Nonprofit Nightmares
from Summer 2000
by Antonio Ramirez
You finally made it to the board of your favorite nonprofit, that sparkling museum or opera house you`ve attended-and supported-faithfully for years. Now, it`ll be nothing but premieres with Pavarotti and wine and cheese with the rich and famous, right?
Well, maybe not.
Despite their star power-nonprofits can offer an attractive mix of glitz and altruism-the never-ending demand for money is not the only downside of sitting on a nonprofit board. You`re possibly also in for a fair share of muddy messes and could wind up in the vortex of some scandal. Be prepared.
The textbook case of the perils of nonprofits remains the United Way, which was shaken in the early `90s by a scandal involving the free-spending ways of its president, William Aramony. He quit, the reputation of the organization took a drubbing, and donations shrank. Many directors serving on local United Way boards came in for tough questioning by their friends and colleagues. Only through a lengthy regimen of strict frugality, full disclosure, and tireless work by volunteers around the country was the organization able to get its fund raising back on track.
Two more recent cases, both in New York City, included a dustup last fall over an exhibit all-too-accurately named "Sensations" and another that spread dissension among the scions of one of America`s wealthiest dynasties.
When the usually sedate Brooklyn Museum of Art brought in an exhibit of the hottest new art from Britain, it included a work titled "The Holy Virgin Mary," featuring photos of genitalia and splatters of elephant dung. The piece, calculated to shock, did. New York`s Mayor Rudolph Giuliani led the charge. Labeling the work "sick" and "anti-Catholic," Giuliani tried to cut off the city`s more than $7 million annual subsidy to the museum and evict it from its city-owned building, actions a court blocked.
To Brooklyn Museum Board of Trustees chairman Robert S. Rubin, an investment banker with Salomon Smith Barney and no stranger to corporate boards, the mayor`s offensive was akin to "a hostile takeover bid in business." All 47 trustees backed the museum`s right to show the art. Sitting on a nonprofit board can mean making tough decisions, Rubin says, because you can`t measure success by the usual yardstick of profit and loss.
While the Brooklyn battle was still ablaze, Manhattan`s Whitney Museum of American Art, founded 70 years ago by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, mounted an incendiary installation of its own. A work titled "Sanitation" by artist Hans Haacke took direct aim at Giuliani and other conservative icons. Using garbage cans as his canvas, Haacke displayed their denouncements of "immoral" art, using the gothic type long associated with Nazi propaganda.
This time the politicians, unable to touch the Whitney`s private funding, remained relatively quiet. But members of the Whitney family quickly took sides. Marylou Whitney, 73, widow of Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney and the daughter-in-law of the museum`s founder, announced she would withdraw a $1 million donation and withhold further financial support for the museum. Haacke`s work, she said, would make Gertrude "roll over in her grave."
But two other Whitneys, board member Fiona Donovan, 42, who is Marylou`s niece and Gertrude`s great-granddaughter, and her mother, Flora Miller Biddle, 71, an honorary board member and former Whitney president, defended the museum. Donovan says the 42-person board supports free speech by artists.
High-profile controversies like these are likely to have a "chilling" effect on museum directors and boards, says Joan Bertin of the National Coalition Against Censorship. She cites the November 1999 shutdown of an exhibit at the Detroit Institute of Arts the day after it opened because it contained inflammatory elements, including a Jesus figure wearing a condom. In this case, Graham Beal, the museum`s director, called the chairman of the board to say he was pulling the exhibit, and then sent a fax to the other 62 board members informing them of his decision.
