Hasta La Ideas

You know you’ve finally made it to the big leagues when the age-old tradition of news outlets publishing the salaries of public museum directors includes you on their lists. Such has happened with Thomas Campbell, now halfway through his third year as the head of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art after taking over in early 2009. Though some prying had been done last year, with the NY Times looking into his swanky $4 million accommodations across the street from the museum, his salary hadn’t been peeked at until the recent release of the Met’s 2009-2010 tax return, on which, Bloomberg reports, it’s written that Campbell pulled in $930,000. If you’re interested in specifics, that breaks down to “$640,697 in base pay, $160,103 in expenses and pension benefits plus $129,000 in estimated rent for the Fifth Avenue apartment where he lives with his wife and two children.” Bloomberg also lists a few of the other famous museums’ famous directors’ salaries, those presumably long accustomed to the tradition, like the MoMA‘s Glenn Lowry ($1.32 million) and the Art Institute of Chicago‘s soon-to-be-departing James Cuno ($836,000 — though that’s a reprint of 2008′s earnings), as well as a number of other staff members’ incomes. Strangely, no annual report yet on the LACMA‘s Michael Govan yet. Though we assume the LA Times is either working on that or ready to release those figures the next time people are mad at him again.

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