If there were a encyclopedia entry on the challenges of high-power nonprofit cultural boards, American Ballet Theater’s board would certainly be the group photo. Yet another case in point for the uber-board’s dysfunction comes thanks to Movado watch chairman Gedalio Grinberg, who plucked his company’s traditionally generous annual support from ABT and gave it to rival New York City Ballet. The highly public ‘dressing down’ is now fodder for the financial and cultural media (see the Financial Times, or the New Jersey Star-Ledger, or the today’s New York Times).
ABT has a proud history of contempt and power struggles among its board, and has a growing stack of disgruntled or discarded Executive Directors to prove it. With a $35 million annual operating budget, there isn’t much choice but to gather New York’s rich and powerful to governance. But it also seems a fact of nature that such a gathering will devolve to a sort of high-society ‘Lord of the Flies’.
At issue in this particular dispute is what Grinberg claims to be an increasing financial reliance of ABT on the board’s new chairman, Lewis S. Ranier, and a decreasing availability of relevant and accurate financial reports. Ranier responded that he has “nothing but respect” for Grinberg, and that the loss of the corporate support was a wonderful opportunity for ABT (in my head, I’m thinking ‘Rolex’).
This one will be worth watching in Google News, if only for the combination of fascination and disgust that’s usually reserved for reality TV. The sad part here is that there’s actually something at stake.
