The essence of the bureaucrat

Culture vulture$
By ISABEL VINCENT and MELISSA KLEIN

Taxpayer-funded museums and cultural attractions suffered their worst economic crisis in decades but still paid executives fat salaries and bonuses -- and doled out perks like housing allowances and club memberships, The Post has learned.
Hammered by the recession, with donations down and endowments shrinking, the institutions saw revenue drop by 50 percent in some cases, according to tax filings for the year ending June 30, 2009. The groups cut hundreds of jobs and slashed programs.
Yet bosses at many of the 33 museums, zoos and other attractions hardly felt the hit. They continued to rake in six- and seven-figures in salaries and benefits, the tax reports obtained by The Post show.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art handed out hefty pay hikes in July 2008, the start of a fiscal year that would see a 40 percent drop in revenue.
Suzanne Brenner, the Met's chief investment officer, got a $354,923 bonus, bringing her total compensation to $1.2 million in 2008, the museum's tax filing shows. Yet the income from investments she supervised plummeted from $270 million to $112 million.
Met spokesman Harold Holzer said the bonus was paid before the market crash.
Holzer would not say what the Met -- which got about $28 million in city funding in fiscal year 2009 -- is paying its new director, Thomas Campbell, who took the helm in January 2009 and whose salary will not be disclosed for another year. He has the use of a museum-owned apartment on Fifth Avenue.

While the Met cut 357 positions last year and laid off workers for the first time since the 1970s, it did not freeze executive salaries until July 2009.
Carnegie Hall, meanwhile, paid its executive director, Sir Clive Gillinson, $965,538 in salary and benefits in 2008. He also got a membership in an undisclosed dining club "for business use only."
The organization was forced to cut its performance schedule in 2009-10 as overall revenue dropped by $6 million.
At Lincoln Center, President Reynold Levy's compensation came to $1.18 million in 2008. The arts group also pays some travel expenses for companions who accompany execs on trips, its tax forms show.

Investment income for Lincoln Center dropped to negative numbers in 2009, and it cut staff by about 9 percent.

There were no pay cuts for execs at the Wildlife Conservation Society, which runs the Bronx Zoo, New York Aquarium and other zoos, but pay has been frozen since 2008. And while budget crunchers were threatening to fire the Bronx Zoo's porcupine, Society Director Steven Sanderson's salary and benefits were $1 million in 2008, including an Upper East Side apartment.

John Calvelli, the society's p.r. chief, got a $41,283 bonus in 2008, bringing his total pay to $485,635. The bonus was "in recognition of extraordinary accomplishments," the group's tax filing says.

At the American Museum of Natural History, director Ellen Futter and others got a 5 percent pay cut in early 2009.

But Futter's 2008 pay package of $967,038 included $702,009 in base salary, a $50,000 bonus and an Upper East Side home. Futter's $1 million compensation in 2007 put her among the highest-paid art museum directors in the country.