September 16, 2012 | Read Time: 1 minute
Stuart Pyhrr
Curator-in-Charge
Metropolitan Museum of Art
2010 compensation: $988,523
Stuart Pyhrr is widely considered to be one of the best in the world at what he does.
But when his employer, the Metropolitan Museum of Art disclosed that Mr. Pyhrr had earned nearly $1-milllion in 2010, his compensation became fodder for a scathing tabloid report about executive pay at New York museums.
Curators, after all, typically don’t command salaries approaching seven figures.
But museum officials say Mr. Pyhrr’s compensation isn’t a true reflection of his take-home pay. Rather, it was the result of a more than $814,000 lump-sum pay-out on a pension he had contributed to for the nearly four decades he has worked at the museum, where he earns a $174,000 salary. The payment from the museum’s previous pension plan was mandatory, automatically triggered by Mr. Pyhrr’s age.
Mr. Pyhrr, born in Chicago in 1948, began working in the Department of Arms and Armor in 1971 as a part-time research assistant. In December 1988, he became the museum’s curator of arms and armor, overseeing a century-old division that manages about 15,000 objects.
“Among arms and armor curators in the world, he is No. 1,” said Jeffrey Forgeng, curator at Higgins Armory Museum in Worcester, Mass. The Metropolitan Museum’s collection “is the best in the country and among the best in the world.”
That reputation, however, wasn’t enough to shield Mr. Pyhrr and six other museum employees who had received early-retirement payouts from The New York Post, which said the officials were beneficiaries of “unabated” “largesse.”
Harold Holzer, the Metropolitan Museum’s spokesman, did not make Mr. Pyhrr available to The Chronicle, saying the scrutiny was not warranted due to the fact that much of his pay figure was related to his pension.
