Admission of gilt
Met $oaks tourists & $howers execs
The Met began squeezing tourists for $25 entry fees last week in answer to years of budget deficits, yet the museum continued to fork over millions in salaries and bonuses to its executive fat cats, new records show.
Daniel Weiss was paid $670,066 in 2016 as the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s president and received a housing allowance that brought his total compensation package to $901,671, according to the Met’s 2016 tax filing, the latest available.
Suzanne Brenner, the Met’s senior VP and chief investment officer, got a $470,313 bonus, bringing her total compensation to $1.3 million, according to the records obtained by The Post.
Chief investment officer Lauren Meserve received a $424,589 bonus and $1.2 million in total compensation.
The country’s largest art museum has a $2.9 billion endowment, yet it’s been grappling with a financial crisis for several years.
It lost $10.1 million in the year ending June 30, 2017, up from $8.3 million the previous year, according to the Met’s annual report.
Attendance hit a record 7 million visitors last year, but only 14 percent of revenues came from admission fees, which had been “suggested” rather than mandatory. The museum also receives taxpayer support from the city.
On Thursday, it began requiring visitors from outside of New York, New Jersey or Connecticut to pay the full $25 price, which is expected to bring in an additional $6 million a year. The move prompted renowned Chinese artist Ai Weiwei to vow he would never enter the institution again.
The financial woes led to 34 layoffs and more than 50 employee buyouts in 2016, along with other cost-cutting measures including postponing a major show on Versailles. In February 2017, CEO Thomas Campbell (below) announced he was leaving, forced out by the ballooning fiscal crisis. Campbell’s total compensation in 2016 came to $1.4 million, including the value of his museumowned apartment on Fifth Avenue. The Met allowed him to continue living in the Fifth Avenue abode for six months past his June 30, 2017, departure. A Met spokesman said the apartment would be sold, but would not comment on whether Campbell paid to live there after he stepped down. Campbell and Weiss, who was named CEO and president in June 2017, voluntarily took a pay cut in 2016 but not until mid-year, according to the Met. Each still ended up with higher compensation than the previous year, records show.
Five administrators who departed the Met in 2016 did so with six-figure severance payments, the tax records show.
Olena Paslawsky, the museum’s CFO who left in June 2016, got a $492,816 severance payment. Her salary for six months came to $259,037.
Sree Sreenivasan, the chief digital officer, took home $155,000 in severance.
A Met spokesman would not comment on the severance payments and whether they were part of a buyout program.
The Met also sold off $13.3 million worth of art and antiquities last year, a record.
Among the items on the auction block was a rare pink-hued vase that brought in $2 million. It was among some 700 Chinese ceramics sold at Christie’s in September 2016.
Under state law, the proceeds cannot be used for the museum’s operating costs.