Assembly for the Arts Workbench Session: A Conversation with W.A.G.E.

Virtual Event: November 3, 2022, 4:30 – 6 p.m. ET

Assembly for the Arts is bringing artist and organizer, Lise Soskolne, to the Workbench Session on November 3, 2022.

During this virtual session, Lise, a co-founder and core organizer of Working Artists in the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.) will introduce its primary programs, W.A.G.E. Certification and WAGENCY, and discuss W.A.G.E.’s broader effort to organize artists, institutions, and soon art workers, around a shared politics of labor. A group discussion will follow.

Since its founding in 2008, W.A.G.E.’s work has developed in service of a single achievable goal — regulating the payment of artist fees in the nonprofit sector. In the context of contemporary art, in which the unpaid labor of artists supports a multi billion-dollar industry, W.A.G.E.’s mission is to establish sustainable economic relationships between artists and the institutions that contract artists’ labor, and to introduce mechanisms for self-regulation into the art field that collectively bring about a more equitable distribution of its economy.

About Lise Soskolne

Lise Soskolne is an artist with over 15 years of work experience in arts presenting, administration and development at downtown New York City nonprofits. Since the late 1990s these have included Anthology Film Archives, Artists Space, Diapason Gallery for Sound, Meredith Monk/The House Foundation for the Arts, Participant Inc, and Roulette Intermedium. Along with many others, she is a co-founder of W.A.G.E. and has been its core organizer since 2012.

W.A.G.E. Certified institutions in OH

• Wave Pool, Cincinnati, OH
• FRONT International, Cleveland, OH
• Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, Cleveland, OH