The beleaguered financier Leon Black is in talks with administrators of the Museum of Modern Art about his future with the museum in the face of troubling details about his ties to convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, The Post has learned.
A number of MoMA trustees have approached Black – co-founder and CEO of Apollo Global Management – to step down as chairman of the museum when his term ends July 1, according to two sources aware of the talks.
Complicating matters, sources said, is whether Black will remain on the board if he steps down as chairman. The billionaire owner of precious works of art such as Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” has served on the MoMA board since 1997.
If the museum cut ties with Black, who was elected to the chair in 2018, it could compromise access to his unique collection, including the Raphael drawing ‘Head of a Young Apostle’ that Black purchased for a record $ 47.9 million in 2013, a source said.
“Remember, if MoMA takes out Black, they’ll lose a chance at his personal art collection,” said this person.
Another source denied that Black, a philanthropist and art enthusiast, would rob the legendary museum of its collection, even if he was no longer on the board of more than 50 people.
Remember, if MoMA takes out Black, they’ll lose an opportunity at its personal art collection, a source says.
The talks come as the museum is blasted by prominent artists like Ai Weiwei and photographer Nan Goldin after it emerged in January that Black paid Epstein $ 158 million for tax and estate planning advice following Epstein’s 2008 guilty plea for prostitution from a teenage girl.
Goldin told The Post that she will not be showing her work at MoMA, even though she is looking for a location in NYC for a retrospective that began at the National Portrait Gallery in London before traveling Europe.
“I told the museum director that he will not be able to offer my show to MoMA while Leon Black is around,” said Goldin, who was instrumental in pressuring other leading art organizations, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim and the Tate in London, to cut ties with the Sackler family behind the addictive pain reliever OxyContin.
“I’d love to show at MoMA, but you have to stick to your ethics,” she said. “How can MoMA support Leon Black, a man in the line of Jeffrey Epstein who was responsible for the sex trafficking of teenage girls?”
Epstein committed suicide in prison a month after he was arrested a second time in 2019 and charged with running a sex trafficking operation involving dozens of underage girls, some as young as 14 years old.
Black has not been charged with any wrongdoing. But his dazzling payments to a convicted sex offender seem to have hastened his decision to hand over the role of Apollo CEO to co-founder Marc Rowan in July. Black remains chairman.
When the payments were revealed in January by a law firm that Apollo had hired under investor pressure, Black forwarded the letter of apology he’d written to Apollo investors to the MoMA board. He closed the letter, saying, “I look forward to seeing you at our board meeting in February,” said the New York Times.
A source close to the MoMA board tells The Post that the note “rubbed people the wrong way” given the gravity of the situation. “After all, he had to step down as CEO of Apollo.”
Since then, the Museum of Modern Art has postponed its planned February board meeting twice – first to mid-March and then until the end of March, sources said. MoMA confirmed the delays, but insisted that the repeated reshuffle had nothing to do with Black.
“The board has moved its meeting from February to March to give its finance committees more time to address some key issues before submitting them to the full board for consideration,” said spokeswoman Amanda Hicks. She declined to comment on whether members of the board were negotiating with Black about his future there.
Sources say that a decision, if taken, can be announced at the next meeting as soon as possible.
Black isn’t the only MoMA trustee with ties to Black, of course. Trustee Glenn Dubin and his wife Eva had a personal relationship with Epstein before and after his 2008 conviction, and the MoMA has named a gallery after them. Artists, including the Guerrilla Girls, have also called on Dubin to resign.
Black declined to comment. Dubin, who has previously denied any wrongdoing, also declined to comment.
A MoMA trustee not involved in the current talks personally supports Black’s retention as chairman and says he helped put the museum through a difficult financial period.
“We are going through very difficult times financially and he has succeeded brilliantly,” said the trustee. “Leon has been extremely good to the museum and he takes his work seriously. I hope he gets through this. “
The curator also dismissed protests from artists such as Goldin and Ai as ‘extremely political’.
“I really believe that the MoMA is not an institution for social change, it is a museum,” said the curator. “No one has sent him to the gallows yet and I hope he does not go to the gallows.”
As The Post previously reported, Black vowed not to cause any trouble when he took over from Jerry Speyer in 2018, who held the role of chairman for 11 years.
“And you know that when Leon is in charge, you know he will save us from disaster because that man keeps pace with all the modern masters,” Black sang to his art friends in the palatial Renaissance mansion. he owns a former art gallery on the Upper East Side.