Like the great Michael Corleone says, “Just when I thought I was out they pull me back in.” I’ll be speaking about Rogues’ Gallery at the New Canaan Public Library at 151 Main Street in New Canaan CT on Thursday February 10th at 7:30 PM as part of its Authors On Stage series, and then at 8 PM on Friday February 11th in the Grand Salon of The National Arts Club at 15 Gramercy Park South in Manhattan, I’ll be reading — quite possibly the first brief preview from my upcoming book Unreal Estate — at The Literary Life Reunion, also featuring Max Blagg, Penny Arcade, Anthony Haden Guest, and many others.

Today’s New York Observer bets that last week’s $10 million contribution towards the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute by Jon and Lizzie Tisch will win the latter a seat on the museum’s prestigious ruling board of trustees. “The board would be a good place for Lizzie,” Gripebox favorite David Patrick Columbia tells the pink paper. “And the days of Condé Nast and Anna Wintour dominating the Costume Institute are numbered on simply actuarial terms.” Writer Rachel Corbett also echoes the argument in Rogues’ Gallery that the institute has balanced the commercial and the timeless since it came to 1000 Fifth Avenue in 1946. Sort of like Madonna, arriving at a recent Institute gala in a timelessly entertaining costume, above.

Jonathan M. Tisch, the chairman and CEO of Loews Hotels, and his wife Lizzie (above) today announced a $10 million gift to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to build the latest new, improved gallery for its Costume Institute, the pet charity of New York’s garment business since the 1940s. Unmentioned in the press release… er… report in this morning’s paper is the subtext of a $10 million gift to the museum: It typically buys a seat on the board, as it did not long back when the controversial libertarian mogul David Koch landed a seat with a same-sized donation. So it’s reasonable to expect one of the Tisches to join him come September when the latest class of trustees is elected. This is also a family affair for the Met, which already has a Tisch Gallery, underwritten with a $10 million gift from Tisch’s late uncle Larry and his late father Preston Robert Tisch. Larry was once a controversial figure on the Met’s board and young Tisch himself played a cameo role in the museum’s recent history when the $3 million dinner that followed his first wedding to Saul Steinberg‘s daughter Laura became a signal moment in the brief bright saga of Nouvelle Society. Unlike his notably irascible uncle, Jon Tisch is also a nice guy. The whole stunning story of the Costume Institute is told in Rogues’ Gallery.

Emily Rafferty, President of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has been named to fill an unexpired one-year term on the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Rafferty, who led the museum’s in-house effort to keep its employees and friends from speaking about it to me for Rogues’ Gallery, sounds like a perfect fit for the semi-secretive financial institution. Congratulations!

This just-published review of Rogues’ Gallery on ipadbookspdf.com just might make me believe in Santa Claus:  ”This is an intriguing book to appear at what may be a major turning point in the Met’s history… chronicles the interminable tugs of war between the trustees, donors and curators and the city authorities over the institution’s core mission… a wonderful eye for the telling anecdote and the hilarious detail… another truly great yarn in his series of books devoted to the doings (and misdeeds) of Manhattan’s self-anointed elite.”

Today’s New York Observer reports on the proposed new plaza in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, paid for in large part by David Koch, a newish Met trustee and resident of 740 Park, and the opposition already being mounted by the museum’s neighbors across Fifth Avenue.  Koch used to be one of them until he moved from the former Jackie Kennedy Onassis apartment at 1040 Fifth to his current apartment at 740. The fascinating story of that move, and the even more intriguing one of one hundred years of the museum board’s imperial ambitions, building history and fraught relations with the people of New York, who own its land, its building, and arguably, its art, are told in full respectively in 740 Park and Rogues’ Gallery. They are both available in paperback via links on these pages.

Curbed is on a roll today, unveiling some floor plan porn for the $24 million maisonette at McKim Mead & White’s 998 Fifth.  The venerable building made a cameo in Rogues’ Gallery because, in a previously unreported attempt at expansion, the trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art briefly considered buying  it for its administrative and research offices, some specialized collections and the museum’s  library. Its builder-owner, James T. Lee (grandfather of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy and developer of 740 Park), was in deep financial trouble and offered 998 to the Met at the bargain price of $900,000. The museum board’s executive committee, always thinking about the tender sensibilities of its wealthy patrons, finally decided not to evict the seventeen families renting there, some of them contributors, in order to take it over.

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Steven Rattner, the former Metropolitan Museum of Art trustee, New York Times reporter, BFF of Arthur Ochs “Pinch” Sulzberger Jr., investment banker, Democratic party moneybags, financial counselor to Mayor Michael Bloomberg (with him above) and briefly, Obama car demi-czar, has reportedly settled charges by the Security and Exchange Commission that he arranged kickbacks, paying off a political adviser to get investment funds from New York State’s pension fund. Rattner will pay a seven figure fine and be banned from the securities industry. The good news: A former journalist can afford to pay a seven-figure fine. An UPDATE from Daily Intel.

Just found this great comment by Abraham Lincoln on the plutocracy and thought it worth sharing: “It is more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, and more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes.” POSSIBLE CORRECTION: A friend notes that the quote may be fraudulent, even if the sentiment it expresses has merit.