In this fierce essay John Coplans excoriates the wealthy supporters who, because of their vanity-driven desire to build a new museum, managed to drive the well-loved Pasadena Museum of Modern Art into receivership, and thus allowed it to be taken over by the financier Norton Simon and turned into a showcase for his middling collection of pre-modern art. Coplans was one of the final directors of the Pasadena Museum, so his writing is fueled by a righteous anger, and supported by well-researched, and deeply understood, information about the history of the Museum, and the personalities that drove it.