TRANSPARENCY AT THE WHITNEY?
by Charlie Finch



All in all, it’s probably a good thing that the Whitney Museum is slogging along with its plans to build a gorgeous new museum downtown on Washington and Gansevoort Streets. What is troubling is that, while the Whitney is receiving a 50 percent reduction in the cost of the land from New York City and nine years of various options to complete paying for the land and to actually build on the site, that Whitney Museum czar Adam Weinberg is still allowed the privilege of NOT telling the press how much in capital funds the Whitney has raised so far for the $680-million project, and NOT disclosing the details of any plans to sell the museum’s flagship Marcel Breuer space on Madison Avenue. (Last year, the man who really runs the Whitney, Leonard Lauder, gave the museum a gift of $133 million and stipulated that the Whitney could not sell the Breuer building for an unspecified time.)

...more