How Performers Are Paid for Performance Art

The artists Gerard & Kelly “saw performer compensation ‘as a blind spot in how performance was entering [museum] collections’… They learned that the going rate museums paid performers in major 2010 exhibitions was about $20 an hour, which they found low and arbitrary. (This includes Marina Abramovic’s piece at the Museum of Modern Art, they said, and Tino Sehgal’s at the Guggenheim, the first performance piece that museum acquired.)” So they negotiated a wage formula for performers in their latest work, and included it in the license for any museum that wants to present it.