Why Does the Manner of Lowry's Compensation Matter?

I truly hope that this will be my last Glenn Lowry post for a while, because I'm getting as tired of writing about this controversy as MoMA must be of reading what I write.

But I can't leave the topic without explaining in further detail why the secret supplementing of Lowry's compensation is not just unorthodox, but potentially unethical.

We may never know whether there were actual (as distinguished from potential) conflicts of interest that resulted from the decision of individual collector/trustees to slip the director extra millions, without approval from the full board, through a private foundation set up for that purpose. I'd like to think that every decision and recommendation made by Lowry during his distinguished tenure was informed by only the purest of motives.

But money buys influence, and because that influence can be abused, it should be in plain view, not hidden behind the screen of an enigmatically named New York Fine Arts Support Trust. Because of the way this was contrived, people are now, with some justification, leaping to conclusions like this one from an anonymous comment posted on Richard Lacayo's Time magazine blog, Looking Around:

It is perfectly reasonable to assume that their [the funders of the Trust's] approach to managing Lowry (through secret payments and other means) is as tied in to their activities as private collectors as it is to their philanthropic activities on behalf of the museum.

If this assumption is unfair, it is nevertheless a natural outgrowth of how the compensation of Lowry was mishandled. People (like Lacayo, in his recent post) will now question whether decisions about acquisitions, exhibitions, permanent collection display and administrative practices may have been unduly influenced by the wishes of the three trustees whose largesse, according to the museum's own statements, made the difference in luring Lowry to MoMA from his previous post. If Lowry ever thought that one of the Trust-funding trustees had fallen short as a MoMA board member, it would be difficult to be strongly critical, let alone to request that the trustee step aside.

It's not enough to say (as Lowry did Saturday, when talking about acquisitions at ADAA's panel discussion) that important decisions are made not by the director alone, but by the trustees, in consultation with the staff. True, there are checks and balances on the director's having his way. But his recommendations have great sway.

There should be no question as to whether his recommendations, pronouncements and actions are influenced by anything other than the best interests of the institution. Now that the Trust is out of hiding, such questions will always be the elephant in the boardroom.

These suspicions and misgivings are not good for the health of the institution. What's more, because MoMA and Lowry are such leaders among museums and were held in such high regard, the ethical posture of the entire field has been compromised. In this respect, MoMAgate is even worse than Gettygate.

This may make Sen. Grassley happy; it makes CultureGrrl very depressed.