Displaying items by tag: trustees

The trustees sued the foundation for compensation for their “extraordinary services” in administering the trust. Under Florida law, trustees are entitled to “a reasonable fee” should the terms of the trust not specify their remuneration.

The trustees, Bennet Grutman, Darryl Pottorf and Bill Goldston, argued that they deserved a combined sum in the region of $51m to $55m. The foundation argued that this figure should be around $375,000 only.

New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission would do well to turn down the Frick Collection’s proposed expansion, which imagines replacing a prized garden on East 70th Street in Manhattan with a clumsy addition. The city should avoid another self-inflicted wound, and there are other options.

The plan, announced last month, ran into early headwinds. New Yorkers have seen the consequences of trustee restlessness and real estate magical thinking, which destroy or threaten to undo favorite buildings. Not so long ago, the Morgan Library & Museum, another Gilded Age landmark, built an addition that flopped. The New York Public Library wanted to disembowel its historic building at 42nd Street before thinking better of it.

The Trustees of the Boston Athenæum announced today the appointment, by unanimous vote, of Elizabeth E. Barker as Stanford Calderwood Director of the Boston Athenæum. Dr. Barker will assume her position on October 1, 2014. She succeeds Paula D. Matthews, who retired as Stanford Calderwood Director and Librarian in July 2013.

Deborah Hill Bornheimer, President of the Boston Athenæum’s Board of Trustees said, “In Elizabeth Barker, the Boston Athenæum has found an executive of brilliance, scholarship, and infectious charm. Her deep reverence for the Athenæum's historic place in American cultural life is clear, while her youthful vision and vitality promise fresh eyes on opportunities ahead. Those of us who love the Athenæum feel Dr Barker is an exceptional person who can lead the institution to new heights.”

The Institute of Contemporary Art has completed a $50 million fund-raising campaign meant to boost its endowment, pay off a small amount of debt from the construction of its building, and support its operating budget over the next five years.

The campaign’s completion, announced to the museum’s trustees on Wednesday, marks an important step in the ICA’s effort to create more year-to-year stability. The museum’s endowment will increase from just under $10 million to $25 million. That’s still small for an institution that has a $13 million annual budget and has had around 200,000 people a year visit the Fan Pier building it opened in 2006.

“The old ICA really had no endowment,” said board president Chuck Brizius. “I think everybody knew this is where we were headed. Now that we’ve done this as a first step, we’re getting ourselves in a better position.”

The trial continued Thursday in a lawsuit brought by three trustees of the Robert Rauschenberg Revocable Trust, who are suing the artist's foundation for $60 million in fees for services rendered.

The worth of Rauschenberg's work was again the focus.

The trustees are Bennet Grutman, who was also Rauschenberg's accountant; Darryl Pottorf, close friend and companion and executor of the artist's will; and Bill Goldston, who partnered with the artist for a fine art print publishing company.

It looks like an art exhibit, when in fact it’s a family tree.

“The Richman Gifts: American Impressionism and Realism,” now at the Norton Museum of Art, is a window into how generations of early 20th century American painters influenced one another.

This collection of 11 paintings given to the museum — a “promised gift” from trustees Priscilla and John Richman upon their passing — allows you to follow how two schools of early American artists developed on different vines.

Anyone looking to meet the director of the tiny but highly regarded Museum of Contemporary Art here has two choices. Head into the museum, where its interim director, Alex Gartenfeld, has an office. Or go next door to City Hall, where the mayor’s appointee to the same position, Babacar M’Bow, is essentially working in exile.

The dueling directors are just part of the chaos emanating from a bitter showdown that has erupted between MoCA, as the museum is known, and the city that founded it.

The museum’s board wants to leave this working-class city and merge with the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach, its wealthier and more glamorous neighbor. It says that North Miami has neglected the museum building and failed to support a needed expansion.

The City of North Miami has asked a judge to dismiss the lawsuit filed earlier this month by the Museum of Contemporary Art.

The city is calling MOCA's suit to move some of its artwork and spread it out across South Florida "legally deficient."

"We're not going to let anybody take our art collection and move it somewhere else after so many years of establishing the great MOCA," Councilman Scott Galvin said.

The Queens Museum of Art has completed its $69-million renovation and will reopen to the public on November 9, 2013. The newly expanded, 105,000-square-foot building includes new galleries, a 48-foot-tall atrium, public event spaces, an artist studio wing, a café and a museum shop. The museum has also announced a future addition to be completed by 2015, which will house a branch of the Queens Library; the partnership will be the first of its kind in the United States.

The Queens Museum’s expansion project was funded through a public-private partnership including $54 million in government support from New York City as well as bequests from private supporters and trustees of the museum. The institution expected patronage to double from 100,000 to 200,000 in the next year.

Founded in 1972, the Queens Museum of Art houses the well-known Panorama of the City of New York, a scale model of the five boroughs built for the 1964 New York World’s Fair.

On May 23, 2013, after a two and a half year renovation, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York unveiled 45 updated and expanded galleries of European paintings. The new space, which has increased by about a third, boasts 600 works of art dating from 1250 to 1800. Arranged in chronological order and grouped by country, the collection includes the Met’s renowned holdings of early Dutch, French, and Italian paintings.

The reimagined European painting galleries include 23 high profile loans, mainly from private collections. Works by Jan Van Eyck (1395-1441), Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510), and Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) will be on view for at least six months thanks to the generosity of the Met’s trustees, and patrons.

The Met’s European painting galleries have not been fully renovated since the early 1950s and this is the first overall reinstallation of the collection since 1972.