This document presents rates, methodology, job descriptions, and a geographic adjustment formula together because they cannot be separated without doing harm. A rate schedule without the rationale behind each number is not a floor — it is a figure that will be misread, misapplied, or dismissed. An artist consulting a number without the argument is no better equipped than an artist consulting no document at all.
The rates here are based on Chicago, Illinois. If you work somewhere else, Section III shows you how to adjust them to your city using a simple calculation — the only math you actually need to do.
The MME publishes its artist compensation rates because publication is itself a form of institutional action. When the MME states what it pays for a mosaic commission, it establishes a reference point in a market that currently has none. Every commission the MME issues is market-making. Every published rate is a public argument about what the work is worth.
The following principles govern every rate in this document and every decision made under it.
No artist, student, fabricator, cultural advisor, or contributor of any kind participates in an MME production without compensation. This commitment is absolute and applies to every MME program, department, and affiliated production without exception.
The compensation schedule in this document governs artist labor only. Materials — tesserae, substrate, adhesive, grout, hardware, and all other production inputs — are budgeted as a separate line item in every MME commission. The two budgets are presented to clients and funders distinctly and are never collapsed into a single figure.
This separation is a structural protection, not an accounting convention. When labor and materials are bundled into a single commission fee, the gap between what an institution offers and what the work actually costs to produce becomes the artist’s problem to solve — by absorbing overruns, by accepting inferior materials, or by contracting the ambition of the work. The MME refuses that transfer of risk. The artist’s compensation is not a residual; it is the first line of the budget. This protection extends to the client as well: when a budget is insufficient and labor and materials are bundled, the obvious pressure is to recover the shortfall through the work itself — rushing production, substituting materials, compressing the process. The client commissioned a specific work to a specific standard. A bundled budget is the mechanism by which they quietly don’t receive it.
Separate materials budgeting also preserves the integrity of material selection. Every MME commission specifies the optimal material for the work as designed, with a documented fallback for defined budget constraints. This ensures that material decisions are made on curatorial and technical grounds, without forcing a quality compromise disguised as a labor negotiation.
Finally, materials are sourced and priced at actual current market rates at the time of procurement, not locked in at estimate. In a volatile economy, the gap between an early estimate and actual procurement cost can be substantial. That gap belongs in the materials budget, adjusted at sourcing — not absorbed silently into the artist’s fee.
Every rate in this schedule is derived from what it actually costs a practitioner at the relevant skill and experience level to maintain a professional practice in the market where the work is performed. Rates are not set to what the field has historically paid, which is suppressed. They are set to what the work is worth, calculated from living wage methodology and documented labor market data.
Published rates establish the minimum guaranteed compensation for each role. Artists whose reputation, experience, or market demand warrants higher compensation receive it. Rates above the floor are disclosed and the calculus made explicit. The floor prevents a race to the bottom. It does not prevent MME from paying more.
When an individual holds more than one role on a project — as frequently occurs when the Lead Artist also functions as Project Manager or Teaching Artist — compensation is calculated separately for each role based on hours logged in that capacity. Three distinct time logs, three distinct rates, full transparency. This principle also governs mixed-engagement contracts: an artist billing at Lead Artist rate for figurative panel work and at Participating Artist rate for general tessellation on the same project invoices at the applicable rate for each class of hours.
Rates, methodology, and the reasoning behind every differential are published and publicly available. An artist anywhere in the world can read this document and understand exactly what the MME pays, why it pays it, and how to calculate what their engagement would yield in their local market. No artist should ever need to negotiate from an undisclosed baseline when working with the MME.
All hourly rates in this schedule are expressed as Chicago, Illinois base rates. Chicago was selected as the base city because it is the MME’s immediate operational context, it is a major American metropolitan area with robust labor market data, and it sits in the middle of the US cost-of-living distribution — neither a floor like Memphis nor an outlier ceiling like San Francisco. A funder in Lisbon and a grant reviewer in Chicago can both evaluate the numbers against a well-documented, verifiable reference city.
The base rates are derived from the Teaching Artists Guild Pay Rate Calculator and the Economic Policy Institute Family Budget Calculator, which together produce the most methodologically rigorous published benchmark for professional independent contractor artists working in the United States. The TAG calculator specifically documents that a professional-level teaching artist working as an independent contractor in Chicago with no dependents requires a livable hourly rate of $52.95 (2024 data). This figure anchors the Assistant Artist rate and informs the entire production tier.
Every rate in this document is a Chicago rate. If you work in a different city, your local rate adjusts to reflect what it actually costs to sustain a professional practice where you are. Here is how to calculate it:
Example: If the Chicago base rate for an Assistant Artist is $53/hour, and your city’s living wage is 20% higher than Chicago’s, your local floor is $53 × 1.20 = $63.60/hour. If your city is 10% lower, your local floor is $53 × 0.90 = $47.70/hour.
For those who want it, the same calculation expressed as a formula:
Local Rate = Chicago Base Rate × (Your City’s Living Wage ÷ Chicago’s Living Wage)
Living wage figures are drawn from the MIT Living Wage Calculator or the EPI Family Budget Calculator, both of which publish annual figures by metropolitan area. Either is acceptable; the document governing a specific engagement must specify which source was used and the figure applied.
The formula applies to the minimum floor. Above-floor rates — for artists whose reputation, experience, or demand warrants higher compensation — are not formula-constrained. The formula establishes the bottom, not the ceiling.
All rates in this schedule are reviewed annually, no later than January 31 of each year, against the most recent EPI and MIT living wage data for Chicago. Revisions are published as a new version of this document. The revision history is maintained in the MME Asset Management Register.
Rates may also be revised outside the annual cycle if the EPI or MIT indices shift by more than 5% in a calendar year, or if BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics data indicates a material change in the applicable occupation categories.
Rates are never revised downward except in documented extraordinary circumstances requiring board-level approval and public disclosure.
The following table summarizes all compensable roles. Detailed definitions and rationale follow. Attribution-only roles — those that receive credit but not compensation from MME — are addressed in Section V.
| Role | Rate Structure | Chicago Base Rate |
|---|---|---|
| Lead Artist | Hourly | $106/hour |
| Project Manager | Hourly premium on Lead Artist | $127/hour (20% above Lead Artist) |
| Teaching Artist | Hourly | $66/hour |
| Assistant Artist | Hourly | $53/hour |
| Participating Artist | Hourly, flat rate | $36/hour |
| Cultural Advisor | Project fee + extension rate | $1,500 base / $75/hour extension |
| Mentor Artist | Project fee + extension rate | $1,500 base / $75/hour extension |
| Student | Hourly, tiered | $18/hour (foundational training); $27/hour (MME commission work during training); $36/hour (surpasses foundational training or external hire at production standard) |
| Fabrication Contractor | Bid/estimate model | Market rate (contractor-set) |
| Design Contributor | Flat image fee | $250 per image |
| Existing Imagery License | Per-use flat fee | $150 per defined use (non-commercial) |
| Shop Foreman | Salaried | BLS OEWS rate for applicable market (see §IV.K) |
The Lead Artist is the artist of record on any MME commission or production. The Lead Artist bears full creative, compositional, and legal responsibility for the work; designs or directs the visual program; maintains the integrity of the work across the full production period; manages the client or institutional relationship; and is named in all records, press materials, contracts, and physical attribution.
The Lead Artist role cannot be subdivided or shared without explicit institutional agreement. On any project with multiple contributing artists, one person holds the Lead Artist designation. There is no co-Lead Artist designation; where genuine co-authorship exists, it is addressed through the commission contract and attribution record, not through rate structure.
The Lead Artist rate is set at 2× the Assistant Artist rate. This differential reflects the genuine depth of the skill gap: the capability to direct a mosaic work at professional fine art standards — including design, color theory at architectural scale, technical problem-solving across complex opus combinations, and compositional judgment — is a substantially rarer credential than the capability to execute assigned work reliably. Not every skilled practitioner ever develops the full range of capacities the Lead Artist role requires.
Chicago base rate: $106/hour.
Project management functions — scheduling, logistics, workflow coordination, multi-site oversight, materials procurement, team communication, and production engineering — are frequently absorbed by the Lead Artist on smaller projects. On larger or more complex projects, these functions constitute a distinct and substantial body of work that warrants separate compensation.
The Project Manager rate applies to Lead Artist hours logged in a project management capacity on projects that exceed either of the following thresholds:
| Trigger Condition | Definition |
|---|---|
| Scale threshold | Projects with a total mosaic area exceeding 15 square feet. |
| Team threshold | Projects involving more than one assisting artist (Assistant Artist, Participating Artist, or equivalent). |
Either condition independently triggers the Project Manager premium. Both conditions need not be present simultaneously.
The Project Manager premium is 20% above the Lead Artist rate, reflecting that project management on large or collaborative mosaic productions requires engineering-level problem-solving (substrate logistics, panel sequencing, workflow design) alongside managerial coordination. The premium applies only to hours logged specifically in a project management capacity, tracked separately from production hours on the same project.
Chicago base rate: $127/hour.
The salaried Shop Foreman position, which will be required once MME Studios reaches full operational scale across multiple concurrent projects, is addressed separately in §IV.K below.
The Teaching Artist role applies when an MME-affiliated artist is engaged to provide structured arts education — instruction, curriculum facilitation, workshop leadership, or pedagogical programming — as a primary function of their engagement. The Teaching Artist role is distinct from the production roles above and may be held simultaneously with another role on the same project; where it is, the two roles are invoiced separately based on hours logged in each capacity.
The Teaching Artist rate carries a 25% premium above the Assistant Artist rate, reflecting three compounding factors:
| Factor | Rationale |
|---|---|
| Invisible planning labor | Lesson design, curriculum preparation, documentation, and assessment occur outside the studio hours that appear in timesheets. The premium compensates labor that would otherwise go unrecognized. |
| Pedagogical skill | Teaching requires the ability to translate technical production knowledge into transferable learning — a skill distinct from and additional to production competency. |
| MME curriculum standard | Teaching Artists working within MME programs are expected to facilitate instruction consistent with the institution’s educational philosophy, which requires additional training and fluency beyond general arts instruction capacity. |
The TAG Chicago livable wage figure of $52.95/hour for a professional-level independent contractor teaching artist serves as the external validation benchmark for this rate. The MME Teaching Artist rate of $66/hour exceeds that benchmark, reflecting the additional institutional standard requirement.
Chicago base rate: $66/hour.
The Assistant Artist is a professional-level practitioner with sufficient skill and experience to work semi-independently within a larger production. The Assistant Artist can receive a delegation and execute it without continuous supervision, maintain the visual integrity of a section in the Lead Artist’s absence, and handle basic administrative and supervisory functions: timesheets, materials tracking, communicating schedule changes to the production team, and basic crew coordination.
The Assistant Artist role is the production tier most directly anchored to the living wage benchmark. The Chicago base rate of $53/hour is derived from the TAG/EPI living wage calculation for a professional-level independent contractor in Chicago ($52.95, rounded to the nearest dollar). This figure represents what an artist at this level needs to maintain a professional practice in this market. The MME treats it as a floor, not a target.
Chicago base rate: $53/hour.
The Participating Artist is a competent practitioner who executes assigned work reliably within a production. The Participating Artist follows direction, produces quality work, asks questions when uncertain rather than making independent decisions, and does not hold supervisory or administrative responsibility. This role is the primary engagement structure for community artists, residency participants, and collaborative production teams.
The Participating Artist rate is set as a flat rate, applied consistently to all artists in this role regardless of individual skill level within the tier. This decision reflects a considered institutional position on how variable pay functions in collaborative production environments:
| Rationale | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Administrative efficiency | Ongoing skill assessment is real labor that falls on the Lead and Assistant Artist. A flat rate eliminates that burden, which is never accounted for in project budgets. |
| Workplace equity | Variable pay within a production tier produces internal competition and resentment, dynamics particularly corrosive in arts contexts where practitioners are identity-invested in their work. A flat rate ensures no artist on the team is made to feel their contribution is valued less than a colleague’s. |
| Institutional responsibility | The MME bears curatorial and supervisory responsibility for ensuring work quality through the Lead Artist role. Paying Participating Artists differently based on quality assessments would transfer that institutional responsibility onto individual artists unfairly. |
| Risk absorption | The flat rate distributes the cost differential between the strongest and weakest practitioner across the institution rather than passing it to artists. MME absorbs the cost; artists receive the floor regardless of where they fall in the skill distribution on any given day. |
The rate is set at the upper boundary of the research range for this tier ($32–$40/hour) to ensure it constitutes meaningful income across production engagements of standard duration.
Chicago base rate: $36/hour.
The Student rate applies to practitioners enrolled in MME educational programs who are working in a professional or semi-professional context — contributing to productions, participating in community commissions, or producing work that may enter commercial circulation through MME channels.
The student rate reflects a transaction that has two components: compensation for labor, and receipt of instruction, mentorship, materials access, and the institutional context of an MME program. The rate structure is tiered to track the student’s actual development rather than apply a single flat rate across qualitatively different stages of practice.
The student rate schedule has three tiers, each triggered by a documented Lead Artist assessment. During foundational training, the rate is $18/hour (50% of the Participating Artist rate). When a student is invited to work on an official MME commission — a Lead Artist judgment that their practice has reached production standard — the rate increases to $27/hour (75% of the Participating Artist rate). When a student surpasses foundational training, as assessed by the Lead Artist and documented in the project record, the full Participating Artist rate of $36/hour applies. A student hired from outside MME programs who arrives with a portfolio at production standard is engaged at the full Participating Artist rate from the first day. The threshold is skill-based, not time-based.
Specific provisions governing student work in commercial contexts:
| Provision | Standard |
|---|---|
| Gift shop placement | Students with sufficient skill may elect to place work for sale in the MME gift shop. Placement is never compelled. The student rate applies to any commercial placement made through MME channels. |
| Public art program | Small practice mosaics produced during training may be placed in public art contexts (street installations, community formats) as part of MME programming. The student rate applies. The student is credited in all attribution records. |
| Unsold work | Original work that does not sell returns to the student. The MME holds no residual claim on student work placed for sale. |
| Copyright | The student retains copyright in all work produced during MME programs unless a separate written agreement specifying transfer is signed. No transfer of rights is compelled as a condition of program participation. |
| Professional standard threshold | When a Lead Artist determines that a student’s practice has reached professional standard, this assessment is documented in writing and the applicable professional rate applies from that point forward. The threshold is skill-based, not time-based. |
Chicago base rates: $18/hour (foundational training); $27/hour (MME commission work during training); $36/hour (surpasses foundational training).
The Cultural Advisor is an expert whose cultural knowledge, community relationships, or specialist understanding of the iconographic or conceptual program of a work shapes the work’s content in ways that would otherwise be unavailable to the production team. The Cultural Advisor’s contribution is intellectual and creative. It is currently invisible in standard attribution conventions. The MME names it and compensates it because it is real.
Cultural Advisor engagements typically involve an initial consultation at the early design stage and one or two follow-up contacts — site visits, phone consultations, or email exchange — during production. The project fee structure accommodates this pattern without requiring hourly tracking of limited consultations.
The Cultural Advisor rate structure is derived from the National Association for Visual Arts (Australia) Code of Practice for Cultural Advisor roles, which publishes the most developed international standard for this specific function. The NAVA rate of AUD $104.68/hour for one-off engagements converts to approximately $66 USD, validating the MME rate range.
| Component | Rate | Covers |
|---|---|---|
| Base project fee | $1,500 | Initial consultation plus one follow-up contact (visit, call, or email exchange). Represents approximately 15–20 hours of the advisor’s total time including preparation. |
| Extension rate — hourly | $75/hour | Engagement hours beyond the base scope, billed at the close of the engagement. |
| Extension rate — half day | $300 | On-site visits or intensive consultations of 3–4 hours. |
| Extension rate — full day | $600 | On-site visits or intensive consultations of 6–8 hours. |
The project fee does not appear in every project budget. Cultural Advisors are engaged when their specialized knowledge is genuinely required by the work, not as a standard production line item. When the role is not required, it is not budgeted.
The Mentor Artist is an experienced practitioner who provides advisory support to a Lead Artist who is newer to managing a complex public or institutional commission. The role is adapted from the CPAG/Community Public Art Guide practice, in which a more experienced artist advises Lead Artists navigating public art processes for the first time.
The Mentor Artist’s involvement typically includes an advisory engagement at the outset of the project, one or two site visits during production, and availability for questions by phone or email during the project period. Like the Cultural Advisor, the engagement is supervisory and limited in hours; both roles carry the same rate structure.
The Mentor Artist role is not required on all projects. It is most relevant for Lead Artists producing their first large-scale public commission, navigating an unfamiliar institutional context, or working in a community with specific dynamics that benefit from experienced external perspective.
Rate structure: identical to Cultural Advisor — $1,500 base project fee, $75/hour extension, $300 half-day, $600 full day.
Fabrication contractors are skilled tradespeople who produce project-adjacent components requiring specialist capacity outside mosaic production itself. The substrate fabricator who cuts and edge-finishes panel backing is a representative example: this work requires precision carpentry, knowledge of construction materials, and production-scale tooling. It is not mosaic work and is not compensated on the MME artist rate schedule.
Fabrication contractors operate under a bid and estimate model. They set their own rates based on their trade, their market, and the scope of the specific engagement. The MME commits to paying fair market rates for fabrication work and to issuing contracts that specify scope, materials, timeline, and total compensation before work begins. The MME does not use fabrication contractor categories to reclassify mosaic work at lower rates.
The distinction between a Fabrication Contractor and a Participating Artist is role-based, not skill-based. A woodworker building substrate panels is a Fabrication Contractor. A mosaic artist laying tile is a Participating Artist. The medium and the function of the work determine the classification.
The MME engages with original visual content in two distinct ways, each requiring a different compensation mechanism.
A Design Contributor is a community member or artist whose original drawing, imagery, or visual decision became the basis for the visual content of an MME mosaic work. The flat image fee compensates the Design Contributor for the use of their intellectual and creative contribution as the source material for the work. It is not a fee for professional illustration services; it is a formal recognition of where the image came from and a payment for the right to translate it into mosaic.
Under this arrangement: the Design Contributor retains the original artwork in all its forms; the MME receives a digital file and the right to use it as the basis for a mosaic translation; no copyright is transferred unless separately negotiated in writing; the Design Contributor is named in all attribution records and on the physical plaque.
The flat image fee is benchmarked against editorial illustration market rates, which represent the most directly comparable transaction: a one-time fee for the right to use a visual in a specific non-commercial context, with the creator retaining the original.
Chicago base rate: $250 per image.
Professional illustrators or graphic designers who bring market rates above this floor are compensated at their established rates. The $250 figure is a floor, not a standard fee for professional design services.
When the MME seeks to reproduce an existing work in a publication, catalog, website, or educational material — rather than using it as the basis for a mosaic translation — the applicable mechanism is a non-exclusive license for the specific defined use. The artist retains all rights. The license covers the defined use only.
Defined non-commercial uses include: exhibition catalog reproduction, MME website display, educational program materials, and institutional documentation. Commercial applications require separate negotiation above this floor.
Chicago base rate: $150 per defined non-commercial use.
Duration, exclusivity, and territory of each license are specified in the individual agreement. The floor applies to single, non-exclusive, non-commercial uses of limited geographic scope. Extended duration, territorial expansion, or exclusive rights require negotiation and will exceed this floor.
As MME Studios reaches full operational scale managing multiple concurrent commissions, a salaried Shop Foreman position will be required to oversee production across projects. This role combines engineering-level workflow oversight, quality assurance across multiple simultaneous productions, team management, and direct supervisory authority over production staff.
Because salary benchmarks for this role will shift with markets and years, the MME does not fix a static salary in this document. Instead, the Shop Foreman salary is determined annually by reference to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (BLS OEWS) data for the applicable occupation category and metropolitan area. The applicable occupation categories are Art Directors (SOC 27-1011) and First-Line Supervisors of Production and Operating Workers (SOC 51-1011), reviewed together to establish a range appropriate to the specific candidate’s responsibilities. The hiring salary must fall within or above the BLS median for the applicable market. This methodology is applied at each annual review and at the time of hire.
Attribution and compensation serve different functions and apply to different groups. Every person who is compensated also receives attribution. Not every person who receives attribution is compensated by MME — some roles contribute to a project in ways that are recognized in the institutional record without involving a direct financial transaction with the MME.
The following taxonomy governs all attribution on MME productions. The compensation status column specifies whether the role carries an MME payment obligation.
| Role | Attribution Scope | Compensation Status |
|---|---|---|
| Lead Artist | All records, press materials, physical plaques. | Compensated — Lead Artist rate. |
| Assistant Artist | All records, press materials, physical plaques. | Compensated — Assistant Artist rate. |
| Participating Artist / Project Artist | All records and press materials. Plaque attribution by project scale. | Compensated — Participating Artist rate. |
| Student | All records and press materials. Plaque attribution depends on scale and specific contribution, determined project by project. | Compensated at student rates. |
| Design Contributor | Named individually in the living record and on the plaque when numbers permit. Credit is not a gesture of inclusion — it is an accurate account of where the design came from. | Compensated — flat image fee. |
| Fabrication Participant | Named in the living record and counted explicitly on the plaque. Never collapsed with Design Contributors and never credited as something they were not. | Compensated — Fabrication Contractor rate (bid/estimate) or Participating Artist rate for mosaic work. |
| Cultural Advisor | Named in all records and on the plaque. Contribution is intellectual and creative. | Compensated — Cultural Advisor project fee. |
| Mentor Artist | Named in all records and press materials. | Compensated — Mentor Artist project fee. |
| Teaching Artist | Named in all records and press materials. | Compensated — Teaching Artist rate. |
| Project Manager | Named in all records. Credit reflects the specific project management scope. | Compensated — Project Manager rate (when threshold is met). |
| Community Partners | Named in all records and press materials. | Attribution only. Community Partners are organizations, not individuals; no direct MME compensation obligation applies to the organization as an entity. |
Fabrication Participants and Design Contributors are explicitly distinguished in every attribution record. The distinction is one of role, not of value: a community member who drew the design that became a mosaic did something different from a community member who laid tile on a Saturday. The MME names both contributions accurately because accurate attribution is not a gesture — it is an institutional obligation.
It is common practice at the MME for the founder and principal artist to hold multiple roles simultaneously on a single production. On a community residency project, the same individual may function as Lead Artist, Project Manager, and Teaching Artist in the same week. This overlap is structural, not incidental, and the MME’s rate structure is designed to accommodate it transparently rather than to suppress or obscure it.
The COI protocol for multi-role engagements is:
| Requirement | Standard |
|---|---|
| Role declaration | All roles held on a project are declared in the project contract and budget before work begins. |
| Time logging | Hours in each role are logged separately and contemporaneously. A single timesheet entry cannot cover multiple roles. |
| Rate application | Each role’s published rate applies to the hours logged in that capacity. No blended rate, no averaging, no suppression of any rate for appearance purposes. |
| Disclosure | The multi-role structure and the resulting compensation calculation are disclosed in project documentation available to funders, institutional partners, and board review. |
| Board review | Any engagement in which the same individual accounts for more than 40% of total project labor cost is subject to board review before commitment. |
The rates in this schedule apply to all persons in the applicable roles, including the MME’s founder. The institution does not suppress the founder’s compensation to manage appearances; it discloses it, documents it, and applies the same published rates that govern every other engagement. Consistency of application is the protection against conflict of interest, not invisibility of compensation.
The following commitments govern how this rate schedule is maintained and communicated.
| Commitment | Standard |
|---|---|
| Public availability | This document is published on the MME website and available without registration or cost to any artist, institution, or member of the public. |
| Annual update | A revised version is published no later than January 31 of each year reflecting the most recent EPI and MIT data. |
| Version history | All prior versions are retained in the MME Asset Management Register and available on request. The version and date of the rate schedule governing any specific engagement are recorded in that engagement’s contract. |
| Market reference | The MME publishes its rate schedule as a reference for mosaic artists negotiating their own compensation elsewhere. Any artist may cite this document in their own negotiations. |
| Annual Equity Report | Actual commission rates paid, including the methodology applied and any above-floor premiums, are reported in the MME Annual Equity and Accountability Report. |
The MME is committed to being the first institution to publish a comprehensive, annually updated schedule of recommended minimum commission rates for mosaic work that mosaic artists can reference in their own negotiations. This document fulfills the first iteration of that commitment.
