Art Museum Boards' Top 10 Targets
The Coveted Group's Bank Accounts, Family Pedigrees, Social Networks and Art Collections Put Them in Play

Shortly before Richard Armstrong took over as director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and Museum in November 2008, he flew to Moscow to visit Maria Baibakova, a 24-year-old Russian heiress with chestnut hair, a heart-shaped face and plenty of resources to pursue her passion for contemporary art.

He also had cocktails with her father, Oleg Baibakov, a real-estate developer whose wealth originally sprung from Norilsk Nickel Co., the same company that made billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov's fortune.

During the following year, Mr. Armstrong made the effort to see Ms. Baibakova in Europe at least three more times. He invited her to New York for last September's black-tie Guggenheim International Gala, celebrating the museum's 50th anniversary.

"We're constantly in touch," Ms. Baibakova said recently. "Richard is amazing."

If this sounds like a courtship, that's because it is: The Guggenheim's board of directors is wooing Ms. Baibakova to join its ranks, and Mr. Armstrong isn't shy about saying so. "She's a doll," Mr. Armstrong said. "She's been so friendly, and we'd like to be even more friendly with her."

Ms. Baibakova belongs to a coveted group whose bank accounts, family pedigrees, social networks and art collections have put them in play for board spots at New York's major cultural institutions. To woo them, directors and trustees rely on an array of techniques.

The official protocol involves vetting candidates and rating them on criteria including interest, social standing, affiliations, skill sets and "capacity"—the preferred euphemism for "cash." Some boards insist on exclusivity. Others allow multiple board commitments so long as the candidate promises not to get overextended in social and philanthropic commitments.

"We don't have a rule that says you can't be on another board, but we need to be a big item in their life," said James Houghton, chairman of the board of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Unlike some other boards, the Museum of Modern Art's trustees can submit confidential written opinions about candidates to the nominating committee. "We've got to be able to weigh in without offending anyone," said Agnes Gund, MoMA's president emerita.

Until someone has made the cut, expect an organization to turn on the charm. Or scramble the jets. "The best bonding situation...is the private jet trip to an art fair," said David A. Ross, a former director of both the Whitney Museum of American Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. A spokesman for the Whitney said the museum currently does not fly potential or current trustees to such events, and hadn't heard of it being done in the past.

Another tactic: The curator will often quietly proffer advice on the potential trustee's art purchases. "Those are the trustees you want—the ones that will be completely turned on by this access," said Mr. Ross, who now chairs the graduate program in art practice at the School of Visual Arts.

"One of the fastest and easiest ways I do it is to go see what a couple collects and then offer to help them collect more," Mr. Armstrong said. "You take them to galleries and help them spend money, and then along the way they get hooked on you." He added that he has committed to this process for as much as a year in certain cases. "And then they're on the board," he said.

Herewith, according to interviews with dozens of arts directors and current trustees, are the 10 most sought-after board candidates.

Top 10 Art Museum Board Candidates

1. Steven Cohen

Mr. Cohen, the founder of Stamford, Conn.-based private investment firm SAC Capital Advisors, which manages $12 billion in assets, started collecting a decade ago and has amassed an estimated $750 million worth of art, including works by Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Francis Bacon and Damien Hirst. He would be an incredible catch for any museum, but he hasn't settled on one just yet. The Museum of Modern Art placed him on its most prestigious acquisition committee -- the Fund for the 21st Century Committee -- and its painting and sculpture committee. MoMA also gave prominent display in its 2007-08 show of Georges Seurat drawings to a piece from Mr. Cohen's collection. But Mr. Cohen has given other New York museums a chance to hope, people familiar with the situation said. The Guggenheim showed one of Mr. Cohen's Richard Prince pieces in its 2007 Prince retrospective, and his Hirst shark now resides at the Met.

2. Glenn Fuhrman

Mr. Furhman, a co-manager and co-founder of MSD Capital, a firm that invests Michael Dell's fortune, has amassed a contemporary art collection that includes works by Mr. Hirst, Jeff Koons, Lisa Yuskavage, Elizabeth Peyton, Ellsworth Kelly, and Gerhard Richter. Mr. Furhman, who bought former Lehman Brothers chief executive Richard Fuld's apartment at 640 Park Ave. for $26 million last summer, is on the board of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington and on the North American Acquisitions Committee for the Tate, but so far he hasn't joined a New York board. He has committed much of his energy these days to the FLAG Art Foundation, an independent exhibition space and loan foundation that he founded in 2007 on two pristine floors of the Chelsea Arts Tower. But museums say they are courting Mr. Fuhrman nonetheless; besides Mr. Cohen, he is the only other non-board member on MoMA's Fund for the 21st Century Committee.

3. Emoly Wei Rales

Ms. Rales is married to Mitchell Rales, a founder of Danaher Corp. who has an estimated net worth of $2.5 billion. The two house their collection at Glenstone, a Gwathmey Siegel-designed, 150-acre estate-cum-museum in Potomac, Md. Visits are by appointment only; the collection includes paintings by Messrs. Pollock and Rauschenberg as well as sculptures by Alexander Calder, Henri Matisse, Mr. Koons and Richard Serra. Ms. Rales, a curator, has organized several shows at Glenstone, as well as in New York and Miami. The couple has donated art to MoMA, and Ms. Rales sits on MoMA's committee on painting and sculpture.

4. Randy Slifka

Mr. Slifka is managing director of Slifka Asset Management, an investment advisory firm. As a collector, he is partial to painting, photography, video, sculpture and drawings by hot contemporary artists, and his cultural patronage—he is a "generous donor" to the New Museum, a spokeswoman said—reflects that taste. He is the grandson of the late Sylvia and Joseph Slifka, major collectors of 20th-century artists such as Alberto Giacometti and Mr. Pollock, adding to his appeal. In 2004, his grandparents' estate donated $40 million in art to 19 museums in the U.S. and Israel. Perhaps as a step toward inviting him to join its board, the Guggenheim has placed him on its invitation-only International Director's Council, its primary acquisition committee. Mr. Slifka also sits on the Whitney's video and drawing acquisitions committees, as well as on the North American Acquisitions Committee for the Tate, alongside Mr. Fuhrman.

5. Eric Zinterhofer

Mr. Zinterhofer has been a senior partner at Apollo Global Management, the Leon Black-founded hedge fund that manages more than $50 billion, but is leaving to start his own private-equity firm. While his professional standing alone would qualify him as having enough "capacity" to catch the eye of any museum board, it is Mr. Zinterhofer's marriage to cosmetics heiress Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer, senior vice president and creative director of the Estee Lauder brand, that boosts his board-ready profile. The Zinterhofers have sat on the Met's Friends of the Costume Institute committee, and Ms. Zinterhofer has co-chaired the Met's Costume Institute gala, one of the most glamorous and exclusive events in the city. The Zinterhofers have also served as junior co-chairs of the Party in the Garden at the Museum of Modern Art, where Ms. Zinterhofer's father, Ronald Lauder, was chairman of the board; her mother, Jo Carole Lauder, was president of the museum's International Council. On May 25, when this year's Party in the Garden honors the senior Lauders, the Zinterhofers will co-chair the event.

6. Andrew Hall

Mr. Hall was most famously at the center of a compensation battle last year over a $100 million pay package contractually owed him by Citigroup, for whom he ran the energy-trading unit Phibro LLC, at a time when the bank was getting bail-out money. (The dispute ended when Phibro was sold.) He is also a major art collector who owns a nearly 1,000-year-old castle in Germany, which he is in the process of developing into a public museum to display contemporary and post-war art. Museum directors interested in viewing his acquisitions, however, may soon be able to do so on this side of the Atlantic: Mr. Hall is developing an exhibition space for his collection, according to the most recent tax filings for his Hall Art Foundation, Inc., which is registered in Southport, Conn. Over the past several years, he has transferred about $40 million worth of art, including works by Messrs. Hirst and Kapoor and Anselm Kiefer, to the foundation.

7. Charlotte Ford

Ms. Ford, née Feng, is from a prominent Taiwanese family, but she grew up in Illinois, went to Smith College and moved to New York more than two decades ago to work as a fashion executive. In 1988 she married William E. Ford, chief executive of General Atlantic, a private equity firm that manages $15 billion in capital. The Fords began collecting as newlyweds and were early fans of video artists like Ryan Trecartin and Sue de Beer. They've also helped underwrite the Whitney Biennial and Yoshimoto Nara's 2004 show at the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis. Mr. Ford joined the New Museum's board nearly a decade ago, but his wife has been under the radar until recently—for the past two years she's been one of the only non-trustees on the five-member gala committee of the New Museum. Both MoMA's Ms. Gund, and Saul Dennison, the New Museum's chairman, call her a potential coup.

8. Daniel Loeb

Mr. Loeb, the chief executive of hedge fund Third Point LLC, is known as much for his for his collection of contemporary art as for his derisive letters to financial executives. He is widely coveted for his personal fortune—his 2007 compensation was $270 million, according to Alpha magazine. Mr. Loeb wouldn't confirm or deny the figure. He owns a $45 million penthouse in Robert A.M. Stern's 15 Central Park West. His art collection has included works by Mr. Koons, Martin Kippenberger, Cecily Brown and Mr. Prince. His outspokenness wouldn't make him the most conservative choice—he once described some descendents of the founder of a company he invested in as members of the "lucky sperm club"—but museum directors say he would be a valuable addition to any board.

9. Maria Baibakova

Ms. Baibakova is best known for starting a nonprofit arts space, Baibakov Art Projects, in a former chocolate factory in her native city of Moscow two years ago to show rising art stars such as Wade Guyton and Kelley Walker. A graduate of Columbia University, she spends a lot of time in New York. Ms. Baibakova says she "doesn't want to sit on any boards" because she would rather champion edgy art commissions in Russia. She's moving out of the Red October factory to a former Soviet house of culture nearby, where she's asked French artist Raphaël Zarka to build a skate-park installation. But the Guggenheim got her to help sponsor its Kandinsky retrospective last year and curators from the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles are visiting her in June during a research trip to Russia. "Boards are so political in the U.S.," she said. "I'd rather work with all of them.

10. S.I. Newhouse Jr.

The Condé Nast chairman is so well-known that one might think he'd be on a dozen boards. He is worth an estimated $4.5 billion and has a collection of Renaissance and modern masters worth at least $700 million, according to Forbes. He owns a Peter Paul Rubens and once owned Jasper Johns's "False Start," an $80 million painting now owned by hedge-fund manager Ken Griffin. So why is he not on any New York boards? He was a MoMA trustee for a quarter-century but resigned a decade ago after a dealer working for the museum sold him a work from the museum's collection. Museums are allowed to sell works from their permanent collections but trustees can't buy them. He acknowledged the misstep at the time. Now, MoMA wants him back. "He's a terrific collector," Ms. Gund said. "Any place he's willing to go should grab him. He can certainly come back here."