A cap on top incomes in the cultural sector?

The local PvdA The Hague group wants a cap on top incomes in the sector, especially if municipal subsidies are involved. We therefore did another study, after Covid, on the earnings of cultural directors in 2024. In times when fair pay has by now become a concept. What is fair if a museum director earns more than Mark Rutte will in 2024 as prime minister of the Netherlands? And should we continue to fight for the minimum wage for art creators?

Top incomes

Following our article on big earners in the cultural sector during Covid, the PVDA's local group in The Hague, along with some other parties, asked questions to the Mayor and Aldermen in The Hague at the time about the level of salaries of cultural directors.

Five years later, however, little has changed about top incomes. The Hague Labour Party, when asked, does say: “We are in favour of a cap on top incomes in the cultural sector. Especially when municipal subsidies are involved. In recent years, we have consistently called a lot of attention to fair pay in the cultural sector, because we see creators and creative professionals being underpaid or even unpaid. As far as we are concerned, money should go to fair pay for makers, not to top incomes.”.

The GroenLinks-PvdA's national election manifesto says nothing about top incomes. It does say that fair pay and fair practice are a binding condition for subsidies and that there should be collective disability insurance and pensions for everyone, including cultural self-employed people.

Reality proved unruly in recent years for those looking at the list of big earners in 2024.

Waste manager

With the Covid outbreak, in 2020, directors, musicians, filmmakers, visual artists and self-employed workers like theatre technicians lost almost all their commissions. Although the government at one point stepped in to help all art-makers, the sector was running pretty empty.

By necessity, cultural workers often went elsewhere: sound artists now work as waste managers for the municipality, theatre technicians became tram drivers. If they still stayed in the cultural sector, many of them should be happy to make the minimum wage.

The aspiration of militant fair pay organisations is at least a minimum wage for makers. Working 40 hours a week, that amounts to 29,376 euros gross per year in 2024. The Visual Arts Platform indicates that the income of most artists is 16,000 euros a year. The Kunstenbond says: “Unfortunately, the reality in the cultural and creative sector is often different. Wages and rates are generally lower than in other sectors. Artists, performers and other creative professionals are sometimes even expected to work for “exposure”, a book token or a crate of beer”.

‘Art is a hobby’

With elections looming and the global trend and preference for right-wing politics, the cultural sector known as progressive is pinching its buttocks. If it is up to political party Ja21, for example, the sector that is working on a ‘left-wing ideological tunnel vision’ suffers, betting on Dutch traditions, commercialisation and private individuals with money. As with the PVV, the adage reads: “Ditch all those subsidies. Keep your own trousers and if there is no need for your art, then it is not a profession but a hobby.”

From the VVD, the sector needs to look for new earning models like the entrepreneur it used to be and become less dependent on subsidies. The BBB wants to get rid of all the ‘’double subsidies' and “Cuts to basic cultural infrastructure (BIS). BBB stands for culture close to people. Instead of large-scale subsidies for a small number of institutions in the Randstad, we opt for strengthening regional initiatives, popular culture and local heritage.”.

Fair pay is expensive

Of course, the left wing in politics is much more comfortable with the intrinsic value of the cultural sector and values subsidies and things like fair pay, which should be funded by the state. Preferably outside existing subsidies. For smaller cultural organisations, fair pay is an expensive business with the result that, for example, interns often work as full (unpaid) staff members. This can lead to unsafe situations such as in this item is to read.

We caught on in the left corridors that cultural directors should not earn more than a metropolitan alderman. On an annual basis, Amsterdam's culture alderman Touria Meliani earns about 186,000 euros (including holiday allowance, end-of-year bonus, taxable expense allowance, without pension). The municipality could not answer when asked for exact amounts. For many a cultural director, 186,000 euros would be a drain: the director of the National Opera earns 231,000 euros. She earns far more in 1 month than what the average artist earns in a year. Years ago, song writer Fiona Bevan, who wrote hits for Kylie Minogue and others, complained that she earned £100 a year from a streamed hit and that many of her colleagues also work as Uber drivers.

Earning right

‘Earning right’ is not entirely foreign to the cultural sector for those who know the executive incomes of cultural institutions. Especially when measured against the earnings of others in public-management positions of similar or greater severity. Is being director of a local arts fund like the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts (170,000 euros), of more (financial) importance than a minister earning 135,242 euros in 2024 including holiday pay and end-of-year bonus?

The education director of the Open Scholengemeenschap Bijlmer, with about 100 staff and 1,200 pupils from VWO, Havo and VMBO, earns between 120,000 and 130,000 gross a year. How does that compare with running a museum for sometimes almost double that amount?

Rating

Apart from the fact that they can be tough jobs: what appreciation, what social importance and what remuneration do we as a society have for certain positions? Is the highest position in the police in the Netherlands, the chief of police, as important financially as the director of a dance company?

Mark Rutte earned 189,210 euros in 2024 as prime minister, converted to a year ( including holiday/end-of-year allowance, without pension accrual), state secretaries did their job for 126,245 a year. Rutte also did not have to pay for the chauffeur-driven car himself. The interim director of the Cultural Participation Fund wrote an invoice for 231,000 euros for 11 months of work.

Of course, it remains comparing apples and oranges: The Rijksmuseum (€231,999) is a more complex organisation and employs many more people, temporary or otherwise (688), than a mime company in Amsterdam (€110,977) with over 11 FTEs. Especially in smaller performing arts organisations, the ‘bottom end’ is squeezed, financially but also in terms of duty of care; technicians, dancers, actors and production staff are often all accommodated during tours in mouldy holiday bungalows that had their glory days in the 1970s.

Big earners in a row

We list the cultural big earners again as in 2020. Not every cultural organisation published full 2024 financial statements on its website or disaggregated executive salaries, and not everyone wanted to cooperate when questioned. Theatre Carré, BumaStemra and the VSCD (trade association of theatre managements), for example, remained silent. Director Mirjam Terpstra of NAPK, the industry association Nederlandse Associatie voor Podiumkunsten, thought the level of her salary was “Something between her and the board but it complies with the WNT”. Documentary festival IDFA omits from its annual accounts more than 10 pages that, according to its own table of contents, would contain management income. Muziekgebouw aan het IJ writes in its annual accounts 2024: “Since the Music Building has more than 50% of its own income, the salary of the board of directors does not have to be published”.

For the sector, the government applies the ‘Balkenende norm’: the Top Income Norms Act, WNT. For public administration, this consisted in 2024 of a maximum of 233,000 euros per year (for 2025, by the way, this was set at 246,000), for cultural funds there was a ceiling of 194,000 euros. Cultural directors often appear to reward themselves more generously than what the government pays the leaders of the Netherlands. There is a difference between pay and remuneration. Remuneration (pay) also includes, for example, the annual ‘pension pot’.

Top of the list

Topping the list is Barbara de Greef, who worked as interim director for the Cultural Participation Fund for 11 months. She received 231,000 gross for that (or passed on to 252,000 on an annual basis).

A small sample of the sector:

Remuneration including taxable expense allowance and including ‘remuneration payable at term’, in euros.
(**) Interim position for 11 months.
(**) Exceeding the Culture Funds norm (194,000) due to payment of previous leave hours (without leave hours: 186,321)
(****) Employment of 0.95
In 2024, former ITA director Ivo van Hove was still paid 116,096 as a consultant and 44,562 euros due to termination of employment.

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