embedded in the site. Other parts of websites that the crawler has difficulty capturing includes Javascript, streaming content, database-driven content, and highly interactive content. Full-Text searches of archived websites are available at https://archive-it.org/organizations/567.
Take Down Policy
Archived websites are made accessible for purposes of education and research. NYU Libraries have given attribution to rights holders when possible; however, due to the nature of archival collections, we are not always able to identify this information.
If you hold the rights to materials in our archived websites that are unattributed, please let us know so that we may maintain accurate information about these materials.
If you are a rights holder and are concerned that you have found material on this website for which you have not granted permission (or is not covered by a copyright exception under US copyright laws), you may request the removal of the material from our site by submitting a notice, with the elements described below, to the special.collections@nyu.edu.
Please include the following in your notice: Identification of the material that you believe to be infringing and information sufficient to permit us to locate the material; your contact information, such as an address, telephone number, and email address; a statement that you are the owner, or authorized to act on behalf of the owner, of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed and that you have a good-faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law; a statement that the information in the notification is accurate and made under penalty of perjury; and your physical or electronic signature. Upon receiving a notice that includes the details listed above, we will remove the allegedly infringing material from public view while we assess the issues identified in your notice.
Appraisal
Robots.txt (a piece of code designed to limit crawler activity within a website) was ignored. Individual links were added to the web archives to capture all content associated with W.A.G.E. Websites were rescoped to attempt to capture the YouTube and Vimeo videos embedded in the websites.
About this Guide
Processing Information
Intial crawling of this collection was performed by Lorena Ramirez-Lopez. Crawling of the websites in this collection were ceased in 2018. In 2022, one-time crawls were ran for missing videos and event page already in the collection. This finding aid was created in Fall 2022 and description was standardized across the collection.
