To be fair to the Seattle Art Museum, I contacted Cara Egan, Manager of Communications for SAM for an official statement which I am running in toto to allow the museum's perspective to be heard.

With the downtown Seattle Art Museum closing and the Volunteer Park re-opening, the needs of the museum are changing, particularly in the frontline area. As a result we have had a reduction of 6 frontline staff positions or 5.1 full-time positions to reflect these realities. We have made every effort possible to maintain stability within the organization and mitigate the impact on our staff by not rehiring when normal attrition occurred over the past few months, hiring temporary employees wherever feasible and cross-training employees in other departments.
The two SAM security guards were terminated because they threatened to abandon their post and compromise the security of the museum. We took action because we will unequivocally not put the museum's staff, visitors or art at risk.
SAM Statement

Working at the Seattle Art Museum in the front line areas such as Security, Admissions, and Maintenance has always been a difficult challenge. Typically the workers are poorly paid. Many make under $10.00 an hour and are at the vagaries of poor scheduling. I have known many guards who work until midnight or 1 AM only to be scheduled for the first shift in the morning. Truck drivers have minimum sleep hours for safety reasons, why shouldn't people who guard priceless artworks be not accorded the same concern?

Indifference to the working conditions at SAM in the front line areas has contributed to a high turn over rate the the institution. When poor wages combine with poor communication to staff, the results are usually distressing to all concerned. Susan Brooks (one of the fired guards) compares the working conditions at SAM to other museums:

"I do know that when I have visited other museums I have noted many differences. Guards at Chicago Art Institute, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Diego Museum of Art, Smithsonian, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Met Museum of Art, and the Getty in L.A. do seem to have perks that we were lacking. At some museums, guards are allowed rubber mats to stand on which would have been a godsend at SAM with all those marble floors. Most museums have actual uniforms for guards and not crappy one-size-fits all t-shirts. I’ve never visited a museum where the walkie-talkies were held together with duct tape like ours were. At a couple of museums, guards had stools and in once case chairs in their galleries to sit on. Of course in Europe, it is even better. Almost all museums allow guards to sit in the galleries. The only museum I have visited that had roving, standing guards like Seattle Art Museum was the Milwaukee Art Museum."

What Brooks and Dixon were asking for, was for a written statement from SAM specifically stating what the staffing schedule was going to look like for the guards in the future. SAM has pointed out that the guards know the schedule three weeks in advance and felt no further written statement was necessary. Phone call from Brandon Weathers (Head of Security) at Seattle Art Museum, (Editorial Note: This transcript was the conversation (roughly) as written and provided by Susan Brooks)

Weathers: I’ve been reading this email you sent out to all staff.
Brooks: Okay. It’s too bad that you got in the middle of this.
Weathers: Well it comes as part of the job.
Brooks: Still I didn’t want you to get in the middle, I hoped it would have been settled before you started, what one or two weeks ago?
Weathers: Well that’s my job. So you are going to carry out your threat of walking out if we don’t meet your demands?
Brooks: The demands? You mean putting in writing all the things you keep saying so we have visible proof?
Weathers: Right. You’re going to walk out if we don’t do it?
Brooks: Are you going to do it?
Weathers: No, we just had a meeting discussing that and we are not going to do it.
Brooks: May I ask why you are not going to do it?
Weathers: We had a meeting today of the departments and it was agreed that the Security department already had schedules out which is much more than other departments so that there was no reason for anything else to be written.
Brooks: Well, I think those other departments deserve…
Weathers: We take it very seriously what you say in your email and think that you will do what you say. No one is doubting that. So then you will walk out at 6:30pm?
Brooks: Well, if at 5pm when I show up there is no written statements in the guard boxes…
Weathers: Then you will walk out and thereby abandon your post?
Brooks: If the guards agree to walk out, then I will turn in my letter of resignation and walk
Weathers: walk out.
Brooks: yes.
Weathers: Then I have to fire, terminay, fuh..
Brooks: Terminate me?
Weathers: Yes, that’s right.
Brooks: ok
Weathers: For abandoning your post while we are open.
Brooks: I’m sorry you had to be the one who had to do this, I…
Weathers: It’s part of the baggage of the job.
Brooks: ok
Weathers: Well, then… So sorry it had to go like this.
Brooks: ok, bye.
Weathers: bye


The fact that the museum fired the two guards is not the real story. Trouble has been brewing at the museum for quite some time. Little things like the guards being forced to work their own holiday party tend to sit and fester and brew a concoction of ill will, resentment and loss of faith. When you have no faith in your staff, then you have no reason to be disappointed in the occasional rebellion. Where the powers that be at SAM start seeing red is when the public finds out that all is not goodness and light at the institution Dr. Fuller started for the betterment of all of Seattle. A museum is not just made of mortar and brick with the occasional art work in the galleries, it is a living, breathing thing that should involve, interrogate and inspire both the public and the people who serve that public to greater reaches into the imagination.