NYT: Donors Sweetened Director’s Pay at MoMA

[DeepModem Mom]

Donors Sweetened Director’s Pay at MoMA
By STEPHANIE STROM
Published: February 16, 2007


(Associated Press)
Glenn D. Lowry, the director of the Museum of Modern Art.

Glenn D. Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art for nearly 12 years, has long been one of the highest-paid museum officials in the country, with salary, bonus and benefits totaling $1.28 million in the year that ended June 30, 2005, the most recent period for which figures are publicly available.

Yet for more than eight years, his income was even higher than the museum reported in its tax forms, thanks to a trust created by two of the museum’s wealthiest trustees, David Rockefeller and Agnes Gund.

Mr. Rockefeller, Ms. Gund and Ronald S. Lauder, another trustee, made tax-deductible gifts to the trust, the New York Fine Arts Support Trust, as did Mr. Rockefeller’s brother Laurance, who donated a Bonnard painting valued at $800,000 that was later sold. The trust used the money to make payments to Mr. Lowry.

Between 1995 and 2003, that trust paid him a total of $5.35 million — in amounts ranging from $35,800 to $3.5 million a year — aside from the compensation supplied by the museum. Last year, those trust payments attracted questions from the New York State attorney general’s office. To address those concerns, the museum disclosed some of the payments in a one-page supplement dated Jan. 5 and filed with the attorney general’s office and with GuideStar, a Web site that provides data and research about nonprofit groups. The state was satisfied with that response.

The Internal Revenue Service does not discuss specific taxpayers. But former state and federal regulators contacted by The New York Times said the system of payments by the trust was unorthodox and raised many questions, ranging from the completeness of the trust’s and the museum’s tax reporting to whether the I.R.S. was fully aware of the trust’s purpose when it granted it a tax exemption....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/16/arts/design/16moma.html