Turn the Met Gala Into a Fundraiser for The Washington Post

The Post holds governments accountable, both at home and abroad, as my stepdaughter Claire Parker, the Post’s Cairo bureau chief, explained eloquently in January—shortly before she was laid off, along with most of the Post’s foreign correspondents and local correspondents. Holding governments accountable is obviously a societal function of vital importance. But Bezos has said: “This is not a philanthropic endeavor. For me, I really believe, a healthy newspaper that has an independent newsroom should be self-sustaining.”

The Met Gala funds the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, which houses 33,000 objects representing fashionable dress and accessories from the sixteenth century to the present, none of them on permanent public view because aging textiles don’t preserve well when exposed to the light. The Costume Institute doesn’t make the cut for my annual giving list, but to each their own. Bezos hasn’t commented publicly on whether the Costume Institute should be self-sustaining, but if it ceased to be a charity that would deprive Bezos of the opportunity to raise his and Sanchez’s status in the fashion world by giving money to it.

The punch line is that while the Post is nowhere near self-sustaining, and never will be, the Costume Institute is already there. According to a May 1 report by Vanessa Friedman in The New York Times, the Costume Institute has since 2016 been putting Met Gala funds into an endowment that will allow it “to potentially support its own basic operations for the foreseeable future.” The gala raised $166.5 million over the past decade. Operating costs for the Costume Institute are a modest $5 million per year, or $50 million over 10 years, which should mean the endowment has $116 million already. The average annual draw on a museum endowment, the Times reports, is 5 percent, which in this case would throw off $5.8 million per year. The Times’ Friedman says the Costume Institute will need a couple more Met Galas to top off its endowment, but that strikes me as generous. The Met Gala is already unnecessary.