Art Museum Director’s Salary Rose to $589,000

Marcelle Polednik had quite a run during her nine years as director of the Milwaukee Art Museum. She made a surprise announcement that she would leave the museum last May despite the generous compensation she was paid. The organization’s most recent federal tax form, for the 2023-24 fiscal year, shows she got another raise in salary — a $30,000 hike that raised her total compensation to $589,000. That was well more than triple the pay she received when she was hired, just $167,867 in May 2016. She averaged an annual raise of more than $60,000.

But that’s just her pay for eight years. She continued for another year as director, serving nine more months until her departure, and presumably got another raise. The museum declined to disclose this figure, so we won’t know her final salary until the next federal tax form is released.

This tremendous rise in pay came even as the museum’s financial and attendance numbers declined under Polednik. Her last report to the Milwaukee County Board said that since 2019 annual attendance dropped from 250,000 to 200,000, memberships from 20,000 to 16,000, and school tours from 56,000 to 28,000, as Urban Milwaukee reported. Annual earned or program service revenue did increase during her tenure, rising from about $2.1 million to $2.35 million, but the main driver of this was a nearly 59% increase in the admission fee for adults, from $17 in 2016 to $27.

Polednik did oversee a 50% increase in the museum’s endowment, which rose from $41 million to $61.8 million over her nine years as director, though that was helped by the tremendous growth in the stock market over that period. Meanwhile, even as museum program revenue and attendance declined, she doubled the number of top employees earning more than $100,000 a year, from five to 10 positions.

To cut costs, the museum drastically reduced its workforce from about 240 employees in 2019 to 180 in 2024, which brought criticism of her and the museum’s board of directors from the union representing its employees. The staff “have long borne the brunt of the museum’s supposed years-long financial strain,” a July press release by the union stated. “Essential vacant positions have gone unfilled, critical resources have dwindled, and professional development has been curtailed and deprioritized…”

“Meanwhile, union staff and other essential workers are consistently told that merit-based raises are not possible due to budget constraints — a justification contradicted on its face by leadership’s own compensation practices.”

To top it off, Polednik ran a deficit in her last full year of $1.3 million, with expenses of $22.9 million and revenue of $21.6 million for the 2023-24 year. But the actual shortfall in revenue appears to be much larger, because it included $7.3 million in “investment income,” a figure far higher than the museum’s average annual investment earnings of $2.26 million over the previous five years. Where did the extra money come from? The tax form shows the museum sold $5.5 million in securities it owned.

“The $5.5 million reflects portfolio activity across both endowment and non-endowment investment assets,” said Cortney Heimerl, the museum’s director of marketing and communications. “The figure reflects a change in investment strategy and routine portfolio management activity. It did not reduce or pay down a larger deficit.”

But without the sale, the museum would have run a $6.8 million deficit for the year rather than just $1.3 million.

The museum announced in May that Polednik was “resigning” from her job. Given that she was in her late 40s and was not leaving for another job, it raised speculation that she was asked to leave. The union’s statement said the board “seemingly compelled her resignation.”

“Yes, she was let go by the board,” said Fred Vogel, an art collector and philanthropist who once served on the board and has been a supporter of the museum for decades, in a July story by Urban Milwaukee. Vogel suggested Polednik “browbeat” the board members to get her way.

What is Polednik doing now? Two months ago, on LinkedIn, she offered this announcement:

“Thrilled to announce the launch of my philanthropic services consultancy, Atelier MP.”

“Atelier MP specializes in bespoke philanthropic planning services for individuals, families and family foundations looking to define, shape and hone their donor profile and to achieve a distinctive, singular impact in the nonprofit sector.”

The MP stands for Marcelle Polednik, who in 25 years of work in “the arts, culture, and philanthropy sector… raised and stewarded over $200M in philanthropic capital,” her new website notes, “spanning investments from individual donors and family foundations to major national and global foundations and corporations including the Andy Warhol Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Henry Luce Foundation, Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities.”