A Brave New World for Luis Monreal : Chief of the highly respected Getty Conservation Institute will inherit a mountain of global political challenges at UNESCO

When Luis Monreal leaves the Getty Conservation Institute on Tuesday, he will walk away from an efficient, highly regarded organization that he has built in five years flat. Acting as a catalytic force for international art conservation, GCI spearheads field projects around the world, offers expertise, runs training programs and conducts scientific research.

On May 1, on the other hand, when Monreal becomes coordinator of Cultural Heritage Programs for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in Paris, he will walk into a political rat’s nest.

“Friends have been calling and asking if I have thought this through, if I know what I am getting into. But when I take the plunge, I take the plunge,” Monreal said in an interview in his Marina del Rey office. Having said goodby to California’s ski slopes on a weekend trip to Mammoth, the 47-year-old archeologist was attempting to clear his desk of dozens of projects while looking ahead to a mountain of challenges.

UNESCO was created in 1945, amid a rush of postwar idealism that stressed education’s role in safeguarding peace and promoting international understanding. In its early years, the United Nations-affiliated agency focused on intellectual exchanges between Western Europe and the United States, but it steadily grew more political. In the late ‘50s, after the Soviet Union and its East European allies joined, UNESCO become a stage for ideological battles. Newly independent African and Asian countries joined in the ‘60s, pressing the organization to promote literacy in the Third World and to protect their nations’ cultural treasures.

Under the leadership of Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow of Senegal, from 1974 to 1987, UNESCO was criticized for becoming increasingly anti-Western and politically motivated. Conflict came to a head over a proposal to establish a “New World Information and Communication Order,” aimed at censoring the Western press through a “code of conduct” for journalists that would have given governments a right to control information. The United States pulled out in 1984 and cut off its annual contribution of nearly $50 million, and was followed by the United Kingdom in 1985.

UNESCO’s current director general, Federico Mayor Zaragoza, a 54-year-old biochemist and former Spanish minister of education, was elected as a reform candidate in November, 1987. He immediately dropped the “New World Information and Communication Order” proposal--stating that such a practice would violate human rights clauses in UNESCO’s charter--eliminated 826 positions and drafted a plan to return the agency to its original mandate to deal with educational, cultural and scientific issues.

Mayor’s proposed reforms have been favorably received in the American press, but his plan to restructure the agency’s administration has set off a raging protest among UNESCO staff and member countries. About 800 staff members conducted a two-hour strike on March 20 to protest Mayor’s plan and his appointment of 17 new senior officers, including Monreal, a fellow Spaniard.

“I couldn’t say no to a friend in need,” said Monreal. “The challenges are too important not to be accepted.”

If the political obstacles are surmountable, Monreal appears to be supremely qualified for the job. His strength at the Getty, according to his colleagues, has been his ability to envision projects involving interdisciplinary, international cooperation and to set them up so that impoverished countries reap the long-term benefits of learning to care for their own national treasures.

“His vision as an archeologist has broadened my own perspective and made me aware of the issues and needs in developing countries,” said Frank Preusser, chief scientist at the Getty Conservation Institute. “His most remarkable quality is his enthusiasm and everlasting energy that motivates people to go far beyond what’s required of them as employees. He’s full of new ideas. If anybody can revitalize the cultural heritage programs at UNESCO, it’s Luis.” Monreal said he will carry on “the same mission but with different means” at UNESCO, working with a governmental network of about 150 countries. “This is not a career move for me. It’s a linear decision after 27 years of work in the field,” Monreal said. “I started as a museum curator (at the Mares Museum in Barcelona), then became secretary general of the International Council of Museums (a UNESCO affiliate with a membership of 8,000 museum specialists from 121 countries), then set up an international conservation program here. I will continue to work for the preservation and conservation of our cultural heritage.”

The highest priority, however, is re-enlisting the support of the United States, he said. “Without the U.S., UNESCO has lost credibility. The lack of U.S. support not only jeopardizes funding (the U.S. contribution amounted to 25% of the agency’s budget in 1984), it mutilates the international vitality of programs and severely handicaps expertise,” he said.

“UNESCO was probably the best, most efficient U.N. agency in the ‘60s,” Monreal said, recalling how it caught his imagination in the early ‘60s. As a young archeologist working in the Sudan, Monreal saw UNESCO rally public and private resources to save Nubian archeological treasures before they were flooded by the Aswan Dam in Egypt. “The Nubian monuments provided an example of what intergovernmental agencies could do. UNESCO pioneered the salvaging of cultural heritage on a great scale and mobilized a tremendous amount of resources,” he said.

Monreal’s new job will consist of “contributing and developing programs that respond to real needs” and “increasing resources allocated to cultural heritage programs,” he said. Monreal intends to seek support from the private sector, including corporations and foundations. “I always say that the conservation of cultural heritage is a great technological showcase,” he said, citing Olivetti’s funding of the restoration of Leonardo paintings and Japanese television’s underwriting of the Sistine Chapel’s cleaning. Potential donors might supply technology or raw material, as well as money, but first they need to increase their awareness of the need to preserve the world’s cultural heritage, he said.

Under Mayor’s new administrative structure, Monreal will be responsible for monuments, sites, artifacts and ethnographic material, as well as “non-material culture,” described as performing arts and oral traditions that can be preserved through publications. At the Getty Conservation Institute, Monreal will leave an organization staffed by 70 people of 16 nationalities, housed in a sprawling office and laboratory complex in Marina del Rey. “Day by day, it has been the most fabulous years of my life, and I leave with great sadness,” he said.

GCI has developed almost exactly according to the blueprint that he presented to Harold Williams, head of the J. Paul Getty Trust, before he was hired, Monreal said. He credits that to the Getty’s resources, “a marvelous crew,” the confidence of trustees and “a margin of freedom.” There’s also the matter of luck. When Williams pressed him for an example of the field projects he would undertake if hired by the Getty, Monreal boldly stated that they could save the paintings in the tomb of Nefertari in Upper Egypt, never dreaming that project would become GCI’s most spectacular success.

Working out complex negotiations with the Egyptian government, private companies and museum personnel around the world, and conducting laboratory research in Tokyo, Rome and Los Angeles, the institute developed a desperately needed treatment for decay caused by salt efflorescence. The salvaging of the tomb murals is a stunning example of what can be accomplished when conservators and scientists talk to each other and when resources are gathered to support their efforts, Monreal said.

He is equally proud of less visible projects, noting that GCI is “the only conservation research program that works systematically to solve problems that no one understands.” One of these problems concerns coatings that are used on most conservation projects--without regard for how they age, discolor and possibly cause damage. The institute also has examined the effects of indoor environment on works of art and developed low-maintenance, nitrogen-filled showcases that arrest bio-deterioration.

Training is also a major commitment at the institute. A September project will train conservators to treat painted wood sculpture and paintings from Australia and the South Pacific.

Keeping a handle on all these in-house and field endeavors is a daunting task, which Monreal intends to leave to the discretion of his unnamed successor. He won’t give gratuitous advice, but he passionately hopes that GCI will maintain its world view and that the Getty Trust will continue to fund an ambitious conservation program. “Conservation is not a luxury. It’s necessary for education and for the identity of groups and nations. We need more than photographic documentation of important sites,” he said. “Real objects are important because they help us understand who we are and where we go.”