Fingers point at Getty museum's overseer
Randy Kennedy, The New York Times 

November 6, 2005 

 
 
He wanted it to be the perfect evening - the kind of courting of collectors
the museum should do more often, he told the staff.
Barry Munitz, president of the J. Paul Getty Trust, had invited his good
friends Sherry Lansing, then the chairwoman of Paramount Pictures, and her
husband, the director William Friedkin, to dinner last year in a house used
for parties at the hilltop Getty complex in Los Angeles.

Because Lansing and Friedkin collect Dutch art, Munitz wanted to impress
them by having two 17th-century drawings by the Dutch artist Herman van
Swanevelt from the Getty Museum taken to be displayed at the house.

Museum officials, who said they felt that the event was more about
socializing than about wooing important collectors, immediately protested.
They argued that moving the drawings posed too many risks, and that the
climate control in the house was inadequate for fragile works on paper.

The drawings were moved anyway.

For Munitz's critics, such anecdotes are a kind of shorthand for explaining
a range of troubles that have engulfed the Getty Museum over the last few
years. 

Today the Getty is under siege on many fronts. Its former antiquities
curator faces an indictment in Italy, and allegations of lavish travel by
Munitz have led to a wide-ranging investigation by the California attorney
general into the Getty Trust's finances.

Overlooked in these controversies, some of Munitz's critics say, is the harm
suffered by the museum itself, including acquisitions, curatorial choices
and departures by talented staff members who bridled at Munitz's decisions
and leadership style.

In 1982, when the museum received the estate of the oilman J. Paul Getty, it
instantly became the one of the world's wealthiest. Given that it had six
times more money than its next-richest American sibling, the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, competing institutions anxiously waited to see how that
fortune would reshape the museum world.

Over the next two decades, the Getty grew significantly, spending hundreds
of millions of dollars to enlarge its collection. But many critics say it
has failed to live up to its early promise, a problem even before Munitz's
arrival. And far from tilting the playing field with its money, the Getty -
which has lost several high-profile bidding battles for artwork in the last
few years - has recently begun to see that it cannot buy its way to becoming
a great museum. It has decided to devote itself to what its poorer
colleagues have always done: seeking donations of world-class private
collections.

Yet as it places its hat fully in hand, the museum is facing serious
questions about its worthiness as a home for such collections. Most of these
questions revolve around the structure of the trust, its board and Munitz,
who has overseen the museum and the trust's other art programs for eight
years.

Many board members praise his vision and leadership. "I think he's really
done a terrific job," said John H. Biggs, the chairman of the trust's board.
But several former and current museum employees complain that Munitz - who
has no background in art - has significantly interfered with the museum's
curatorial operations and demoralized much of its staff by imposing his own
vision in several crucial areas, disregarding or overruling many museum
decisions.

They describe a frustrating working environment in which Munitz has formed
strong alliances with art institutions in England and Germany, and insisted
on collaborating with them. While this has sometimes yielded loans of
impressive works, they say, it has consumed time and resources that could
have been directed elsewhere, organizing exhibitions that better illuminated
its core collection of European paintings and Greek and Roman antiquities.
As a result, they say, the museum's direction often appears erratic, and its
reputation has suffered nationally and globally.

The departure last year of the museum's previous director, Deborah Gribbon,
who cited philosophical differences with Munitz, was in large part a
response to such interference, according to former and current employees,
most of whom spoke on condition of anonymity, partly because of fears of
reprisals against current staff members. And they characterized many of
Munitz's initiatives at home and around the world as propelled more by his
social aspirations and connections than by considerations of what was best
for the museum.

Munitz, a former university administrator and businessman with an easy
confidence and keen political instincts, defends himself, saying that much
of the rancor arises because the Getty Museum, unlike the Metropolitan or
other large American museums, does not have the final word on its own fate.
The Getty Trust - which also oversees a conservation institute, a research
arm and a grant-making foundation - calls the shots.

"The fact is that they are one very important piece of what we do, but they
are not the ultimate decision makers," Munitz said of the museum's leaders,
adding that the inherent tensions were part of "a philosophical,
organizational issue that goes back 20 years."

"There are powerful emotions here," he said. "There are very articulate and
strong people here on both sides of the issue."

Critics say that Munitz - with the support of a board that includes many of
his business friends and allies, few with backgrounds as dedicated
collectors - has placed far less emphasis on the museum than his
predecessor, Harold M. Williams, did.

The amount of money annually available to the museum for buying artwork, for
example, has dropped to among the lowest levels in its history. And Munitz
has in the past few years built what critics see as ill-advised alliances -
some accompanied by multimillion-dollar grants - with the State Art
Collections in Dresden, Germany; with the Courtauld Institute of Art in
London; and with Chatsworth, one of England's grandest estates, which houses
the Duke of Devonshire's art collection.

These partnerships have been the source of frustration within the museum,
where some curators question their value to the Getty. Some of the
Courtauld's most important masterpieces, for example, cannot leave London
because of restrictions in the will of their donor.

"The Courtauld, Chatsworth and Dresden initiatives are Barry's," said a
former museum employee. "They are not necessarily projects that the museum
would have otherwise undertaken."

This dissension is roiling the Getty, which stands at a kind of crossroads.
A new director - Michael Brand, most recently the director of the Virginia
Museum of Fine Arts - was named in August to replace Gribbon. After years of
planning, the Getty is scheduled in late January to reopen its renovated
villa in Malibu, the new home of its collection of Greek, Roman and Etruscan
antiquities.

Yet the woman largely in charge of that project, the museum's antiquities
curator, Marion True, resigned last month over accusations of improprieties
involving a real estate deal. She faces a criminal trial, opening Nov. 16 in
Italy, where she is accused of conspiring to acquire looted antiquities for
the museum.

Separately, the California attorney general's office, which oversees
nonprofit foundations, has opened an investigation into the finances of the
trust, spurred by recent articles in The Los Angeles Times that raised
questions about Munitz's considerable travel expenses and perks, and about a
2002 real estate deal between the museum and Eli Broad, a billionaire
investor who is a close friend of Munitz's.

Late last month, the Getty's board set up a special committee to examine the
antiquities matter and to monitor the attorney general's investigation.
Biggs said that while he believed there was "a legitimate policy issue
driving some people's concerns" within the museum, he said that such anger
should be directed primarily at the board, which sets the institution's
priorities, not at Munitz.

But critics inside and outside the museum complain that the board has been
increasingly disengaged from the issues facing the museum. And, they say,
because the board is made up of many of Munitz's business-world friends -
including the billionaire investor Ronald W. Burkle and Jay Wintrob, an
insurance executive and protege of Broad's - there are  
   
 
few checks and balances on Munitz.

In 2003, for example, he asked several senior officials of the museum and of
other Getty programs to fly to England for a meeting at Chatsworth in
Derbyshire to explore a partnership and possible loans from its collection,
including its old master drawings, considered among the world's best. Some
museum officials, however, said they felt that a partnership with the
Chatsworth did not make much sense for the Getty and that the drawings would
not make a particularly interesting loan because many had already been shown
in the United States several times, some as recently as 1996, in an
exhibition at the Pierpont Morgan Library.

Barbara Whitney, who left the museum last year as its associate director for
administration and public affairs, said there was widespread dissatisfaction
with Munitz's plan, "yet nobody felt they could say no." She and other
persistent critics of Munitz said there was a strong feeling that his
initiatives were making the Getty seem erratic and hurting its reputation.

"The Getty worked very hard for two decades to build its credibility in the
art world, in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere, by being very selective about
the projects it took on and only doing things that fit the mission and added
value," said Whitney, who now works as a private-school administrator. "Many
of us have become concerned in recent years that Munitz is diminishing that
credibility through grants and partnerships that don't make much sense,
either for the Getty or the partners."

Given the largess that flows from the Getty's grant-making and conservation
arms, officials at other museums are loath to comment about how they
perceive the Getty and its accomplishments.

But John Walsh, who served as the Getty's director from 1983 to 2000, echoed
Whitney's concerns, saying the museum had worked hard to overcome its
reputation as an art-world arriviste and to become known as a place with
exhibitions "on interesting subjects, ideas and unfamiliar artists, with
many surprises for visitors."

"It would be a long step backward to start doing shows that simply move a
bunch of things from one museum to another," he said. "You can see those in
art museums everywhere else."

In a recent interview in his office overlooking the travertine Getty complex
in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles, Munitz said that such partnerships
made perfect sense, not just for the museum, but also for the Getty as an
educational institution.

He added that he and the board had long ago realized that even though the
Getty's endowment, now at $5.2 billion, is relatively healthy after several
years of unstable markets, the museum's collection cannot expand solely
through buying. He emphasized that the museum, and its new director, Brand,
would be working much harder to court collectors and land major donations,
something the Getty had done only fitfully in the past.

But to be successful, he said, he and other officials must be more
aggressive about spreading the Getty name, money and resources. "You need to
go out there," he said. "You have to meet the great collectors, you have to
meet the high-net-worth individuals, you have to do a great deal of
traveling because people don't understand who we are." And, he added, many
who do understand "don't like us."

The trust is trying hard to change that. Grants awarded by the Getty have
risen to around $30 million a year, compared with $10 million a year in the
mid- to late 1990s, even as money for buying art for the museum has declined
to about $20 million budgeted for this fiscal year. (In the past, the
average was about $46 million a year, though in 2003, when the Getty paid a
reported $70 million for a Titian masterpiece, the museum spent around $100
million.) 

In an interview that lasted almost two hours, Munitz - who earns $635,000 a
year as well as retirement benefits that make his overall compensation about
$1.2 million - was rarely defensive as he talked about the trust's recent
troubles.

But he was accompanied by a public relations executive who specializes in
crisis management, and he expressed exasperation with his critics at the
museum. "Part of the frustration," Munitz said, "is people didn't come to me
and say - from the museum - 'If you head in this direction, this a problem,'
or 'Please don't do that,' or 'It's embarrassing here,' or 'It's awkward
there.' Never. I promise."

But those who have dealt with Munitz said they did speak up - although his
staff often insulated him and made communication difficult. And they added
that when they did object openly to his decisions, he frequently overruled
them. They cite the incident involving the dinner party and the drawings as
a prime example, one that angered and embarrassed the museum staff.

"One of the most alarming things for me was that it was such a clear-cut
demonstration of Barry's lack of concern for the works of art," said
Whitney, who was about to depart from the museum around the time of the
incident.

Munitz insists that the drawings were adequately protected, and he defended
having used them to entertain Lansing and Friedkin. "The goal was to try to
get them more interested in the institution," he said.

Asked whether the couple had a significant art collection, he said, "They
are interesting collectors who are beginning to build a collection." He
added that in campaigning on behalf of the museum, "you don't start with
people that you don't know - you start with people you know."

But Munitz's critics complain that many of the people he knows best tend to
be ones who cannot much help the Getty.

Broad, for example, is a renowned collector, but he specializes in
contemporary art. Works he owns are to be displayed in a new building that
will be part of the Los Angeles County Museum.

Munitz also has close ties to Lord Rothschild, the English banker and arts
patron, a relationship that has led to much deeper involvement by the Getty
with the Courtauld Institute, a respected teaching center and museum. The
Getty is in the process of giving it a $12 million gift.

Lord Rothschild praised the links between the two institutions. "I think
it's been a very symbiotic and positive relationship, both for the Courtauld
and for the Getty," he said. But some at the Getty say that the Courtauld
will get far more out of the relationship than the Getty, or its visitors,
ever will.

Munitz disagreed with that, yet again pointing out that the museum's
interests might lose now and then to those of the other Getty programs, in
research, education and conservation. While some may want the museum
acquisitions budget to keep expanding, he said: "We're not the National
Gallery and we're not the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We're a different kind
of institution. Not everybody agrees with that. Change is a painful,
difficult process."
 

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