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.

… they drag me back in. On October 6th, at 6:30 PM, I’ll be speaking about Rogues’ Gallery at the Junior League of the City of New York, 130 East 80th Street. It’s open to members and their friends.

D Magazine in Dallas reports that Roger Horchow of the Horchow catalogs has very good taste in books.

Just back from a long trip to faraway places and with internet access restored noticed that not only is Rogues’ Gallery the #4 bestselling paperback non-fiction book at Bookhampton this week, it is the #1 bestseller that is not about the Hamptons. So thanks again, discerning East End readers. “Books won’t stay banned. They won’t burn. Ideas won’t go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost.” — Alfred Whitney Griswold, New York Times, 24 February 1959

Rogues’ Gallery is #4 on the Bookhampton non-fiction bestseller list this week. Thanks Bookhampton and all you East End readers!

Gripebox first revealed Metropolitan Museum director Thomas Campbell‘s $4 million Fifth Avenue apartment — and some of the peculiarities of his living arrangements — here back in March. That’s not it above, but the floorplan shows the same apartment one floor above Campbell’s. Today’s New York Times reveals that though Campbell receives free housing across the street from his museum office, he pays no income tax on a perk that’s got to be worth a tidy six-figure sum annually. As so often happens when it deals with the Met, the local community newspaper went easy on Campbell, covering his situation in two very brief paragraphs, while serving up seven paragraphs on the similar housing perk given to Ellen Futter, director of the American Museum of Natural History (which has not had the sense to put multiple Sulzbergers on its board of trustees). Too bad. The history of the Met’s housing benefit and who has benefitted from it is, to say the least, titillating. Thomas Hoving, for instance, refused it, preferring not to live (metaphorically speaking) above the store. There’s lots more of what the Times didn’t tell you in Rogues’ Gallery. Click the link to the left to buy a copy.