Anna Wintour (that’s not her above) got her reward for tireless service to Si New — , oops, the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art yesterday when she was promoted from powerless non-voting honorary trustee of the museum to only slightly less powerless “elective” trustee. On the same day, James Houghton, the museum’s aging chairman, stepped down and was replaced by real estate owner and operator Daniel Brodsky, who is slightly younger. Women’s Wear Daily got the scoop on Wintour’s ascension to the socio-cultural Pantheon that is the museum’s board, but not Brodsky’s promotion. The New York Times wrote up Brodsky, but not Wintour. I wonder if either of them wishes it had been the other way around? I know which one looks better in Chanel.

This gripepad and pen are familiar with the ins and outs of telling the emperor he’s starkers. But at a certain point, it can get repetitive, so I’ve mostly spared the Metropolitan Museum in recent months. I almost felt bad when Obama-Gets-Osama kept Anna Wintour‘s fashion promo party from dominating the news cycle this week. But the blog Scallywag & Vagabond has written about the Party of Last Monday in a very entertaining way. Suffice to say the post is called “Jerking off with the Metropolitan Museum Gala Propaganda Committee.” NSFW, kids! The image of Yoko and Karl is from racked.com‘s extensive wardrobe coverage. Christopher London has more on the ball here. He calls his post “Let Them Eat Cake.”

Caravaggio at K-Mart prices? Value-priced Velazquez? Metropolitan Museum of Art memberships have just gone on sale… and you can get fifteen months for the price of twelve. Boasts the Met: “You’ll enjoy outstanding benefits including unlimited free admission,” which is guaranteed to all by the museum’s lease, but never mind, “Members-only events, discounts in The Met Store, access to the exclusive Members Dining Room overlooking Central Park, and more.” You still can’t get Rogues’ Gallery there, but again, never mind. Click here for details.

Those who criticize should also praise when it’s deserved. Good things come to those who wait. And what follows also proves the unstated contention in Rogues’ Gallery that great institutions aren’t the same as the sometimes-flawed transients who run them. Twenty-eight months ago, after I finished writing that book, I gave a copy of a privately-printed memoir, Remembrances by the late Arthur Amory Houghton, as a gift to the Thomas J. Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as they did not have a copy of the book by the Museum’s former chairman, and the Houghton family member who gave it to me had suggested I donate it once I was through with it. Today, that gift has finally appeared in the museum’s WatsonOnline catalog, which even notes who donated it. And, it turns out, Rogues’ Gallery is now available in the museum’s library, too. Shhhh. Don’t tell the trustees.

In his media column today, “At Media Companies, A Nation of Serfs,” David Carr comes down on the side of those who think professional writers shouldn’t write for free for the Huffington Post and ought to consider same before posting on Facebook and Twitter. Perhaps because he has a ready-made megaphone, that local community newspaper he writes for, Carr doesn’t get the benefits HuffPo and Facebook offer those of us who lack his significant advantage. Two years ago, when Rogues’ Gallery was published — and effectively ignored by the mainstream media after a stealth suppression campaign by truth-averse Metropolitan Museum trustees and administrators and open threats from the hired gunsels at the law firm of Cravath Swine and Moore, it was the no-paying Huffington Post (channeling Jesse Kornbluth’s Head Butler blog) that first revealed the chilling, empty threats made against the book, Richard Curtis’ E-Reads blog that revealed the book’s altogether curious non-appearance at the New York Public Library, my Facebook friends who kept it from suffering the crib death the museum and its supporters (some of them in the press) wished on it, and the low-paying New York Observer that kept the drumbeat going, ensuring the book’s survival. Tens of thousands of book sales later, none of those paid slaves of the culture Mafia has yet mentioned the way they all crumbled in the face of a campaign by the powerful to keep the book from its intended public. But I can say without qualification that HuffPo and Facebook made money for my publisher and I. Thank God there’s still a free press.

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.”