The Explorers Club is one wild bunch.
The storied Upper East Side institution already divided over a plan to partner with the Discovery Channel is now scandalized over allegations that its lothario president was two-timing a club member and the executive director, The Post has learned.
Club boss Richard Wiese’s “sexual relationship” with submarine explorer Christine Dennison came to light in a court affidavit filed last month as part of Dennison’s lawsuit against Wiese and the club.
Dennison and her husband were expelled from the Explorer’s Club after a dispute over their rental of office space in the East 70th Street headquarters that houses expedition artifacts including a stuffed whale penis and a narwhal’s pointed tusk.
Vanessa O’Brien, a club fellow and former board member who filed the affidavit, said in the document that she brought up the relationship at a September board meeting, worried that if it came out it would “have a negative impact on the Club’s reputation.”
Wiese then called the relationship “a lie,” O’Brien wrote in the filing.
But Dennison told The Post it was no lie — that she and Wiese had been involved shortly after she became a club fellow in 2003.
She said Wiese took up with the group’s executive director, Nicole Young, around the same time.
“I did break it off when I became aware he was living with this woman as well,” she said. “He wasn’t honest.”
Wiese, a former model who hosted a TV show called “Born to Explore,” eventually married Young in 2007.
Dennison, who wed husband Timothy Taylor in 2010, said their expulsion from the group felt like a vendetta.
“It feels like a personal issue is involved as I have not done anything that warrants these extreme actions,” she said.
Dennison’s and Taylor’s legal case comes at the same time Wiese is pushing ahead with a deal that would include giving the Discovery Channel naming rights to its headquarters and money for expeditions, but only those of Discovery’s choice.
“The current deal is an overreaching, one-sided proposal in favor of Discovery that would irreparably impact the club’s assets, mission, reputation and legacy,” club member Julian Monroe Fisher wrote in a letter sent this month to members that was obtained by The Post.
Fisher is calling for members to hold a special meeting and vote on the deal.
Another member previously filed a complaint with the state Attorney General’s office saying the organization violated its own bylaws, including in the election of Wiese as president, and sexually harasses women because “female board members who disagree with the president are interrupted and not allowed to continue to speak,” according to the complaint.
Wiese did not return requests for comment.
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