AGNES Gund – the Sanka coffee heiress and one of the biggest art collectors in the world – was backing away yesterday from comments she made implying that her fellow members on the board of the Museum of Modern Art are cheapskates.
Gund is quoted in the January issue of W: “I really did feel I had to give a lot to MoMA, even though many of the trustees have a lot more money than I do.”
Julie Belcove, who wrote the W story, reports that Gund had “a note of irritation in her voice” as she continued: “There’s only one other person I would say I’m like on the board of MoMA, and that’s Lewis Cullman. Now, Lewis has more money than I do, but not a lot more, and he gives a lot of it away, but proportionally he gives more of his money, like proportionally I give more of mine, than, say – I won’t name them but any of them you know, and that excludes David Rockefeller, who’s been extraordinarily generous.”
Mike Margitick, the museum’s senior deputy director, said, “Aggie is indeed a great philanthropist, but so are all of the trustees.”
Gund’s fellow MoMA board members include Sid Bass, Ronald Lauder, Thomas Lee, Mike Ovitz, Jerry Speyer, Leon Black, Donald Marron and Clarissa Alcock Bronfman, wife of Warner Music Group chairman Edgar Bronfman Jr.
“I can’t tell you how damaging this is to my relationships with these people,” Gund told Page Six yesterday. “They are incredible generous, and give huge amounts. I think these quotes were taken completely out of context. I would never say that.”
Belcove couldn’t be reached and none of the board members would deign to respond. A woman at the office of oil billionaire Bass told us, “It’s a matter of policy that he does not speak to reporters.” It makes us wonder – if he’s so stingy with his words . . .