Like the abstract painter who created it, the Judith Rothschild Foundation has never had a very high profile in the art world. Ms. Rothschild, who died in 1993, established the foundation in her will and assigned a friend the mission, as trustee, of using her collection of artworks by masters like Matisse and Mondrian to promote underappreciated artists — a category in which she included herself.
An exhibition of selections from the Judith Rothschild Foundation drawings collection, at the Museum of Modern Art in 2009.
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Judith Rothschild in 1946.
That friend, Harvey S. Shipley Miller, has since donated or sold many of these artworks and used the proceeds to benefit cultural institutions across the country.
Another major beneficiary of the foundation’s efforts over the years, though, has been Mr. Miller himself.
A Harvard-trained lawyer and art aficionado, he set a salary for himself of more than $200,000 in some years for his service as the foundation’s sole trustee and, for years after Ms. Rothschild’s death, had the use of her Park Avenue town house and her upstate country home.
Over several years he directed more than $130,000 in foundation money to the law school at the University of California, Los Angeles, where some was used to create a fellowship named after him, not Ms. Rothschild.
And as the foundation’s trustee, and the gatekeeper of its treasures, he was given coveted seats on important boards and committees at institutions like the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, where he has served alongside the likes of Ronald S. Lauder and David Rockefeller Jr.
In a city where money alone is no guarantee of social standing, Mr. Miller provides a striking example of how control over important works of art can be a ticket to the upper tier of the philanthropic world, with all its attendant prestige and social cachet.
To be sure, foundation trustees often enjoy wide latitude on how they operate, and Ms. Rothschild’s will gave Mr. Miller broad authority to interpret the foundation’s mission and to donate to a range of charitable and educational causes. No one has alleged financial misconduct by Mr. Miller, whose civic-mindedness has impressed many, and who says he has labored faithfully to serve Ms. Rothschild’s interests.
“I loved Judith,” said Mr. Miller, who declined to take questions. “This was a labor of love.”
The foundation, however, failed to make promised grant payments to arts groups last year. And now the New York State attorney general’s office is undertaking a broader review of the foundation and Mr. Miller’s stewardship even though the grants have since been paid.
Some art-world experts say Mr. Miller has used Ms. Rothschild’s assets in ways that honor his friend, whose death he used to acknowledge every year with small notices in The New York Times.
“My impression was, he’s done an extremely good job of enhancing and sustaining Rothschild’s position,” said Karen Wilkin, the curator of an exhibition of Ms. Rothschild’s paintings that traveled to Russia in 2002.
Mr. Miller “is smart, articulate and very charming,” said Gail Harrity, president and chief operating officer of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where Mr. Miller has been a board member since 1985. Without question, that appointment, eight years before Ms. Rothschild’s death, was buoyed by Mr. Miller’s own social contacts, passion for the arts and refined curatorial eye.
But his stature in New York has been boosted by his control over Ms. Rothschild’s assets and her art collection, which was valued at $34 million when she died.
For example, Mr. Miller was appointed to the board of the Museum of Modern Art in 2003, the same year he embarked with the museum’s guidance on a plan to put together a collection of 2,600 drawings, subsequently valued at $60 million.
The collection, named after Ms. Rothschild and underwritten by her assets, was presented to the museum in 2005. But when the Modern created a curator’s position tied to the collection, it was named, like the U.C.L.A. fellowship, after Mr. Miller, though the museum said that it too was endowed by Ms. Rothschild’s assets.
“It seems as if Harvey may have advanced his own agenda rather than fulfilling Judith’s,” said Caroline Mortimer, a longtime friend of Ms. Rothschild’s.
Many artists create foundations to shepherd their legacies, but most foundations do not give control to a single trustee because they seek additional oversight. “This kind of governance fails to protect against possible conflicts of interest,” said Nancy E. Kelly, an accountant at Metis Group who serves on the advisory panel of Charity Navigator, a watchdog agency over charities.
Before becoming a full-time trustee for the foundation, Mr. Miller, now 62, had worked as a lawyer, a business executive and a curator. As part of running the foundation, he determines its travel budget, which has been about $100,000 in recent years, though one year the foundation spent $300,000.
Until Ms. Rothschild’s Park Avenue town house was sold by the foundation in 2007, for $15 million, the foundation’s tax returns typically said Mr. Miller was required “as a condition of his employment” to live in the building, which was its headquarters.