$5,000-Per-Plate Dinner Tests Museum Ban on Political Fund-Raisers

New York Times

5 days ago

At a private event hosted by Senator Dave McCormick, Republican of Pennsylvania, donors wandered through a sculpture hall at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh and partied with their cowboy hats on at a dinner where each plate cost $5,000.
The aftermath was less celebratory.
Dozens of employees at the Carnegie Museums sent an open letter to trustees, saying that the fund-raiser violated guidelines meant to safeguard the institution from partisan activities. The money raised was not directed to McCormick, who was elected in November, but to a nonprofit with ties to a political action committee he established. The organization supports conservative policy goals in energy and manufacturing.
Weeks after last month's event, the museum network's chief executive, Steven Knapp, acknowledged to employees that it was a violation of policy, accusing the fund-raiser's organizers of providing misleading information and promising to contact McCormick.
'The people working for him have put us in a terrible situation, have really damaged our relationships internally and externally, and we didn't deserve that,' Knapp said in a staff meeting, according to an audio recording obtained by The New York Times. He added, 'I'm so outraged by what occurred to us that I would be just as happy to say, 'No more politicians, period.''
McCormick's office did not respond to a request for comment.
Originally framed as a 'palace of culture' by the tycoon Andrew Carnegie in 1895, the museum network includes the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, the Carnegie Science Center and the Andy Warhol Museum. It is one of the largest cultural institutions in the country, with annual expenses above $70 million.
On July 15, the Carnegie Museum of Art hosted a dinner for PA Rising, a nonprofit organization connected with Pennsylvania Rising, a political action committee that was established by McCormick to help Republicans in the state get elected. (Pennsylvania Rising ceased activity this year, according to campaign finance reports.) The event was held after McCormick's inaugural Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit, which was attended by President Trump and Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat.
The dinner raising money for PA Rising, which offered a marquee sponsorship deal for $500,000, has been controversial for Carnegie Museums because of its policy that it 'does not accept bookings for partisan political events or fund-raisers, including voter education, registration and get-out-the-vote drives led by partisan groups.'
The day before the dinner, Knapp said in a small leadership meeting that canceling the party at that juncture would bring political scrutiny and that it would be easier to handle if museum leaders could maintain plausible deniability, according to three people with direct knowledge of the meeting who spoke anonymously because they fear repercussions for discussing internal deliberations.
Knapp did not respond to requests for comment. A spokeswoman for the museum network, Betsy Momich, said in a statement that his remarks were a response to questions about canceling the event based on rumors circulating on social media. 'At that time,' she said, 'we had written assurances from event organizers that the rumors were not true.'
Anna Rogers Duncan, an adviser to PA Rising, said in a statement that the dinner was held at the art museum to show off Pittsburgh's rich cultural heritage. 'As we had made clear from the beginning,' she said, 'the dinner was not a political fund-raiser for Senator McCormick and we offered to explain this further to the museum leadership.'
The museum spokeswoman said Knapp was not aware of any offer to meet with PA Rising before the dinner.
Museums generally avoid politics to maintain their audience's trust in the unbiased nature of their programming, experts said. Historians were critical of the Trump administration after it told the Smithsonian Institution this week that it would review exhibitions in search of 'divisive or ideologically driven language.'
'If a museum were to become associated with one political party over another, then the material in their exhibits would be questioned,' said Sally Yerkovich, who teaches museum anthropology at Columbia University and leads revisions for the code of ethics at the International Council of Museums.
After the dinner, local publications criticized Carnegie Museums for breaking its own policy and for potentially violating rules in the tax code that largely prevent nonprofits from 'directly or indirectly participating in' political campaigning. More than 60 employees signed an open letter that said Knapp had disregarded the staff's concerns by allowing the event to take place.
The consequences, they wrote, included 'reputational harm done to Carnegie Museums, an unhealthy work culture and our damaged relationship with the communities we serve.'
In recent days, Knapp told employees that he had been working to revise the museum's policy to include an explicit mention of events hosted or sponsored by political action committees or other campaign-related organizations.
'I do not believe that any set of guidelines or procedures we adopt will guarantee that future embarrassments will not occur,' Knapp wrote in an Aug. 11 letter, 'but we are certainly open to advice on additional ways of minimizing that risk.'