MoMA, MoMA, MoMA

Note: I'm on jury duty today. I'm auto-posting and email replies will be much-delayed.

Non-profit institutions make two kinds of mistakes: Sometimes they err in how they treat their audience. Call it the middle-down breach of trust. The other mistake is in how the museum treats the law, be it state, federal, or rules made by by governing associations to which the museum belongs. Call it the middle-up breach of trust. When you have an institution that makes both kinds of mistakes it's time to question the quality of that institution's management, from its trustees down through senior staff.

Stephanie Strom's slobberknocker in last Friday's NYT reveals that MoMA is up to its fifth floor in problems. The Strom story indicates that MoMA -- or at least three trustees -- have decided that that IRS rules on the disclosure of executive compensation don't apply to it. (In a related story: How'd you like to be the MoMA employee or trustee who signed your Hancock to one of those 1995-2003 tax filings? Either you signed, knowing that the compensation figures in the return were inaccurate -- or you were hung out to dry.)

The problems that MoMA has with its audience are just as head-shaking. Exhibit A is the Armando Reveron show currently on view at the museum. Reveron is not in the top rank of Latin American modernists due U.S. retrospectives. He ranks somewhere well behind Clark, Matta, Gego and Soto. Joaquin Torres-Garcia hasn't received an American retro in almost 40 years. So why Reveron? Might it have something to do with MoMA trustee Patricia Phelps de Cisneros? She has the largest private collection of Reverons. A former curator of hers 'consulted' on the show. I think I have an idea of why Reveron got the retro.

MoMA's other breaches with its audience have been discussed her at length in recent years, so I'll just quickly list them here: dumb deaccessioning, the $20 admissions price, opening a new building with a kiss to UBS, the frankly pathetic sell-out to Pixar (a show that MoMA curated... and that Pixar managed after it left NYC). None of these is as earth-shattering an error as those revealed on Friday, but combined they demonstrate that MoMA is governed more by hubris than by common sense.

In the wake of a scandal such as the one engulfing MoMA now, it's easy to call for the head of the director. That's not a real solution here -- not when trustees are involved in so many of MoMA's missteps. But it's obvious that MoMA director Glenn Lowry can't fix these problems -- he's too personally indebted to the three trustees who set up his $5.4 million fund for a Lowry-involved investigation to have any integrity. And the compensation issue is hardly the only MoMA problem that deserves examination.

So here's what I think should happen: First, Lowry should stop ducking questions. He should call a press conference and answer whatever he's asked. It's better for MoMA if he chooses to talk to the press than if he has to talk to the Senate Finance Committee.

Then he and his board should convene a blue-ribbon panel of outside observers to examine how MoMA is being run. That panel should be charged with making recommendations about how MoMA can clean itself up and regain its institutional integrity. No one on the panel should have ties to anyone named Gund, Shapiro, Rockefeller, Lauder, or Lowry. (I know: It's gonna be a short list.) I'm thinking of people such as James Wood, Harry Parker, or Marc Wilson -- not an old boy's club but a men's council. (Given that some of the problems at MoMA are exhibition-specific, toss in a Michael Auping-type too.) That panel's report should be made open to the public and the board should accept its recommendations. If you're MoMA that's gotta be a better solution than potential investigations by the U.S. Senate or the State of New York.

MoMA is broken. It needs to be fixed.

Related: The Oregonian's DK Row makes a good point about how many museums augment directors' salaries -- and do it transparently.