children's museum - REDBROWARD

Mindy Shrago,right, makes $157k as YAA Executive Director

Despite losing more than half a million dollars in revenue over the last five years, Young At Art (YAA) executive director Mindy Shrago continues to collect a six-figure salary. According to public records, Shrago has received big salary raises even while she desperately tried to restructure the Davie museum’s financial deal with Broward County. Broward County Commissioners are waiting for Young At Art Board Chairman David Di Pietro to submit a new financial proposal to repay taxpayers’ investment in the children’s museum.

In 2013, published reports claimed Shrago and YAA reneged on its deal with Broward County. According to the Sun-Sentinel, Broward taxpayers purchased land in Davie and built a new home for Shrago’s museum, “on the promise the museum would pay some of the money back — $1 million a year for 11 years.” Even though YAA raised $5 million dollars, it used that money to pay for art exhibits instead of making payments to the county.

But, Federal tax records show YAA had money to pay Shrago’s six figure salary.

SHRAGO MAKES BIG BUCKS WHILE YAA LOST REVENUE

According to records filed with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Young At Art has been seriously hemorraghing money since 2011. Over a four year period, YAA total revenues fell from $3,691,581 million to $3,100,507 million. That is a loss of $591,074 million over four years. But these same records show Mindy Shrago kept receiving her big paycheck.

Young at Art’s 2013 Federal IRS Form 990 shows Shrago received a $140,387 yearly salary. The form claims Shrago worked fifty hours a week.

Even though YAA was in the midst of a serious financial crisis, the 2014 Form 990 shows Shrago received a sizable salary increase. Shrago was paid $152,407 for a fifty hour work week. This was a $12,020 increase for the executive director of an ailing institution funded by Broward taxapayers.

A year later, Shrago’s take home pay jumped to $157,828 dollars. While still seeking relief from the County, Shrago received a $5,421 raise. It’s unclear if the YAA Board approved these increases each year or whether they were part of Shrago’s contract.

Shrago’s big bucks salary is just the latest scandal surrounding Young At Art. REDBROWARD exposed the questionable exhibits which exposed children to hypersexualized imagery including naked men and women engaged in sex acts, wet t-shirt parties and topless women bashing political figures. Several online campaigns have urged YAA Chairman David Di Pietro to remove Shrago from her position. This is unlikely to happen any time soon. According to sources, Shrago’s husband, former Judge Jay Spechler brags about her large severance package if she is replaced at YAA. Spechler is close adviser and personal attorney for Di Pietro. He sued Florida Governor Rick Scott on Di Pietro’s behalf after his removal as chairman of Broward Health. Spechler and Shrago have contributed thousands of dollars to Di Pietro’s wife, Judge Nina Weatherly Di Pietro.

Tired of the YAA “games,” Broward County Commissioner Lois Wexler has stated she will review the new matters with the County Administrator and County Attorney.

YAA Executive Director Mindy Shrago, right, is all smiles at “peep show”

In 2014, Young At Art, a Broward taxpayer supported children’s museum in Davie, hosted the “Naughty By Nature” peep show in Fort Lauderdale. The exhibit was part of Young At Art’s “Bedlam Lorenz Assembly,” which sought to expose Broward’s children to contemporary art. The “Naughty By Nature” exhibit was held at the 1310 Gallery in Fort Lauderdale. It featured naked men and women, a dog licking a TV screen while an x-rated movie played in the background, a “precum/postcum” elevator light show, something called “Enter The Honey Hole” and “Vagina Flowers.”

Zack Shrago Spechler, son of Young At Art executive director Mindy Shrago, described the show as an exploration of sexuality. “The idea that really intrigued me is how we can be so obsessed with our bodies, and the sexuality of others, but we can be in a room full of body parts and not even recognize them,” Spechler said. “So you can stand in this exhibit and see various body parts, but they are abstract. You’re like, ‘Wait, is that a leg?'” According to SouthFlorida.com, Zack Shrago Spechler “operates the art collective Bedlam Lorenz Assembly at the Young at Art Museum.”

Earlier this year, Zack Shrago Spechler was the main focus of a consultant’s review of Young At Art. According to the Sun-Sentinel, consultant Louise Stevens of ArtsMarket, “[F]indings were that Shrago’s 32-year-old son, Zach Spechler, is being paid by the museum to act as a curator, unbeknownst to county officials, who said it might violate the terms of their agreement. Last year, for example, he was paid $17,636. A group he formed solicits artists and decides what art gets displayed in the museum, Stevens said.”

(Last November, REDBROWARD revealed Stevens had been threatened during the Young At Art review process.)

Did Broward taxpayers pay for this “Naughty By Nature” peep show? Should a taxpayer-funded children’s museum expose kids to risque art exhibits? At sign at the exhibit said, [T]he sexual and grotesque reveal themselves in sculptural and installation-based works with a distorted focus on flesh, tissue, organs and everything in between.” Should children see “grotesque” art with a “distorted focus on flesh?

In a video tour of the exhibit on YouTube, children are dragged into the “precum/postcum” elevator which took guests to the “peep show.”

The “peep show” was described as an exploration of “[T]he human body in a direct, full frontal affront, phasing macroscopic representations of the figure into the exhibition’s intimate abstractions.” For us regular non-artistic types, this means topless women pleasuring themselves on video screens.”

Last week, REDBROWARD exposed Mindy Shrago’s attendance at a strange political puppet theater featuring topless women and Donald Trump pinatas. No wonder Shrago was all smiles, she’s apparently used to such oddball shows.

Now, as Shrago and YAA Chairman David Di Pietro seek a new deal with Broward County, our leaders should forget the consultants and the audit games. They should demand a full accounting of Young At Art’s finances to make sure taxpayer money is not funding someone’s political rallies or nude peep shows.