Mr. Lauder, the Whitney Museum’s chairman and biggest benefactor, had also been the biggest roadblock to an ambitious plan to move the Whitney out of its outdated uptown home, which happens to be within walking distance of Mr. Lauder’s apartment. In recent days, he finally relented, and the museum yesterday announced plans to build a dramatic new Renzo Piano–designed edifice in the meatpacking district.

It is yet another sign of the molting of New York: The long-overdue move of a major museum downtown. The humbling of old-media moguls and the return of a start-up culture. The growing up of the creative class, as chronicled in this week’s Observer by Leon Neyfakh in his piece, BroBos in Paradise.

For two years now, the city has been stagnate, brought to a halt by a grinding recession. But that’s over—at least for now, if Wall Street doesn’t crash again and if our state and city can keep the lights on. (For what it’s worth, the real estate world seems sold: On the same front page as the Whitney story was news of plans to build the city’s tallest, and perhaps swankiest, residential skyscraper, financed by Abu Dubai.)

Bring it all on. New York has always been about replacing its old leaders and industries and institutions with things that are vibrant and new. It is, as Mr. Lauder would say, a new city.

On Oct. 28, Ms. Fiori celebrated its publication between the Proenza Schouler and Zac Posen collections on the third floor of Saks, wearing a turquoise shawl. “It is my favorite island on earth,” she said. “And I have been to a lot of them. It’s sexy, it’s romantic and it will never get any bigger than it is.”

Guests included Leonard and Evelyn Lauder. The latter wore a pink Posen dress. “I love the food and the clothes and the hotels and the view and the color,” she said, of Capri.

Designer Vera Wang also made, quite literally, an appearance. In what looked like a single, fluid motion, Ms. Wang swooped behind the glass table where Ms. Fiori sat, posed for a picture or two, retreated toward the elevators and was gone.

They were there to talk about the Breast Cancer Awareness campaign of Estee Lauder Companies, where Mrs. Lauder is the senior corporate vice president and Ms. Hurley is a spokesperson. They both wore pink: Ms. Hurley a ruffled pink blouse with black trousers, and Mrs. Lauder a pink coat over a black dress and a weighty necklace made of silver-colored glass, netted and on a ribbon, by Oscar de la Renta. “A lot of things are on ribbons this year—it’s very hot,” she said later.

Right before the two were escorted outdoors for the segment, a producer approached Ms. Lauder’s publicist: “How does Ms. Lauder like to be called?”

“Mrs. Lauder,” the publicist replied.

“Mrs. Lauder,” who is 73, was born Evelyn Hauser in Vienna, from which she escaped with her parents during World War II. “It was a very dramatic story,” she told The Observer. “The ship on which we were sailing was one of three in a convoy that went the North Atlantic route, but that route had been mined by the Germans, and the first ship hit a mine and exploded, and we had to take in the survivors.”

In New York, Evelyn attended Hunter College High School and Hunter College. During her freshman year at the latter, a friend invited her to a party to meet two young men the friend had met over winter vacation in Florida. The friend wanted “Bob” to be her date, and so Evelyn would have to go with the one named Leonard. His mother Estee sold makeup; he lived on 77th Street; and he was in graduate school at Columbia.

“Leonard came to my house to pick me up on West 86th Street, he met my father and I went to this party,” Mrs. Lauder said. “When I came home, my father was waiting for me, so I thought something happened because he never waited for me. I said, ‘What happened to Mom?’ He said, ‘Nothing happened to Mom. I just wanted to tell you, that is a nice boy.’”

Mr. Lauder departed for the Navy. But he began phoning Evelyn regularly while away and asked her out for dates when he returned home on weekends. “The problem was that if you didn’t have a date by Tuesday, you were a wallflower,” she said. “So I always had a date Friday or Saturday night, so he would be my Sunday afternoon date. One time he taught me how to drive in a parking lot at Jones Beach. He had a Plymouth. I didn’t release the hand brake and I burned out the lining of his brakes!”

They married in 1959, at the Plaza in front of 150 guests. Since then, Ms. Lauder has become a philanthropist of the scale of the late Pat Buckley and Lady Astor, donating money to the Central Park Conservancy and New Yorkers for Parks, and establishing the Leonard and Evelyn Lauder Foundation with her husband. Then, after a breast cancer scare in the ’80s—she was never actually diagnosed—she shifted her efforts, raising $18 million in 1989 to open the first Evelyn H. Lauder Breast Center of Memorial Sloan-Kettering’s Cancer Center; helping to create those Pink Ribbons; and founding the Breast Cancer Research Foundation (BCRF). And earlier this month, the Lauders’ foundation gave a gift of $50 million to open the new Evelyn H. Lauder Breast Center, three times larger than the first.

AFTER THEIR  Early Show appearance, the ladies got into their red Lexus and headed to Fox’s Good Day New York, where Ms. Lauder ran into makeup artist Bobbi Brown, CEO of Bobbi Brown cosmetics, which the Lauder company bought in 1995.

“Bobbi! What are you doing here?” said Ms. Lauder, embracing her, and then turning to The Observer. “Bobbi is part of our family.”

Estee Lauder started out selling four products: all-purpose cream, creme pack, cleansing oil and skin lotion. But since Mr. Lauder joined his mother’s business, in 1958, it has grown to include the beauty brands Aramis, Bumble & Bumble, Clinique, La Mer, MAC, Origins, Tom Ford Beauty and Sean John fragrances. After Evelyn married Leonard and left her job as a schoolteacher in Harlem, she, too, joined her mother-in-law.

“She was very chic, very well dressed and had a beautiful home,” Mrs. Lauder recalled of her first meeting with Estee. “At their house on 77th Street, she had an all-white living room, from the carpeting to the silk on the couches to the draperies to the walls. I had never in my life seen an all-white living room!”

Mrs. Lauder added: “She was very welcoming. I would have never [worked for her] if she wasn’t. She said, ‘Someday this will all be yours. I’d really love you to do this with me.’”

The Lauder family members hold the majority of the stock at the public company. Mrs. Lauder’s son William is the executive chairman (son Gary is a venture capitalist based in Silicon Valley); her nieces Aerin and Jane work there; and the elder Mr. Lauder is chairman emeritus. Mrs. Lauder, meanwhile, keeps an office and two assistants, and meets weekly with the fragrance development heads. She would not disclose her salary: “I don’t even know what it is, if you really want to know the truth.”

At Fox’s studios, where Ms. Hurley changed into a different pink blouse, the ladies ran into Sopranos actor Vincent Pastore. “E. Hurley. We were in Mickey Blue Eyes together. Hello!” Ms. Hurley said to Mr. Pastore, jutting out her hand. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m doing world hunger,” he replied.

“We’re here for breast cancer!” Ms. Hurley said.

“Have you met Los Lonely Boys?” Mr. Pastore said, ushering over the Hispanic rock band from Texas. 

AFTER ANOTHER CREAM couch, another pink shirt from Ms. Hurley and another perky host—at LXTV—the ladies arrived at the Waldorf Astoria’s Presidential Suite. It was noon. “The fixtures in that bathroom—it’s from the ’30s!” Mrs. Lauder told Ms. Hurley and her bodyguard as she appeared from the rest room. In a vast, empty dining hall nearby, they met up with eight co-chairs (Anne Eisenhower, Arlene Taub, and Gail Hilson among them) of the upcoming BCRF luncheon to do a formal tasting and finalize the menu. Tickets are $1,600 each; $1.8 million has already been raised.

Rice-crusted halibut with long beans, shitake mushrooms, coconut sticky rice and ginger passion-fruit sauce appeared. “I think it’s a little white-looking. Can we do something about that?” Mrs. Lauder asked. The chef promptly resolved the problem with a julienne of peppers atop the coconut rice.

Next came wild king salmon and balsamic vinegar-glazed chicken. Among the topics of discussion as the ladies nibbled: Milking pregnant cows gives 11-year-old girls breast cancer; Bergdorf Goodman is empty, but the shoe department isn’t because, according to Ms. Lauder, “You can wear last year’s suit with this year’s shoes”; and, according to Ms. Taub, birth-control pills are responsible for certain strains of cancer and “are the worst thing that has ever happened to women.” Ms. Hilson disagreed: “But they gave women sexual freedom.” To which Ms. Taub retorted: “And what’s so good about that?”

Mrs. Lauder changed the subject to recent advances in reconstructive surgeries. “So are you saying that people with mastectomies can keep their own nipples now?” asked Ms. Hurley.

For dessert, they tried low-fat strawberry parfait, pistachio dacquoise, warm apple-strudel crepes and a Pavlova, which Ms. Lauder found “divine,” but which was overruled by a popular vote for the strudel.

“Do you text, Evelyn?” Ms. Hurley was now asking Mrs. Lauder.

“No. I like handwriting and I like voices,” she replied. 

“What about a BlackBerry?” one of the others asked.

“My thumbs are too fat,” the doyenne said.

Unlike Mrs. Lauder, the young socialites of today seem more concerned about making their reality TV debut than creating a philanthropic legacy. Does she think they understand the responsibility that comes with their social standing?

“I think they do,” Mrs. Lauder said. “You think of Allison Roosevelt and Tory Burch and my nieces Aerin and Jane and my son William and certainly my California son Gary are extremely philanthropic with a great deal of organizations like the Aspen Institute, the Fresh Air Fund and RDC. It is important for us to be able to network with younger people because we can’t live forever.”

After a break, The Observer met the ladies at Bloomingdale’s at 5 p.m., where they would light the department store’s facade pink. Ms. Hurley managed to bring along two brand-new pink outfits, and Mrs. Lauder, having had a chance to change, was now wearing an all-pink dress herself, and heels. Her hair had been redone and her makeup reapplied, and she was smiling her way through the room.

Ms. Hurley said this was entirely in character and recalled when the Lauders attended her wedding to Indian textile heir Arun Nayar in Jodhpur, India, in 2007. 

“They were the last people standing. It was 5 in the morning, they were in turbans and jewelry and they were up dancing to hip-hop!” Ms. Hurley said. “Evelyn has more energy than any teenager I’ve ever met. She just hits the ground and runs.”

ialeksander@observer.com

"Out of respect and in honor of Estée Lauder, the immediate family, unfortunately, is not able to be in attendance this evening, but Evelyn Lauder and the entire Lauder family sends their sincerest thanks," began actress Elizabeth Hurley, the mistress of ceremonies, before steering things in a cheerier direction. "You might like to know that this is the hottest party in town tonight. We've been sold out for a month!"

From there the evening, which raised $5.4 million, bifurcated into part celebration, part memorial. "I wouldn't miss the Hot Pink Party for anything!" Mayor Bloomberg told the audience, and then added, "Our prayers are with Evelyn, her family and Estée Lauder."

We caught Glamour editor Cindy Lieve on her way out, as she was heading to the Costume Institute Gala uptown. She took a moment to reflect on Estée Lauder's life. "Today the beauty industry is full of 'personalities,' and she started that. There was never a sense before her that beauty companies could be spearheaded by people who were people. She began that, and now every beauty company has a person-a face, a celebrity-but she was the first. She was a real toughie, too-and if you're a woman in business, you gotta be!"

Clad in a black pantsuit, playwright Wendy Wasserstein was all business. "I think it's more what Estée Lauder meant to women in terms of being an entrepreneur. I think she means a lot to New Yorkers as well. She was a girl from New York who did good, was right up there with Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubenstein, and she was ours! And not only that, she makes incredible skin cream!"

After dinner, Ms. Hurley introduced Elton John ("one of the greatest men in the universe"). He took to the stage in pinstriped pants and a hot pink silk ascot, and banged out hits like "Tiny Dancer," "Benny and the Jets" and "Rocket Man." The audience collectively waved the hot pink plastic "lite cubes" in time to the music.

Then Ms. Hurley unhooked herself from her boyfriend, Arun Nayar, and scampered over to The Transom in an electric pink gown, made especially for the party by Donatella Versace. Her arms and hands glittered with jewelry from Chopard, for whom Elton John designs a collection of watches.

"Estée Lauder herself was obviously an amazing woman, and it's a big shock to the whole company that she's not with us anymore, even if she hadn't been out on the social circle for some time," said Ms. Hurley. She is the former "face" of the cosmetics company, having taken a secondary role to model Carolyn Murphy, who replaced her in 2001. She remains involved in the cancer foundation and often does public appearances with Evelyn Lauder.

"What she really represented to me was an amazingly strong woman who did astoundingly well in business when most women were still in their aprons and did the dishes," said Ms. Hurley. Lauder began her beauty dynasty in Queens, where she went by her given name, Esther Mentzer, and cooked up face creams in her kitchen. "She's an astonishing story today in that there are very few people like her, let alone women like her-she just was way ahead of her time. She was apparently one of the best salespeople in the universe-as, indeed, is her son Leonard. He's irresistible!" she giggled.

Also irresistible is Ms. Hurley's own son, Damien Charles. "He's 2 years, 2 weeks, 3-foot," she said proudly. "He can speak, he can have tantrums-he's astonishing. He's at the 'Mommy, don't goooo!' stage every time I have to leave the room. It's horrible! I'm told the second he hears the door close, it stops, but I fall for it at least 20 times saying, 'O.K., then, one more kiss!' It's sad, but it's fabulous."

Words, indeed, that perfectly captured the mood of the night.

-Noelle Hancock

Waiting for the Donald

Donald Trump and his hair were late to his book signing, but his fans didn't seem to care.

"Donald! Donald!" they chanted as he strode into the Borders near Wall Street. He struck poses in the doorway before riding the escalator to the second floor, waving like Miss America. The line of people waiting to meet him spanned two stories, and inched along slowly. There were all types, each with their own reasons for loving the Donald.

"We're here because he's here," said Fran Foley, a fiftysomething woman from Long Island who was waiting on the third floor with her friend Joanne Martell. They were holding copies of How to Get Rich, a book packed with career advice such as "Play Golf" and "Get a Great Assistant."

"I like the fact that he was down in the dumps, financially in trouble, and he pulled himself back from the brink. You have to admire a man with that kind of stamina," said Ms. Martell. "And I want a chance to look at that baby face, and see if it really is as baby as it comes across, and check out his hair! You know, he was on Larry King, and Larry actually touched it and pulled it and everything, you know, to say that it was real. But it is weird. It looks like underneath the top layers there's something else going on on that scalp of his, and he tries to cover it over."

Bill Vergakis, a burly man with a goatee, muscle T-shirt and leather fanny pack, had come from Hoboken.

"I've seen Donald Trump plenty of times before, 'cause I'm an actor, an extra. And I've been an extra in a movie where he had a cameo," said Mr. Vergakis. "He's a nice guy. I mean, I've talked to him before. You wouldn't expect it from somebody who's, like, a millionaire. So many of them are snotty, they don't want to be bothered. He's like a real down-to-earth type of guy." Mr. Vergakis suddenly looked wistful. "Who knows, maybe next year, by this time, I'll be here signing books," he said.

"I'm in real estate myself," added Ray Wein, an owner and operator of "historical properties" in Pennsylvania. "I left my business to come up and meet him today. He makes decisions, and moves forward and doesn't second-guess himself, and I'm trying to be more like that in my business."

Three women from Texas had been waiting about an hour.

"He talks about his hair in the book," said Anne Shrader, with a slight drawl. "That's what I respect about him, 'cause I don't like his hair, but it doesn't matter to him. It's like Emerson would say, he's not concerned about the good opinion of others."

"He's a different thinker. And we needed some good news! Business had a black eye, especially in Houston, cause of Enron, and Dynegy," said Linda Mikeska. "Plus, I'm of Czech descent, and when he married Ivana and all, that's what really got me pumped up!"

Then there was Mervin Abdool, a slight fellow in a neat blue dress shirt.

"I'm here because I collect signed books," he said, underwhelmed. "I'm a really big Stephen King fan."

-Sheelah Kolhatkar

Black and White Forever

Truman Capote's Black and White ball in 1966 is often called "the party of the century" but how much fun could it really have been? The whole thing cost a measly $16,000. Norman Mailer tried to take it outside with McGeorge Bundy but had to settle with trading insults with Lillian Hellman. Lauren Bacall cut the rug with Jerome Robbins. The dance floor cleared. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. tried to cut in to no avail.

What else happened? The creepy, two-faced host skipped around asking everyone "aren't we having a wonderful time?"-not a good sign. Frank Sinatra left early and hit a bar. Nevertheless, the clearly overrated party lives on.

On April 22, 2004, over 700 young literature enthusiasts-the Young Lions of the New York Public Library-put on black tie, white dresses and masks in homage to Capote's silly snobfest. At 9:30 they began to file into the library's Astor Room for disco hits and heavy drinking. Actor Chris Noth stood by the bar talking literature.

"It gave you a sense of a time and war that in some ways was politically reminiscent of what's happening today," he said of William Prochnau's Once Upon a Distant War, before adding that the war in Iraq is "deplorable, a disaster and a big political scam."

He was asked for the worst writing from the past century.

"What the fuck was that book, oh wait a minute, it was a pseudo-spiritual book?"

Celestine Prophecy?

"Yes! I read a page of that and threw it in the fireplace. But I love Ms. Bushnell's work."

"I love Chris Noth's work," said Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell, throwing her arms around HBO's "Mr. Big."

She named Tolstoy as the writer who filled her with a sense of awe.

"What a snooty reply," Mr. Noth said.

"No, if you want to know anything about relationships, read Anna Karenina."

What writers have made them weep?

"Yeats," he said, before slurring the following line: "Take down this book and softly read how one man loved the … something."

"This is what makes me cry: Chris Noth reading poetry," Ms. Bushnell said.

Later, Mr. Noth was talking about acid. "It's a better drug than any other drug," he said. "I believe that it has spiritual properties. I think the drugs today, they're fucking violent and awful and have no redeeming spiritual values. And we're living in a cultural boneyard. I suggest that you find a loved one and take half a tab."

"Yes!" Ms. Bushnell said.

"Don't do cocaine, that's a terrible drug," he continued. "But you can do some peyote too." But he lit up at the mention of mushrooms and said to "call my agent" if any could ever be made available.

Techno-celebrity Moby was sitting nearby and fondly recalled an LSD trip from his college days. "I'll never look at marble the same way," Moby said. "The veins in marble, it's frozen motion but when you're on acid it's unfrozen. Suddenly you see fluidity."

He liked the idea of a benefit party for the New York Public Library with controlled substances. After all, theme nights in recent years have included "the Candy Colored 60's", "Alice in Wonderland" and "The Beat Generation: A Literary Happening."

"If this party went until 7 in the morning and everyone took ecstasy, it would be the party sublime," Moby said. "It's funny because I smoked pot a couple weeks ago, and I don't smoke a lot of pot, but pot in the last 20 years has become so strong that it's essentially kind of like smoking acid."

Moby looked around and agreed that no one there would remember the party 40 years from now. "Everyone should go home and have wonderful love and drug-fueled sex," he said.

-George Gurley

Mr. Norton has served on the board of the Museum of Modern Art since June 1999, and his return to the Whitney Museum of American Art casts him in the unprecedented role of serving on both boards at once. Last year, Mr. Norton became the chairman of the board of P.S. 1, MoMA's hipper Queens affiliate, which he joined in 1999. He also serves on the executive committee of the Guggenheim Museum's International Directors' Council, that museum's primary acquisition committee, and on the board of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

But Mr. Norton's return to the Whitney involves some complex social acrobatics. It also places him at the heart of any overlap in the two institutions' missions. In recent years, the Whitney, founded as a showcase for American art, has featured more international art, putting it in more direct competition with MoMA. Mr. Norton now serves on committees at both museums. What happens if both are bidding on the same acquisitions at the same galleries, or vying to get the same exhibitions?

In the social order of generations past, it would have been unheard of to serve on the Whitney and MoMA boards at once. For one thing, the MoMA board has always been considered far more prestigious, far more difficult to join, and its annual dues are said to be higher-not including contributions to its $800 million capital campaign. The Whitney, meanwhile, has often been considered more of a consolation prize, playing the role of willful, mercurial teenager to MoMA's more polished grown-up-arguably more nimble and inventive, but also more cash-strapped.

But if anyone can get away with two-timing elite museums, it's Peter Norton, a former computer programmer from California who is known in the art world as an unpredictable, outspoken personality. Mr. Norton made a fortune with his Norton Utilities in the 90's, amassed one of the world's largest collections of contemporary art-it now contains 2,400 works-and has established himself as one of the most important arts philanthropists in New York.

"I'm really excited that he's involved again at that level at the Whitney," said Kris Kuramitsu, a curator of Mr. Norton's private collection and director of arts programming for the Peter Norton Family Foundation. "He's incredibly enthusiastic about the arts in New York. It's a pretty great testament to his interest and his commitment."

Ms. Kuramitsu said that Mr. Norton planned to remain on the MoMA and P.S. 1 boards even now that he was back at the Whitney. She declined to elaborate on the circumstances surrounding Mr. Norton's return to the Whitney, and said Mr. Norton was traveling on the Amazon River and couldn't be reached for comment.

Although museums are nonprofit institutions whose boards-and tax returns-are public information, they tend to shroud their boards in secrecy. Yet even by New York museum standards, the Whitney seems to be going far out of its way to downplay Mr. Norton's return to the board.

After nearly a month of not returning calls and e-mails regarding Mr. Norton, on March 8 the Whitney's acting director of communications, Stephen Soba, said only that Mr. Norton had rejoined the board "recently." (Mr. Norton appears on a Whitney board list dated December 2003 and posted on the Whitney Web site.)

Mr. Soba declined to comment further. "I don't have time at the moment to go into your questions."

Nor were the Whitney's new director, Adam Weinberg, or the chairman of the museum's board of trustees, Leonard Lauder, interested in discussing Mr. Norton's return. "Mr. Lauder is away and not available for comment. Adam is not able to take the time, and neither am I," Mr. Soba said.

The Whitney will certainly be glad of Mr. Norton's largesse, having lost some board members in the turn-of-the-century financial scandals: L. Dennis Kozlowski, who joined the board in 2001 when he was still chief executive of Tyco International, and left in 2002 after he was indicted on charges including tax evasion; and Jean-Marie Messier, who joined the board in 2001, when he was the chief executive of Vivendi Universal, and left in 2003 after the company tanked.

Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for MoMA, Ruth Kaplan, said the museum had no comment on sharing Mr. Norton with the Whitney.

Mr. Norton has a somewhat stormy history on museum boards. He joined the Whitney board in April 1994 under then-director David Ross. Mr. Norton had already been affiliated with the Whitney and underwrote a significant part of its 1994 Black Male show, curated by Thelma Golden. In November 1994, he stepped down from the board of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, after four years as a trustee, reportedly to protest the museum's decision not to take the Black Male exhibit.

Indeed, when Mr. Norton left the Whitney board in 1998, under Maxwell Anderson's directorship, it was widely perceived as a move protesting the resignation that year of Ms. Golden and another up-and-coming curator, Elizabeth Sussman, after Mr. Anderson narrowed their mandates. Yet others familiar with the situation said that Mr. Norton had stepped down from the Whitney board before Ms. Golden and Ms. Sussman resigned-and likely did so in order to join the MoMA board.

Some museum watchers speculated that Mr. Norton's return to the Whitney might win him more attention at MoMA, whose board has traditionally had baroque internal hierarchies. In 2000, Mr. Norton is said to have asked another MoMA board member, Douglas Cramer, whether he could audit the museum's powerful painting and sculpture committee meetings. He is said to have framed Mr. Cramer's response-a no-and hung it on his wall, as if it were a work of art. "It was something he hung on the wall in his apartment. I don't know if it's still there or not," Ms. Kuramitsu, the Norton collection curator, said. "He's got a pretty good sense of humor about things."

Another Whitney insider said that trustees generally don't meddle with curatorial appointments, but that Mr. Norton's return could be seen as part of Mr. Weinberg's mission to bring some of the Whitney's estranged family back into the fold. Whitney sources said that Mr. Weinberg had extended an olive branch to Flora Miller Biddle, a member of the museum's founding family and honorary trustee, who had scaled back her involvement during Mr. Anderson's tenure.

The Whitney board has traditionally been dominated by Mr. Lauder, its powerful chairman. The arrival of Mr. Norton means another strong voice to the board-one who's able to put his money where his mouth is, and who could potentially become the strongest counterweight to Mr. Lauder. Mr. Norton is devoted to contemporary art; Mr. Lauder's interests lie more in Modernism.

Through his Norton Family Foundation, meanwhile, Mr. Norton has been supporting arts groups across the city. In 2002, the last year for which the Norton Family Foundation's tax returns were available, of the nearly $3 million in overall gifts, the foundation gave $85,000 to the Museum of Modern Art. It also gave $100,000 to P.S. 1. The foundation also gave about $140,000 to the Studio Museum in Harlem, where Mr. Norton used to serve on the board, and where his ex-wife, Eileen Norton, is still a board member.

Yet the man who has become one of New York's most important arts philanthropists has always had a somewhat fraught rapport with the art world's power structure. "I have spent a lot of my life standing just outside a circle," Mr. Norton said in a 1995 New Yorker profile, referring in that case to his marriage to Ms. Norton, who is African-American. "My most common posture in life is to be just outside two related but opposing circles." He has now officially secured his place as the consummate outsider's insider.

Now, at last, Eastern Europeans would be free to watch the Pocasicko, a news segment featuring the naked weather girl, who puts on or strips off clothing according to the day's forecast.

This was Mr. Lauder's chance: his moment to step out of the shadow of his successful family, to come back from the debacle that was the 1989 New York Mayoral race and establish his own identity.

How it all went wrong was merely hinted at on June 12, when The New York Times reported that Mary Jo White, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District, was investigating Mr. Lauder's television holding company, Central European Media Enterprises (CME), over allegations that the company had bribed state officials in Ukraine. The story was picked up by the Associated Press, the International Herald Tribune and several news outlets in Central Europe, without elaboration. But the message came across loud and clear: Mr. Lauder's company could be in a mess of trouble.

To people familiar with the heir to the Estée Lauder cosmetics fortune (Clinique, Aramis, Aveda, Origins and the Tommy Hilfiger and Donna Karan scents) and chairman of the Museum of Modern Art, the news came as a shock; that Mr. Lauder even had a television company in Ukraine was little known.

It may have been most shocking of all to Mr. Lauder himself. Officials at CME said they knew nothing about a federal investigation until they read about it in The Times . The company's chief executive, Fred Klinkhammer, claims that neither he nor any of his employees or predecessors have been contacted by Ms. White's office. As for the subpoenas and the empaneling of a grand jury, as reported in The Times , Mr. Klinkhammer said that he was never notified. (He added that he was never contacted by The Times , either.) The attorney for Mr. Lauder and CME said he has not been informed of an investigation, either. Ms. White's office refused to comment.

The Times reporter, Raymond Bonner, stood by his story. But, he added, "if this is the case, and the documents support the allegations, maybe the story is: Why is the U.S. Attorney not issuing more subpoenas?"

If an investigation is underway, it is certainly not the first time that Mr. Lauder's activities in Central Europe have caused legal controversy. Nor is it the first time that the controversy has been shrouded in ambiguity. Since its inception in 1995, CME, its partners and its associates have been entangled in a dark Gordian knot of court proceedings from New York to London to Kiev, fighting off lawsuits, bringing suits and being accused of ties to corrupt government officials and organized crime.

A federal investigation would not even represent CME's most pressing legal matter: The company has a $500 million lawsuit against the Czech government awaiting judgment in London and, in a related case, is owed $27 million by a former partner known in his native land as the Czech Ted Turner.

Ironically, if CME is under U.S. investigation, it may be for claims very similar to those it brought against the defendants in those two suits.

But even if all of CME's legal troubles were miraculously to go away, it may be too late for the company. CME's stock, once on the Nasdaq, now only trades over the counter, at about $2 per share. Mr. Lauder boasted that the company would be worth billions; it now has a market capitalization of $6.6 million. Standard & Poor's no longer covers CME's bonds, because at the end of last year the company defaulted on an $8.5 million bond payment (it subsequently paid it). And to cover debts, Mr. Lauder has had to sell his television stations in Hungary and Poland, the latter after only 14 months of operation.

Mr. Lauder has tens of millions of Estée Lauder money, and more than $100 million from banks, sunk into the ailing company. And the lone prospective white knight on the horizon–plus the $615 million it had promised to bring with a buyout–pulled out some time ago, for fear of CME's litigious proclivities.

Marveling at the glacial pace at which the company's grievances are being resolved, CME's officers can do little more than shake their heads in frustration. "The Czech Republic is a dangerous place to do business," was Mr. Klinkhammer's bemused and final statement on that country.

Mr. Lauder, 57, declined to be interviewed.

The story of CME begins in Hungary, where it all started for the Lauder family. Mr. Lauder's mother, Estée Lauder, a Hungarian Jewish immigrant, had begun selling homemade hand creams at a pharmacy in Queens after World War II and, over the course of several decades, parlayed that into a beauty-products empire. Mr. Lauder's older brother, Leonard, had assumed the helm of the company when their father, Joseph, died in 1983. Leonard Lauder took it public, making himself and his brother billionaires four times over.

Ronald, however, was not as good with money as he was at acquiring things. By 1991, he'd accumulated a world-class collection of modern European art–he'd made his first purchase at 13, an Egon Schiele, with $10,000 in bar mitzvah money. He'd also conducted a not-very-serious run for Mayor of New York, losing the Republican nomination to Rudolph Giuliani in 1989. ("The big news today is not what Ronald Lauder said at City Hall, but that Ronald Lauder actually found City Hall," Mr. Giuliani's campaign was quoted as saying during the race.)

He'd also gotten himself embroiled in a scandal involving the importation, for an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, of Egon Schiele works that may or may not have been stolen from Holocaust victims. All in all, Mr. Lauder was ripe for a win.

That's what he was aiming for when he plunged into business in the former Eastern bloc. He had the perfect pedigree: A generous donor, along with the rest of his family, to Ronald Reagan's campaigns, he'd been rewarded in 1983 with a stint in the Pentagon as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Europe and the Soviet Union. From 1986 to 1987, he served as U.S. Ambassador to Austria (where he famously drew criticism for tooling around with a pack of bodyguards paid for by his protective mother).

The lifelong New Yorker developed a European persona, enhanced by his art connections and that Lauder international patois.

His timing was right: Communism was awkwardly birthing free-market capitalism, regulations were negligible and assets were cheap. With an illustrious but eclectic assortment of partners that included Chicago real-estate magnate Sam Zell, Canadian real-estate legend Albert Reichmann, and supermarket tycoon and Indiana Pacers owner Melvin Simon, Mr. Lauder bought up tracts of real estate and restaurants, parts of banks and brokerage houses in Budapest, and put up a $400 million office complex on the former site of Checkpoint Charlie in East Berlin.

Soon the region's nascent television industry caught his fancy. Mr. Lauder sensed, rightly, that cities like Prague and Budapest were on their way to emulating the free-wheeling investment atmosphere of Moscow–and that their citizens, too, loved American popular culture. All they needed was their own version of Vladimir Gusinsky, the Russian mogul behind MediaMOST.

And that's what Mr. Lauder set out to be. He went from country to country lining up local business partners, whom he needed to secure the state-controlled broadcasting licenses. Like Mr. Gusinsky, he did not know what sort of trouble some of his partners would soon be causing him.

In 1994, CME was formed with Mr. Lauder as non-executive chairman (he holds a good deal of the stock and a majority of the voting power). A year later, TV Nova was up and running in the Czech Republic. By 1996, Mr. Lauder was broadcasting local news, American movies and shows like Melrose Place and The X-Files in Germany, Slovakia, Poland, Slovenia, Hungary, Romania and Ukraine.

Jan Culik, a professor of Central and Eastern European media studies at the University of Glasgow, who has been watching CME since its arrival on the scene, said that Mr. Lauder's and CME's business practices were simple and direct. "They basically came in and said, 'We are from the West–we can do what we want.' These governments are corrupt; the infrastructures are weak."

Professor Culik said that, in the Czech Republic at least, CME and its local face–a well-known Prague entrepreneur named Vladimir Zelezny–went back on their promise to provide content heavy on cultural programming. No sooner did they start the station than they put on sensational news programs, Professor Culik said, including the one with the stripping meteorologist, and tabloid talk shows with names like Taboo –a lot of "soft porn," as Professor Culik put it.

But apparently, that's just what the Czech people wanted. At its height, TV Nova held 70 percent of the Czech Republic's viewing audience on any given night, and the Ukrainian station still brings in 45 percent, according to Mr. Klinkhammer. Mr. Lauder looked like a genius.

Then, in 1996, he was sued by a former partner in Hungary, American businessman Seymour Holtzman, for wrongful termination of their joint venture. Mr. Holtzman alleged that Mr. Lauder had basically forced him out of their partnership in the Central European Development Corporation, the company he'd formed in Hungary in 1989. "He is mean-spirited …. He thinks he's above everyone else," Mr. Holtzman told the Wall Street Journal in 1991. The matter was settled in court for an undisclosed sum. (Mr. Holzman did not return calls from The Observer .)

But the Holzman case was nothing compared with what was to come. In 1997, Perekhid Media, a Western-owned rival in Ukraine, brought a suit against Mr. Lauder and CME in New York, claiming that CME had bribed Ukrainian officials, essentially to snatch from Perekhid a license which the company had obtained in 1993. Mr. Lauder had subsequently started a station there using that license, called Studio 1+1.

Perekhid wanted $750 million in damages. The case was dismissed, refiled a year later in London and dismissed again.

"The first case was thrown out because it was a completely cynical matter to be brought up in New York," said Mr. Klinkhammer, the CME chief, speaking from Ukraine. "And then the second case was thrown out of England because it was a completely cynical matter to be brought up there."

Mr. Klinkhammer called Mr. Lauder's acquisition of the Studio 1+1 license "completely legitimate." He said that if the U.S. Attorney's office is indeed investigating CME, he assumes it was the principals of the now-defunct Perekhid–David Stewart, a Scotsman, and Andy Bain, an American–who made the precipitating complaint. Other sources close to the situation harbor similar suspicions.

Mr. Bain now runs, with Mr. Stewart, an investment firm called Atlantic Group, which operates in republics in the eastern portion of the former Soviet Union, including Ukraine.

The Observer was able to obtain only the complaint portion of the 1997 Perekhid case. The remainder of the court papers are sealed, at CME's request. Mr. Lauder and CME's attorney, John Kiernan of Debevoise & Plimpton, said the seal was requested because Perekhid was using sensitive business documents to conduct a "worldwide smear campaign" against Mr. Lauder and his company. Because of a confidentiality agreement, Messrs. Bain and Stewart could not comment.

The Perekhid case ended favorably for CME, at least for the moment. But Mr. Lauder's biggest headache was still to come.

CME's former partner in the Czech Republic, Vladimir Zelezny, has been called the Czech Ted Turner. But, Mr. Zelezny has an even more flamboyant past than the American media mogul. Mr. Zelezny has been arrested for allegedly smuggling art (he was never charged). He is also infamous for his weekly television talk show broadcast from Prague, Call the Director , on which he openly attacks or sucks up to chosen public figures–sort of a more scandalous O'Reilly Factor . A onetime screenwriter and news producer, Mr. Zelezny was among a group of Czech intellectuals who applied to the state in 1993 for the first privately held broadcasting license.

A radical television journalist in his youth–he once defied official policy to broadcast footage of the 1968 Soviet invasion of Prague–Mr. Zelezny was, by the early 1990's, as eager a capitalist as Mr. Lauder. The two met in 1993 and formed their partnership.

Mr. Zelezny helped to make TV Nova the most-watched television station in the Czech Republic and a $15-million-a-year business. But in April 1999, CME expelled Mr. Zelezny from the fold and filed suit against him, claiming he'd formed a television company of his own, CETV, which, in Mr. Klinkhammer's words, "siphoned off" millions of dollars from CME.

"He was fired . For theft ," said Mr. Klinkhammer.

Mr. Zelezny did not return repeated calls for comment by deadline.

In August 1999, Mr. Zelezny retaliated, buying out Mr. Lauder's other partners and wresting control of TV Nova's broadcasting license. Mr . Zelezny used it to start a second station. Later that month, Mr. Lauder initiated proceedings against the Czech Republic, claiming that it had colluded with Mr. Zelezny to take away his station and demanding $500 million from the Czech government to compensate CME for its drop in market capitalization–precipitated, the firm claimed, by the license transfer to Mr. Zelezny.

In May, arbitration ended in London. Mr. Klinkhammer said that he expects a judgment soon. Mr. Kiernan, CME's lawyer, is not as sanguine. "Any prediction I would make would be wrong," he said, the frustration palpable in his voice.

Mr. Kiernan did get some satisfaction in February, however, when a London court ordered Mr. Zelezny to pay CME $27 million in damages. So far he hasn't paid a cent, and interest is accruing at the rate of $3,000 a day, according to Mr. Kiernan.

At this point, however, the money is only part of the enmity between Mr. Zelezny and CME.

"He wanted to become the czar of the Czech Republic," Mr. Klinkhammer told the Prague Tribune in 1999. "I think his plan was to control TV Nova and use it as a cash machine, and control Prima TV [Zelezny's station], using it as a propaganda ministry to drive himself into the No. 1 office in the country. I think this should be the Czech people's worst nightmare."

Mr. Lauder's case against the Czech government, and even more so the one against Mr. Zelezny, have been the source of headlines in Central Europe and London for two years. Professor Culik said that during that time, Mr. Zelezny–who wields tremendous power in his native country–has been waging a propaganda war against CME and Mr. Lauder on his weekly television program.

"The Czech courts are very reluctant to act against him," Professor Culik said.

But he added that Mr. Zelezny is just another example of an ongoing problem for CME. He pointed to the "convoluted arrangements between local entrepreneurs and CME.

"CME was absolutely happy about Zelezny until he started rocking the boat," Professor Culik continued. "In the first five years of their partnership, CME didn't mind associating themselves with practices which, in the United States, would have been simply unacceptable." And, he added, "They stupidly allowed Zelezny to buy out the other partners in the license to gain majority control of TV Nova."

Mr. Klinkhammer disagreed with Professor Culik's analysis. He said that, with the exception of Mr. Zelezny, "I think we've been pretty fortunate in finding good business partners."

But even if Mr. Zelezny pays, the most damaging fallout from the TV Nova debacle has already occurred. For a company operating in uncertainty like CME, perhaps the best route–certainly the one that Mr. Lauder, who borrowed heavily from the Estée Lauder company (an estimated $68 million) and J.P. Morgan (an estimated $125 million) to launch CME, seemed to have in mind–was to become big and sell. (Leonard Lauder, perhaps sensing trouble, made the Estée Lauder loan formal, using lawyers on each side. "The idea was to make it an arm's-length borrowing," said Ira Wender, Estée Lauder's broker at the time.)

And sell was precisely what Mr. Lauder thought he could do when the Swedish Broadcasting System–impressed with CME's rapid growth–started knocking on the door in early 1999.

Had SBS bought CME, Mr. Lauder would have proven himself a real businessman. He would no longer have been the dilettante son of Estée Lauder, the less accomplished younger brother of Leonard Lauder. But in September 1999, in the midst of the Zelezny mess, SBS suddenly pulled out. With it went a potential $615 million windfall.

Meanwhile, The New York Times ' June 12 story reported that investigators are reviewing thousands of documents surrounding CME's acquisition in 1996 of a Ukrainian broadcasting license–after a moratorium on the granting of new licenses had been declared. They're also reportedly looking into a payment of $1.4 million that CME made to a suspicious company which, according to documents obtained by The Times , was "indirectly owned by many high Ukrainian officials."

"That's completely false," Mr. Klink-hammer said. "To imply that [the money] was paid to any individuals is just utter nonsense."

The Times also reported that certain business associates and part-owners in Studio 1+1–including one official in the scandal-ridden administration of Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma–are being investigated or have been investigated by European state agencies or the F.B.I. for offenses ranging from corruption and gold smuggling to ties with the Russian Mafia.

Mr. Klinkhammer denied any knowledge of the investigations of his Ukrainian colleagues.

But other sources think differently.

"[CME] knew exactly whom they were getting into bed with," said one former associate. "They've made a lot of enemies all over Eastern Europe, and all of them keep in touch."

An enlightened, good-neighbor state of family affairs hardly seems possible in an age long ago sacrificed to the triumph of the individual and the accommodation of the ego. Money no longer is the means to culture, it is culture. Self-actualization, fetishized child-rearing rituals, isolationism and serial divorce have replaced philanthropy as the leading form of expression for the moneyed classes.

The upper classes used to meet to roll bandages. Now they meet to roll in yoga classes, and blame the press for the chronic harsh treatment they say has hastened their retreat from public life. But how can you resist when, as witnessed the other day at that great Upper East Side anthropological center, Zitomer's Pharmacy, you find the Zoloft father, the Prada mother and their 10-year-old son barking orders for sundries at the checkout counter while yelling down the mouthpieces of their cell phones?

Once upon a time, a great effort was made by privileged families to insure their demeanor and unity as upstanding citizens. To that end, in the extreme, Consuelo Vanderbilt's mother insisted that a metal rod be placed at the back of her daughter's corset so she would sit properly. Consuelo Vanderbilt never forgot the pain of the metal rod jabbing her as her carriage coursed a rough patch on the road to Blenheim Palace in 1894, home of the Duke of Marlborough whom she married in 1895.

The Vanderbilts are the subject of two new books by first cousins Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney Conner and Flora Miller Biddle, granddaughters of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, the founder of the Whitney Museum. Ms. Conner, a talented painter, has written and illustrated Those Early Years , published by Turtle Point Press. Ms. Biddle's memoir, The Whitney Women and the Museum They Made , will be published next month by Arcade Publishing. Different as these books are in genre, they are united by their depiction of a world of American aristocracy that seems like ancient history compared to the brusque standards of today's meritocracy.

Ms. Conner, or Gerta, as she is known to friends, has painted landscapes since she was 15. An exhibition of her work took place at the New York Studio School this past spring. About five years ago, Ms. Conner felt called to paint images from her early life. A friend who saw this initial work encouraged the artist to paint her memoir, examining her solitary childhood, her adolescence and early adulthood, and one especially nightmarish episode. About 40 years ago, Ms. Conner's first husband kidnapped her young children, a son and a daughter, and took them to Spain where, because of Napoleonic laws, he was able to keep them from seeing their mother until the oldest child escaped to the United States at the age of 16.

Those Early Years is told in few words, and two dozen lyrical illustrations, bright and colorful. On the other hand, The Whitney Women and the Museum They Made narrative might remind some readers of Katharine Graham's memoir, Personal History . Ms. Graham tells about her inherited role in the newspaper business; Ms. Biddle writes about inheriting the Whitney Museum, which grew from a small studio on Eighth Street to the institution it is today under the direction of her, her mother and her grandmother.

"It's the story of a journey from childhood to age, from illusion to reality. It tells of a change in an institution and a change in me," writes Ms. Biddle.

To compete, or simply stay afloat, the Whitney has had to expand its community of supporters beyond the family court. Ms. Biddle tells of several of her calls to raise funds and make new museum friends.

"One spring day in 1987, I went to lunch at Susan Gutfreund's magnificent home on Fifth Avenue," Ms. Biddle recalls. "Alfred Taubman had called me, after John Gutfreund had left Salomon Brothers, suggesting it would be a good time to show warm feelings to these acquaintances we'd never brought close to the museum. They'd be pleased, and the Whitney would be the beneficiary. So I called Susan. She showed me up the curving staircase, past a gorgeous Monet, into a vast living room overlooking Central Park. Turning left, she seemed to await a special response, and suddenly I noticed my favorite chair, formerly in my parents' yellow library, covered in the same fabric we'd used for" a book about her mother compiled after her death in 1986.

"Surely she thought I'd be delighted to see it again," Ms. Biddle writes, "but it was hard to be polite, imagining Mum's reaction, wishing I could have kept that particular chair."

The chair, along with much of her mother's things, had been sold to pay estate taxes.

Followers of the trials and tribulations of the Whitney Museum have awaited Ms. Biddle's book to see how she would regard Leonard Lauder, now president of the Whitney. He had been instrumental in ousting in 1990 museum director Tom Armstrong, whom Ms. Biddle continues to champion in her book–including her account of Larry Tisch's wrongful charge that Mr. Armstrong blackballed one of his children from entry into a New York co-op building because the Tisches are Jewish. Despite Mr. Lauder's position against Mr. Armstrong, Ms. Biddle writes fondly of the gentleman, his commitment to the Whitney and his inspired ability to "unite the board and raise the funds necessary for the museum's survival."

But she also includes a recollection of a breakfast at the Plaza Hotel with Mr. Lauder at which she was "feverish with incipient flu." She writes, "All with a smile but devastating nonetheless" Mr. Lauder told her "I had no clout like Blanchette Rockefeller [the president of the Museum of Modern Art] … the collection was terrible, curators inept … the board didn't have enough contributing trustees or the right ethnic balance, the museum had no status or quality–but great potential!… I thanked him, and tried to respond, but as I said later to Tom one shouldn't have a meal with Leonard unless one is feeling perfect.

"Tom said, one shouldn't pass Leonard on the street unless one feels perfect!"

Billy's List: Quiz time!

1. Why are people talking about Quillacas in Bolivia?

a. Calvin Klein has rented a ranch there for the holidays.

b. There seems to be some evidence that scientists have found the lost city of Atlantis there.

c. It's where Evita Perón's vast collection of couture clothes has been kept in cold storage since her death, auction pending.

2. The May issue of Interview will be devoted to:

a. Pets.

b. Barbra Streisand.

c. Bruce Weber's houses.

3. What is the "Bodyguard Bra"?

a. Sean (Puff Daddy) Combs' slang for a black, stretch Dolce & Gabbana T-shirt.

b. Puff Daddy's slang for a dog collar of "ice," meaning diamonds.

c. A "smart" bra being developed to trigger an alarm when the wearer's heart rates rises because of danger.

Answers: (1) b; (2) a; (3) c.

From: Ron Rosenbaum

Re: How an apology to the city for the Books & Company fiasco might redeem your image and rescue your museum

Dear Mr. Lauder,

Hey big guy, real profile in courage there with the Karen Finley cancellation! I have no strong feelings about Ms. Finley's work (I've never been to one of her performances), but it sure looked pathetically craven for the Whitney to cancel her upcoming "life-art" installation just a week after the Supreme Court rejected the appeal of her National Endowment for the Arts grant cutoff.

Typical of the Whitney to make the cowardly announcement on the eve of the July 4 holiday weekend, obviously hoping to avoid calling attention to its cravenness. Talk about piling on, talk about watching which way the wind blows. It kind of confirms, doesn't it, that the Whitney is all about fashion rather than esthetic conviction. When Ms. Finley seemed hot and cutting-edge, the Whitney rushed to sign her up, but it didn't have the courage of its convictions–let's face it, it has neither courage nor convictions–so it cut and ran when the Supremes showed disapproval. As Thomas Healy, Ms. Finley's gallery representative told The New York Times , the timing of the cancellation was "a little too bizarre to be a coincidence." It was not only bizarre, it was cruel and deceitful.

So once again under your tenure the Whitney has sunk to a new low in respect, which no amount of pandering to kitsch taste with an Andrew Wyeth exhibit can possibly rescue. No, it may be that things have gotten beyond rescue. Unless … unless you listen to me, Mr. Lauder. I have a plan. One that might, just might , succeed in restoring both you and the Whitney to some semblance of the respect you've squandered and lost in the eyes of literate New Yorkers.

It has to do with Books & Company. Remember Books & Company? I know you're a busy man with an extremely large cosmetics family fortune to spend, so it may have slipped your mind. It's been more than a year now, 15 months to be precise, since you and your hirelings–the now-departed (for San Francisco) director David Ross and his deputy, acting director Willard Holmes–forced the untimely killing of one of New York City's most vital and beautiful cultural institutions, a bookstore that was more than a bookstore, but a kind of work of art in itself. A place that radiated intellectual integrity, a source of inspiration for readers, writers and thinkers, a place where some of the foremost writers of the world met their readers, where new writers found an audience, where a browser could find his or her life changed by an encounter with a book he might never have found elsewhere had it not been for the thoughtful, imaginative and discerning selection of Books & Company owner and founder Jeannette Watson and her able and erudite book buyer Steven Varni.

It's been more than a year, Mr. Lauder, since you effectively told the thousands of New Yorkers who protested your insensitive and disingenuous efforts to evict the store from Whitney-owned property–who saw through the phony economic rationales I exposed in my columns on the subject–that you just didn't care . You weren't going to listen to their pleas because you had more important priorities: the super-important grand master plan for developing and capitalizing on the Whitney's real estate assets.

Big plans were in the making! Expansion and progress must be served! Location, location, location! That's essentially what we heard from you and your spokesmen who seemed to have far more interest in becoming go-go real estate hustlers than serious curators of a museum that had turned itself into a veritable laughingstock and had one universally respected asset left: the custodianship of Books & Company. Not that you had anything to do with its quality, but you were its landlord. Little more was asked of you than to not force this one undisputed jewel, this one genuine enduring cultural asset of the Whitney, into the street.

But you couldn't handle that responsibility, you and your minions were too greedy, too eager to play mini-Trumps with the property it was on. Unfortunately, we already know your idea of a "classy operation"; we have the instructive example of the Whitney's wholly owned "Store Next Door." The contrast between that disgracefully schlocky, embarrassing merchandiser of Mickey Mouse lamps and other cheesy tchotchkes and the physical beauty and intellectual excitement of the Books & Company premises in full flower, tells us all we need to know about your idea of tasteful real estate development.

But you insisted Books & Company had to go, had to make way for your Super-Important Master Plan (let's call it SIMP for short). Had to make way fast, public be damned. Get them out, put them on the street, gut the premises, you demanded, despite a rising tide of protests from some of the most distinguished literary and artistic luminaries in the city.

And you got your way, they're out, it's gone. But where's the replacement? Where are the fruits of SIMP? Remember how your people said it was intolerable for the Whitney not to realize maximum profitability on the Books & Company space, remember the many zigs and zags of your public and private statements on the issue? How initially the Whitney had boasted it was only asking a 2 percent rent rise to extend the store's lease, and how, after the store came back and said they'd accept the 2 percent offer, the Whitney declared that it was "no longer on the table"? It was–your own original offer–suddenly economically unacceptable. At the Whitney all eyes were glazed with greed over the real estate speculation profits SIMP would bring, and all ears were deaf to the protests and pleas of those who wanted to save the store. And it could have been saved.

Remember how, at the last minute when there was still a chance to save the store, when Books & Company supporters came up with a new offer that would have virtually doubled the rent they were paying, you rejected that too, revealing a monumental insensitivity to the Whitney's single most precious asset–and to the people who loved it.

You just couldn't wait to get them out. Make way for SIMP! When Jeannette Watson asked if she could stay open just 12 weeks beyond the October 1997 expiration of her lease so she could stay in business through the holiday book-buying season when most independent book stores make enough to balance their books for the year, the Whitney, with Scrooge-like callousness, said No, no way, no extension, forcing her for economic reasons to shut down in May, before the money-losing summer season. After 20 years of bringing distinction to the museum, she couldn't get 12 more weeks from you. Make way for progress. Make way for SIMP!

So where is it, what happened to SIMP, the super-important master plan? After 15 months of your wheeling and dealing, where's the progress, where are the results of the plan you snuffed Books & Company for? Just the other day, I passed the locked-up storefront and peered sadly into the gutted interior of the store. Nothing happening. Nothing happening next door at the evacuated premises of the terrific little mom-and-pop stationery store forced out for SIMP. You've turned a whole block of prime Madison Avenue frontage into a virtual ghost town, an eyesore, all for SIMP.

I decided to put in a call to a Whitney spokesman to see what was up with SIMP. Surely, you must be on the verge of a major, major breakthrough by now, devoting all your brainpower and dynamic real estate speculating talent to a mighty coup.

But to my surprise and astonishment, your spokesman at the museum told me the same thing you've been telling people for 15 months now: "We are negotiating with several parties about the space."

In fact, since you knew you were evicting Books & Company at the end of 1996, you must have been negotiating for nearly two years now with no results. Gee, I wonder why there are no takers? Could it be the bad odor the Whitney's treatment of Books & Company left behind? Could it be that SIMP was overambitious and too grandiose for even such real estate geniuses as you and your crack team of property hustlers?

Meanwhile, the Books & Company space, which you insisted had to bring in market-level cash flow, is bringing in exactly zero. Nothing! Is there a breach of fiduciary responsibility on the Whitney management's part here, kicking out the bookstore, a paying tenant, and not having any plan in place to provide a substitute income stream from the premises? You could have kept the bookstore on for another year on a month-to-month basis while you were putting SIMP in place, but it turns out you didn't have your ducks in a row, did you? You didn't have any ducks at all. Shouldn't the Whitney's somnolent board launch an investigation of this mismanaged fiasco at this point? Shouldn't someone be held accountable for the failure of SIMP and the ill will the eviction of Books & Company has incurred at the already shaky museum?

The kicker, though, the too beautiful bitter pathetic irony of it is how your spokesman tried to spin the glaring failure to produce any results. It's a prime example of just how "fungible" the truth is in the Whitney's dealings in the Books & Company matter. When I asked the spokesman what explanation she had for the 15 months' failure to fill the Books & Company space, she tried to pin the blame on the poor dead corpse of the bookstore: She said, "We've always known this would take time, that's why we asked the bookstore to stay on to the end of its lease [in October 1997] rather than close [in May]."

This blame-the-victim remark could be the ultimate insult to the intelligence of New Yorkers, not to mention to the truth. The bookstore wanted to stay open the full extent of its lease, it wanted to stay open 12 weeks longer to be precise, through the holiday season. But you and your cruel Scrooges said No. After 20 years of bringing distinction to your institution, 12 weeks was too much. Make way for SIMP! And now the Whitney has the nerve to try to argue the store should have stayed on to subsidize SIMP.

I checked my memory of the Scrooge-like Christmas season turn-down with Steven Varni and Jeannette Watson, who were negotiating with your hirelings on these questions, and they both confirmed it. But my conversation with Jeannette Watson gave me the germ of an idea, a plan that might, just might, give you a chance to redeem yourself.

Ms. Watson is doing well for herself now, although she went through a difficult mourning period following the loss of the store (as all book lovers in New York did). She's now working a couple days a week at the Lenox Hill Bookstore while cooperating with the writer Lynne Tillman on a kind of oral history of Books & Company for Harcourt Brace & Company. Understandably, she has no desire to have any further contact with you after the cruel way you and your minions jerked her around during the sham negotiations over the store's future.

Still, I have the feeling that if you were to be a man, and make an abject apology to her and to the citizens of New York City on behalf of the Whitney, if you were to (metaphorically at least) crawl on your knees to her, offer to junk the odious SIMP , offer to reopen the store at your expense, guarantee that she would have total control but not be required to put in the killing hours she used to, offer to hire back her book selection genius Steven Varni and let them run the place, she might, just might entertain the idea. No guarantees, I wouldn't blame her if she didn't trust you even if you begged. Still, if you're lucky, it might be a way for the Whitney to regain the respect it's lost. Maybe it's too much to hope that Books & Company could rise from the ashes. But you could at least start with the abject apology. You owe us all that.