More Details on Glenn Lowry's Sweet Deal

CultureGrrl has just obtained a copy of the 1998 tax return for the New York Fine Arts Support Trust, the private foundation that funneled money from David Rockefeller, Agnes Gund, Ronald Lauder and Laurance Rockefeller to the Museum of Modern Art's director, Glenn Lowry.

It shows that more money went directly to Lowry in 1998---$422,953---than in any of the five years reported to the NY State Attorney General's office. This gives support to what I asserted in a previous post: The Attorney General's Charities Bureau did an inadequate and incomplete investigation by agreeing to MoMA's proposal to provide it with Additional Compensation Information going back only to 1999.

Payments to Lowry in 1998 were made monthly, according to the tax return, and ranged from $16,265 in January, April, June and October to $73,979 in December. All of those payments are listed as "charitable cash contributions" to Lowry.

The NY Times article that broke this story provided a bar chart (not online) of Lowry's compensation by the Trust (but without specific dollar amounts for most years), going back to 1995. MoMA says that this chart is inaccurate: Much of that money did not go into Lowry's pocket but to other MoMA-related purposes. However, the Times has run no correction, and likely would have done so had MoMA provided documentation of the actual compensation. The record, whatever it is, needs to be set straight.

Lowry has consistently declined to go on the record to give his side to this story. This is the first time I can think of when this usually outspoken director has not promptly responded to a negative story in a major newspaper by firing off a well reasoned, well written letter-to-the-editor. It's certainly happened to me!

His silence on this one is deafening.