Execs milk the Met
Six-figure bonuses amid museum staff cuts
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has doled out hefty pay raises and six-figure bonuses to top executives — despite a looming deficit that threatened to reach $40 million, records show.
Although the Fifth Avenue museum was already losing millions when Daniel Weiss took the helm as president in July 2015, he still got a $300,000 bonus for less than half a year on the job, according to the museum’s 2015 federal tax filings, the latest available for the troubled arts institution.
In fact, Weiss’s total compensation for just six months of work came to $818,112, which included a salary of $327,931 and a housing allowance for his Park Avenue apartment.
Meanwhile, the museum announced stringent austerity measures, cutting payroll and special exhibits.
Outgoing Met director and chief executive Thomas Campbell’s total compensation was $1,428,935, including a salary of $942,287. His salary and “other compensation” of $127,622 was a 7 percent increase over the previous year, records show.
Campbell (above, with former Met president Emily Rafferty), who resigned last month amid the growing fiscal crisis, lives across the street from the museum in a grand, four-bedroom, four-bath Fifth Avenue apartment provided by the museum. He has headed the museum since 2009 and is scheduled to leave in June.
Rafferty, who left her position at the end of June 2015, received a total compensation package of $2.2 million, the tax records show.
Suzanne Brenner, the Met’s senior vice president and chief investment officer and its next highest paid employee, saw her bonus rise to $624,828 from $570,590. Her total compensation was $1,583,553.
The salary for chief investment officer Lauren Meserve jumped 14.7 percent and her bonus shot up to $548,723 from $466,847. Her total compensation was $1,451,775.
The Met would not comment on the raises.
Museum executives sounded the alarm about rising deficits during the past fiscal year, which ended on June 30, 2016.
The year ended with an $8.3 million deficit.
The Met laid off 34 employees, 1.5 percent of its workforce of 2,200, last September, although none of the layoffs involved curatorial staff, a spokesman told The Post.
Earlier, the museum announced that 50 staff members had taken buyouts.
A spokesperson noted that revenue from admissions went up by 4 percent last year and the Met saw record attendance of 7 million.