(
)
Operating in the red and facing a bleak fiscal future, the Metropolitan Museum of Art asked its patrons to pay an admission fee.
The year was 1970, and the “suggested” fee was $1.
The admission plan was supposed to be a six-month experiment. The City Council immediately condemned the charge, saying a museum in a city-owned building on public land, supported by taxpayers, should be free to the public.
Forty-three years later, the Met is among the richest museums in the world, with $3 billion in assets and more than $300 million in annual revenue. Next month, it will host its annual Costume Institute Gala, one of the hottest events of the city’s social scene. The Met attracts record crowds and bestows million-dollar pay packages on its executives.
Yet it still charges an admission fee — now a “suggested” $25.
That’s spurred a lawsuit from museum members Theodore Grunewald and Patricia Nicholson, who say the admission policy “defrauds” the public because under the museums’s lease with the city — executed in 1878 — visitors shouldn’t have to pay anything “from 10 o’clock until half an hour before sunset” Wednesday through Saturday.
The suit aims to stop the Met from charging the admission fee. A second class-action suit seeks refunds, plus damages, for visitors who paid to enter the Met.
Lawyer Michael Hiller, who is representing the plaintiffs in both suits, charges the Met is a public institution that “behaves like a private business that lavishes exorbitant salaries and perquisites among its executives.
“The museum does not need to charge; it chooses to do so, and when it does, it does so on the backs of members of the public,” Hiller said.
Museum Director Thomas Campbell this month posted a defense of the admission fee on the Met Web site saying, “No current state legislation requires the Museum to be free to the public.”
The Met’s main justification for charging patrons is an agreement it claims dates to the early 1970s, when the city allowed it to impose the suggested fees.
But the museum refused to provide any documentation of the compact, referring inquiries to the city.
The city handed over its documents on the matter only after The Post submitted a request under the state’s Freedom of Information Law.
The documents do not bolster the Met’s position.
Thomas Hoving, museum director in 1971, asked the city parks commissioner for permission to make the admissions arrangement permanent.
In a March 30, 1971, letter, Commissioner August Heckscher said he would ask the city’s lawyer to draft an amendment to the Met’s lease in order to formally sanction the plan. The Met was given the go-ahead to keep charging patrons until the amendment was completed.
But no record of a completed amendment exists.
Even attorneys for the museum now concede that there was “no formal amendment” to the original lease. But, they argue in papers recently filed in the lawsuit, “the city for the last 42 years has been aware of the ‘pay-what-you-wish’ admission policy and has granted advance written approval to changes to the recommended admission payment.”
Hiller said that’s not good enough.
“We now have the smoking-gun evidence that the museum knew that its admission-fee policy required approval that the museum never obtained,” he said. “Worst of all, for the last six months, the museum has been trying to cover it up.”
The Met rolled out its suggested contribution plan in the summer of 1970, first to see special exhibits, then to enter its Cloisters satellite. In October 1970, it became mandatory to pay something, even a penny, to enter the museum.
The museum had a $1 million deficit in 1969-70 and faced another $1.5 million loss the next year. The Met hoped to take in at least $1.2 million a year in admission fees.
Today, those admission fees bring in much more. In the 2012 fiscal year, the Met raked in $37.8 million from admissions, up 17.5% from the previous year. The fees made up 11% of the museum’s $332 million in total revenue that year. A record 6.2 million people visited the Met in fiscal year 2012, many flocking to see the Alexander McQueen fashion exhibit.
The museum, like other cultural institutions, took a hit during the recession, cutting 357 positions and laying off employees for the first time since the 1970s.
But the money woes didn’t stop it from paying maintenance on a sprawling Fifth Avenue apartment that sat empty for 4 1/2 years. Maintenance for a similar apartment in the building was $5,100 a month.
The 3,000-square-foot dwelling had been home to Met presidents, but the current president, Emily Rafferty, declined to live there. She receives a yearly housing allowance of about $50,000 to reside elsewhere.
Campbell, who was named museum director in January 2009, moved into the apartment later that year. Campbell’s total pay package in 2011 was $1.1 million, including a salary of $698,789, according to the Met’s most recent tax filings.
Rafferty was the highest paid museum employee in 2011, with total compensation of $1.5 million. In addition to her $655,932 salary, she received $840,800 in “other compensation,” including a pension plan.
Former Director Philippe de Montebello, who retired in 2008, received a $3.2 million bonus in 2006 as part of a retention agreement to keep him on board.
If the museum members prevail in their lawsuits, the Met may find itself back where it started — in financial trouble after paying out millions in settlements.
“This is a museum-quality exhibition of the arrogance of power,” said Michael Gross, author of “Rogues’ Gallery,” his critical history of the Met. “The trustees feel they are above the law and don’t have to answer to the public.”
Post reporter Julia Marsh contributed to this report.