The next time you pony up $20 to get into the Museum of
Modern Art, you might want to pause to consider what those dollars
are underwriting. It’s not just the museum’s $850 million
building campaign. It is also the $1.28 million the
museum pays its director, Glenn D. Lowry. (That was in 2005;
doubtless the figure was higher in 2006.) Now $1.28 million might seem
like a tidy packet, but it is apparently insufficient for
the director of MOMA (who, by the way, lives rent
free in Museum Tower), for it turns out that some of the museum’s trustees,
including David Rockefeller and Agnes Gund, created a slush
fund, er, trust fund that paid Mr. Lowry over $5 million
between 1995 and 2003. Nice work if you can get it.