By Caroline Goldstein, For Art News

After a turbulent year marked by the pandemic and social-justice uprisings, how have salaries in the museum industry changed? According to the just-released salary report from the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), the answer is: not much.

Overall, the jobs earning the highest salaries remained consistent year over year, with directors pulling in $320,000 on average per year; chief operating officers earning $183,700; and chief curators earning $158,500. The director of finance role saw its average salary leap 14 percent year over year, to $158,700 in 2020.

The data in the report—compiled from 207 member museums located in Canada, Mexico, and the United States—offers a sense of how individual jobs were affected by the COVID-19 health crisis and months of forced closure. But since many institutions’ fiscal year begins July 1 or later, the 2020 data may not encompass the full impact of the pandemic. Also, crucially, the report does not factor in furloughs or layoffs, which were rampant in the sector last year.

As in earlier years, the lower end of the scale is dominated by visitor-facing jobs: volunteer coordinators brought in an average of $50,400, while museum security guards averaged $39,300 (a 10 percent increase from the 2019 average) and visitor services associates made $31,600. (Notably, these are also the roles most directly affected by museum closures.)

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