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NY Times, Oct. 3, 2019
New Scrutiny of Museum Boards Takes Aim at World of Wealth and Status
By Robin Pogrebin, Elizabeth A. Harris and Graham Bowley
Warren B. Kanders, a vice chairman of the Whitney Museum of American
Art, had just been driven out by a cascading protest over his company’s
sale of law enforcement and military supplies. And his fellow trustee
Kenneth C. Griffin was livid.
So hours after Mr. Kanders resigned in July, Mr. Griffin, a hedge fund
titan and one of the world’s richest men, followed him out the door,
quitting in outrage during a conference call with other board members.
Before lunchtime, the Whitney had lost two major benefactors — the lobby
is named after Mr. Griffin, and Mr. Kanders and his wife have an
adjoining stairwell.
By the end of the day, Mr. Griffin had changed his mind. But according
to people privy to the events, he did so only after Leonard Lauder, the
cosmetics scion and the museum’s powerful chairman emeritus, phoned Mr.
Griffin from a boat to coax him back.
Mr. Griffin was not the only wealthy arts patron unnerved by what had
happened — the tumult at the Whitney sent a lightning bolt through the
entire museum world. If board members can be forced out because of what
they do for a living, what does that mean for cultural institutions that
depend on their generosity to survive?
“There is a slippery slope if you get very precious about holding out a
litmus test for service on a board,” said Reynold Levy, the former
president of Lincoln Center and a philanthropy expert. “This can be
stretched to the point where it becomes very difficult to attract and
retain board members.”
Anyone who scans the financial records of major American museums, or
talks to their leaders and donors, can gauge just how much is at stake.
In the absence of significant public support, some museums rely on board
members for upward of one-fifth of their annual budgets. The price of
admission to the boards remains steep, often millions of dollars to
enter, and annual donations of six figures to keep a seat. Those boards
are also dominated, as they have been for years, by the likes of Mr.
Griffin, Mr. Kanders and Mr. Lauder from finance, real estate and the
corporate executive suite.
In return for their donations, board members gain admission to an
exclusive cultural club others yearn to join; give arts organizations
their cachet and connections; and provide a power base that commands the
attention of public officials. They also get a boost in status, rare
access to artists and curators as well as the public recognition that
comes with giving back.
Thanks to trustees’ support, the public gets to enjoy Picassos,
Rembrandts, Shakespeare in the Park.
But an emboldened activist movement is holding a mirror up to this
bargain, loudly questioning whether the greater good is served, even if
not everyone agrees on who and what qualifies as “good.”
The Whitney protests, ignited by a report that tear gas made by a
Kanders company had been used against migrants at the southern border,
started out with noisy gatherings in the museum lobby calling on Mr.
Kanders to step down. As he stood his ground, the protesters became more
confrontational, marching to his Greenwich Village home and posting his
address on Instagram for others to find. Eventually, several artists
withdrew from the Whitney Biennial in solidarity, threatening the
museum’s signature exhibition. Mr. Kanders resigned soon after.
Pressure is building on other cultural institutions as well, with
demands they become more representative of the communities they serve.
In New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio has made city grants conditional on
boards’ increasing their diversity.
Max Hollein, the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which
recently swore off money from members of the Sackler family with links
to OxyContin, acknowledged that “we have to be clear about how we accept
donations.”
But he also emphasized that the museum as we know it would not exist
without the board that props it up.
“Institutions in the U.S. are built on philanthropy,” he said. “That
means a significant amount of individual support.”
Dollars and sense
At the Whitney, some 10 to 12 percent of the $60 million annual
operating budget comes from board contributions, a number that just
begins to quantify what trustees pay for other things, like construction
projects and tables at fund-raisers. In Mr. Kanders’s 13 years on the
board, his donations approached $10 million.
The Museum of Modern Art estimates that its trustees contribute as much
as 20 percent of its $175 million budget. At the Los Angeles County
Museum of Art, officials pegged that support at about 30 percent.
“Trustees are an important part of the finances of a museum,” said Brent
R. Benjamin, the director of the Saint Louis Art Museum and president of
the Association of Art Museum Directors, “and their financial leadership
is critical for bringing in other donors.”
Trustees can also bring with them practical benefits. Having the
developer Jerry Speyer as chairman for years helped the Museum of Modern
Art navigate New York City real estate when pursuing its recent
ambitious building projects.
The chairs and co-chairs of the boards of 10 of America’s most-attended
art museums
MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
Leon D. Black
Founded and runs one of the world’s largest private equity firms, Apollo
Global Management.
ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO
Robert M. Levy
Former chairman of Harris Associates, a Chicago investment fund company,
where he continues to operate as a manager and investment officer.
WHITNEY MUSEUM
Thomas E. Tuft
Held leadership positions at Lazard and Goldman Sachs before joining
Arsenal Capital Partners, a New York-based private equity firm where he
is an adviser.
MUSEUM OF FINE
ARTS, BOSTON
Kevin T. Callaghan
A managing director at Berkshire Partners, a private equity firm.
DE YOUNG MUSEUM,
FINE ARTS MUSEUMS
OF SAN FRANCISCO
Jason Moment
A managing member at a hedge fund, Route One Investment Company.
LOS ANGELES COUNTY
MUSEUM OF ART
Antony P. Ressler
Co-founder and executive chairman of the private equity firm Ares
Management.
METROPOLITAN
MUSEUM OF ART
Daniel Brodsky
A real estate developer who followed his father into the business. His
Brodsky Organization builds, owns and manages residential and commercial
buildings.
SOLOMON R. GUGGENHEIM
FOUNDATION
William L. Mack
A real estate investor and developer, he is co-founder and chairman of
the Mack Real Estate Group.
WHITNEY MUSEUM
Susan K. Hess
A philanthropist whose family wealth includes ownership in the Hess
Corporation, the oil and gas supplier, where her husband is chief executive.
MUSEUM OF FINE
ARTS, HOUSTON
Richard D. Kinder
Co-founder and executive chairman of Kinder Morgan, one of the country’s
largest energy pipeline companies.
SAN FRANCISCO
MUSEUM OF ART
Robert J. Fisher
Helps lead the clothing retailer Gap, which was founded by his parents.
LOS ANGELES COUNTY
MUSEUM OF ART
Elaine P. Wynn
Co-founded and led casino and resort companies with her ex-husband,
Steve Wynn.
Having the chemical and fossil fuel magnate David H. Koch — who died in
August — on the board helped the Metropolitan Museum of Art pay for its
extensive plaza renovation in 2014 (Mr. Koch footed the entire $65
million bill).
There is a clannishness about these boards that has produced over the
years a cadre of recognizable names from the same fields. An analysis by
The New York Times of 10 of the country’s most popular fine art museums
found that 40 percent of their board members had acquired their wealth
from the world of finance. Many board members came from real estate and
from the energy, oil and gas sector. Museums have not had much success,
though, tapping into the new wealth arising from tech companies, the
analysis shows.
The vast majority of trustees, unsurprisingly, are white. Only recently
has that homogeneity been challenged in a meaningful way, with
institutions realizing that the development of new audiences requires
more people of color on the staff, on the board and in the programming.
“We need to define trusteeship beyond people of financial wealth,” said
Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, which supports and
advises nonprofits. “Expand the number of board members and bring in
people with other assets besides money that the museum needs. What’s
interesting to me is the lack of energy, focus and creativity to figure
this out.”
Some institutions have occasionally tried over the years to vary their
boards to include members with other strengths who are not expected to
“give or get” at the same level as wealthier trustees. The MoMA board,
for example, includes the actress and playwright Anna Deavere Smith; the
Whitney has the scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr.; the Guggenheim has the
artist Rashid Johnson. Although benefiting from the input of these types
of members — expertise, new perspectives, creative thinking —
institutions still have to find trustees who can help pay their fixed,
and often formidable, costs (like security, building maintenance, art
insurance, shipping).
The price of membership
For board members not invited because of their artistic or academic
accomplishments, the price of entry remains steep at the country’s most
prestigious institutions. At the Whitney, a new trustee is generally
expected to contribute about $5 million within a few years of joining
the board and then about $200,000 annually to stay on it.
When board members describe their motives for giving, they often talk of
the singular importance of the museum they support.
“The reason to serve, and it is service, is from a deeply held passion
for the institution and its mission,” said Candace K. Beinecke, a
trustee at the Met. “Serving on the board of a cultural institution is a
serious commitment.”
For some, it can also be an investment.
Trusteeship often gives board members the inside track on up-and-coming
talent, enabling collectors to buy the works of emerging artists before
they become market commodities. Board members also gain coveted access
to top curators, whom they can then informally consult about their own
collections. The benefits work both ways, since curators can steer
trustees toward works of art they want to purchase for — or have donated
to — the institution.
“Being on a board of a museum, you are getting inside information about
art, about the art market, who is hot, from curators, from directors,”
said Marc Mayer, a former deputy director of the Brooklyn Museum and
former director of the National Gallery of Canada.
While some boards have grown very large, in part to increase the donor
base, most are governed by just a handful of people at the top. On rare
occasions, a trustee comes to define an institution, as Mr. Lauder has
the Whitney.
Over four decades, Mr. Lauder, who is the elder son of the cosmetics
impresario Estée Lauder and went on to run her company, has been the
museum’s biggest donor, contributing large sums of money as well as
major works of art. Although he has a deep affection for the Whitney’s
former home, designed by Marcel Breuer, on Madison Avenue and initially
opposed the idea of a move downtown, Mr. Lauder not only came around but
donated $131 million to the new building in the Meatpacking District,
which was ultimately named after him.
Even as chairman emeritus and well into his 80s, Mr. Lauder has
continued to wield remarkable power at the Whitney, if lately on a less
day-to-day basis. Mr. Griffin, when asked to explain his reason for
deciding to stay on the Whitney board after resigning, provided a
statement that made it sound as if Mr. Lauder was still the man in
charge, and made no mention of the museum’s current leaders. “I have
great admiration for Leonard Lauder’s leadership in building the Whitney
into one of the greatest institutions of American art in the world,” the
statement said. “I will continue to support Leonard’s vision for the
museum, and am proud to serve with him on its board.”
From board member to broad target
In 1996, Mr. Kanders, a former money manager who had ended up in the
eyeglass and lens business, bought part of a company called American
Body Armor. It was his first stop on a journey that would remake him
into a provider of law enforcement equipment and military supplies.
Today his company, the Safariland Group, makes a wide variety of
products including bulletproof vests, bomb-defusing robots and gun holsters.
But it was one product — tear gas — that labeled him Museum Enemy No. 1.
Late in 2018, at a time when President Trump was warning of an illegal
immigration “crisis,” United States Customs and Border Protection agents
used tear gas on asylum seekers at the Mexican border, firing into a
crowd that included children. The website Hyperallergic reported that
the canisters had been manufactured by Mr. Kanders’s company.
Days later, about 100 Whitney staff members, ranging from front desk
personnel to senior curators, signed a letter. “We work to bring in
artists who are immigrants and artists of color to the collection,” it
said. “Upon learning of Kanders’s business dealings, many of us working
on these initiatives feel uncomfortable in our positions.”
Mr. Kanders declined to comment for this article.
Also paying attention was a loose coalition of activist groups, led by
Decolonize This Place, an organization formed to fight a variety of ills
like gender and race inequality, discrimination against indigenous
groups and the effects of gentrification. They have argued that museums,
as structured today, are undemocratic, ignoring broad public interests
to favor the rich.
In March, they began gathering every Friday evening at the Whitney,
often carrying treats for the security guards, like baklava, to win
friends and demonstrate their peaceful intentions. But their chanting —
“Warren Kanders, you can’t hide. We charge you with genocide” — was
sometimes loud and aggressive as museum visitors poured in, drawn by the
Whitney’s pay-what-you-wish night.
The Whitney’s signature Biennial exhibition was getting underway, and
one of the exhibitors, Forensic Architecture, a group that aims to
collect evidence of potential human rights violations, submitted a video
work, “Triple-Chaser,” named for Safariland tear-gas canisters. The
video suggested that by selling bullets to the Israeli government, one
of Mr. Kanders’s companies may have abetted what United Nations
investigators have called possible war crimes.
The protesters were unfazed by arguments suggesting that by targeting a
major benefactor they were threatening the financial foundation of an
important cultural institution, one that had made significant progress
in diversifying its staff and its programming.
“There’s no point in saying, ‘How would you fund that,’ if that very
thing is not really worth saving,” said Eyal Weizman, the founder of
Forensic Architecture.
The museum determined — in consultation with the New York Police
Department — that as long as the protests were peaceful and did not
threaten the artwork or visitors, forcibly removing people would only
ratchet up tensions further.
“When you’re engaged with contemporary culture you’re engaged with
contemporary culture,” Adam Weinberg, the Whitney’s director, said in an
interview. “As one of my trustees said, when you say you want to be part
of the dialogue, you don’t always get to choose the dialogue that you’re
part of.”
In the ninth week, the protesters took their campaign up a notch and
marched from the Whitney to Mr. Kanders’s house in Greenwich Village,
where a teenage son was at home without his parents. Once there, the
protesters set up a prop on the street outside: a large model of a
tear-gas canister that spewed a fog of dry ice.
The pressure on Mr. Kanders grew in July when three artists and writers
published “The Tear Gas Biennial” in Artforum, calling for the 75
artists in the Biennial to withdraw from the show in protest.
Eight artists soon said they would, including Nicole Eisenman, who has
close ties to the Whitney. Some art world veterans questioned the purity
of the artists’ position; would they, for example, refuse to sell to a
collector whose source of income they found objectionable?
But the activists, who had been protesting for months, began to sense
victory. They published a series of triumphant posts on Instagram,
including one that listed the Kanders address: “We encourage folks to
pay his ass a visit.”
By this time, Mr. Kanders had grown frustrated by the museum’s
leadership and concerned for his family’s safety, according to a person
with knowledge of his thinking. He was angered by the way the protests
were handled, and he had not been informed about the Forensic
Architecture video until the day it was installed.
Mr. Kanders’s bitterness was evident in his resignation letter, issued
July 25, in which he said his wife would also be leaving her position as
co-chairwoman of the museum’s painting and sculpture committee.
“The politicized and oftentimes toxic environment in which we find
ourselves,” he wrote, “across all spheres of public discourse, including
the art community, puts the work of this board in great jeopardy.” He
added, “I hope you assume the responsibility that your position bestows
upon you and find the leadership to maintain the integrity of this museum.”
The fallout from Mr. Kanders’s resignation was immediate. The artists
who had threatened to withdraw from the Biennial agreed to stay. Other
museum directors wrung their hands over what the departure might mean
for their trustees who could be similarly targeted.
Four museum directors who spoke about their concerns but requested
anonymity because of the highly charged nature of these issues said they
worried that the Kanderses’ departure would have a chilling effect on
cultural philanthropy. Given the range of hot-button issues, what sort
of trustee would now be a safe pick? Someone from Big Pharma, from a
chemical company, from Facebook?
Several weeks ago, concerned museum directors approached Mr. Walker, the
Ford Foundation director, who together with Elizabeth Alexander,
president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, arranged a meeting for
them at Mellon’s offices in Manhattan to discuss possible ways forward.
Mr. Walker was concerned that the activists sometimes sounded as if they
would like to use political power to destroy arts institutions, not
reform them. But he urged museum directors to get ahead of the issue by
re-evaluating the criteria they use to select trustees in a manner
consistent with their missions.
“They can be proactive and establish a broad set of principles and a
philosophy that informs their definition of trusteeship,” Mr. Walker
said in an interview. “But we’re not just talking about money.”
Nevertheless, it’s also clear that financial concerns are not going to
evaporate any time soon. Consider the Whitney’s next big project, an art
installation on the Hudson, across from the museum, by David Hammons
that recreates in steel the broad outline of the Pier 52 shed that once
stood there.
It is scheduled to open next year, thanks to the support of major donors
to the project. They include Warren B. Kanders.
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