Art, History and the Real World...

Robert F. Maguire is running a couple of minutes late for his 10 a.m. appointment. Wearing a photo ID badge that labels him as a trustee of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, he strides into the museum director’s office, eyes a tray of cappuccinos on a coffee table and asks, “Which one is the decaf?”

The distinguished-looking mega-developer, who serves as president of the museum’s board of directors, has agreed to answer yet another round of questions about the beleaguered museum, but he has his own agenda. Accompanied by 20th-Century art curator Stephanie Barron, who is currently coordinator of curatorial affairs, he is eager to show off two new attractions--a study center for Japanese scrolls and a jewel-box-like installation of European artworks from the Renaissance.

Maguire doesn’t say so, but the message is clear: Forget the fiscal crisis that has forced LACMA to reduce its staff, programs and public viewing hours. Never mind charges that the trustees haven’t done all they could to ensure the museum’s long-term health and welfare. Don’t even think about the controversial appointment of Director Michael E. Shapiro, an inexperienced administrator who, after less than one year on the job, announced his resignation Aug. 29 and left last week. But here is a museum that is fighting its way out of chaos and getting a grip on the future.

The stakes are extremely high. One of the top art museums in the country and the biggest in the Western states, LACMA has been the site of blockbuster exhibitions on subjects ranging from the treasures of King Tut’s tomb to the splendors of Mexico. Young as it is, at 28, the museum is a place that international travelers visit and local boosters proudly promote as a major cultural asset. Professionals count on the museum as a source of first-rate scholarship and publications, while schoolteachers value it as an educational resource for their classes.

Eighteen months ago, the museum was riding high. But, in the wake of a fiscal crisis, LACMA’s operating budget has been slashed from about $30 million to $25 million, its staff of 355 has been trimmed to 273, and it has closed an additional day, on Tuesdays. All this seems to have happened with terrifying speed. When former Director Earl A. (Rusty) Powell III resigned in April, 1992, to direct the National Gallery of Art in Washington, he was leaving a plum job. Now that the museum is without a director again, trustees believe that they can’t even begin a search for Shapiro’s successor until they clear up the museum’s financial picture and lay the groundwork of a future that has become unclear.

So for now, the president of the board is running the ship, and he has not forgotten the problems that have turned this third year of his four-year tour of duty into a nightmare. But Maguire understands the importance of symbolism at a time of crisis, and he has chosen his symbols carefully.

Constructing the scroll center--which entailed moving an office and installing a massive storage vault at the Pavilion for Japanese Art--is an attempt to resolve a long-festering dispute with Joe D. Price, who in 1983 gave the museum a collection of Japanese art, along with $5 million in seed money for a building to house it. Price has never been satisfied with the pavilion or the museum’s handling of his gift, and on Aug. 4 he filed suit for the return of loaned artworks that are not part of the gift. Completion of the long-discussed study center is unlikely to win him over, but the center is visible proof that LACMA officials have tried to please him.

The new Renaissance gallery, on the other hand, is a model of the curatorial collaboration and educational commitment that we can expect to see at the museum in the future, Maguire and Barron say. Organized by Martin Chapman, a decorative arts curator, but composed of objects from several departments, the exhibits offer aesthetic enticement as well as a picture of life in the Renaissance, enhanced by easy-to-read labels and illustrated explanations of styles and customs.

On a tour of the new gallery--with Chapman offering a lively commentary on everything from carved ivory reliefs to silver drinking cups--Maguire seems relieved to step out of the spotlight, but he can’t escape the hot seat. Maguire, the managing partner of Maguire Thomas Partners (a major downtown development firm that is currently consumed with the $7-billion Playa Vista project in Playa del Rey), joined the LACMA board when the museum was booming.

But now--for the second time in a little more than a year--he is at the helm of a director-less museum. And the second time is considerably tougher than the first, because of the continuing fiscal crunch and a host of related problems.

Maguire put 17-year LACMA veteran Barron in charge of curatorial affairs, while longtime Chief Deputy Director Ronald B. Bratton, a veteran of county government, manages administrative and financial matters. A dozen of Maguire’s 45 fellow trustees have been enlisted to serve on a management transition team with Barron and Bratton. The team meets on Wednesday mornings to deal with a wide range of issues.

The first priority is to stabilize the museum’s relationship with the county, Maguire says. The county’s fiscal crisis has prompted Supervisor Gloria Molina to call for a review of a longstanding contract that has obligated the county to pay for LACMA’s maintenance and operations since the museum was founded in 1958. And even longtime museum supporters on the Board of Supervisors such as Ed Edelman and Deane Dana have publicly questioned the amount of support that the museum can expect to receive from the county at a time when many social services are barely being met.

THE STICKY COUNTY DEAL

There’s no question that the Museum Associates, the nonprofit organization that manages the museum, will have to bear a greater burden, Maguire says, but there is also no question that the county has a legally binding obligation to pay for the museum’s maintenance and operations.

“We have a contract with the county. The museum isn’t optional. It isn’t a discretionary expenditure,” he insists. “The only question is the level of support we can expect in the future. We have to come to an understanding of what is realistic. It’s to the benefit of both the museum and the county to do that.”

Arriving at a mutually beneficial agreement--and avoiding the annual budget wars that eat up so much time and energy--will require negotiating with the county chief administrative officer and the county counsel, who can then recommend a course of action to the supervisors, Maguire says. “The issue isn’t very complicated,” he says. But he won’t hazard a guess as to how long the process might take or what the resolution might be. No talks are currently scheduled, according to county representatives.

The county contract is the first of five “critical short-term issues” Maguire listed in a Sept. 20 memo to the LACMA staff announcing the management transition team.

Second is the resolution of a $100-million lawsuit, undertaken with Stanford University, against the First Church of Christ, Scientist. The dispute--which could provide a multimillion-dollar windfall for the museum--centers on a book about church founder Mary Baker Eddy, written in 1945 by Bliss Knapp, a Boston-based Christian Science teacher who died in 1958. Knapp repeatedly tried to persuade the church to publish the book, “The Destiny of the Mother Church,” but the church refused on grounds that it deifies Eddy and differs from church doctrine. Knapp’s wife, Eloise Mabury Knapp, and sister-in-law, Bella Mabury, who were heirs to a California banking fortune, took up the cause after his death.

The two sisters left the bulk of their estates to the church on the condition that the book be published as “authorized” Christian Science literature--without disclaimers by church officials--and be “prominently displayed in substantially all the church’s reading rooms” around the world. The wills also required the church to repudiate a 1948 letter to Knapp from the board of directors rejecting the book. If the church did not fulfill conditions of the wills, the bequest was to be evenly divided between LACMA and Stanford. The book has been published and distributed, but the museum and the university have sued the church, claiming that terms of the wills were not fully satisfied. The case is pending in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Maguire’s third priority, as stated in his memo, is “the public image of the museum--working to establish a positive and proactive publicity and press strategy.”

The fourth critical issue listed is the possible acquisition of adjacent May Co. property. Maguire plans to see if the property can be developed both for additional museum space and a source of revenue, without impairing the museum financially.

The fifth issue is the development of a sculpture park that will be partly paid for by a $5-million county bond.

Other matters of pressing importance include giving raises to employees paid by the Museum Associates, to keep pace with county salaries, Maguire says. High-level vacancies will be left for a new director to fill, but some lower-level positions must be filled for the museum to continue to serve school groups and carry out its programs, he says. The salaries of new employees will be paid by the Museum Associates. The board is also committed to reopening the museum on Tuesdays, Maguire says, but no plan has been put in place to make that happen.

As for a new director, there’s no action to report, and that’s a good thing, Barron says. Rushing to appoint a search committee or to hire an executive search firm and setting a deadline for an appointment would not serve the museum’s best interests, she says. “No director we would want would want to come here now,” she says, explaining that it will take time to regroup and forge a new direction. One positive development is that the staff has gained a new sense of resolve and camaraderie as they focus on how to get on with their jobs, Barron says.

“What is needed is to get back a real sense of pride for volunteers, visitors, trustees and staff,” she commented in an earlier interview. “It’s the most valuable asset. I don’t have answers, but I know that every decision you make should take that into account.”

Bratton, who has directed the museum’s financial affairs and county relationship for 10 years, speaks with unabashed pride of LACMA as a well-managed, technologically sophisticated institution that is debt-free, fundamentally sound and only going through “a temporary setback.”

The current situation is more serious than past downturns because of Southern California’s economy, he says, but he has no doubt that the museum will survive and continue to get support from the county. “Los Angeles has benefited enormously from the open and trusting relationship between the county and the Museum Associates,” he says, and any breach of that trust would be disastrous for both sides.

Indeed, the museum has arrived at a crossroads after a period of profound disruption. LACMA has enjoyed spectacular growth since its 1965 opening on Wilshire Boulevard. But just as it was poised to expand its facilities--to accommodate its collection and provide space for future gifts--and to broaden its audience with new educational outreach programs, the museum’s financial and human resources were sharply reduced.

As these discouraging events have unfolded, a confidential LACMA-commissioned survey, conducted last spring by the Boston Consulting Group, revealed that the museum ranks far below comparable institutions in terms of endowment and unrestricted trustee giving. It suggested that some of the trouble could have been averted if the museum’s trustees had exercised more foresight and extended their generosity to matters outside their personal interests. The appointment of an inexperienced director has intensified questions about the trustees’ judgment.

One upset that brought Shapiro’s management style under sharp scrutiny was his transfer of Maurice Tuchman, the founding curator of the museum’s 20th-Century art department, to a newly created department of drawings, after 28 years of service. Tuchman has sued Shapiro and the Museum Associates for reinstatement. The defense argued that Tuchman’s complaint is a routine civil service grievance because he is a civil service employee, but Judge David Yaffe disagreed and the case is being prepared for trial in Los Angeles Superior Court.

THE TRUSTEES TAKE OVER

Now that Shapiro has departed, the board must help to fulfill some of the director’s duties, but that puts the trustees in a delicate position. LACMA’s board has always had a reputation for meddling in operations and curatorial affairs, instead of concentrating on setting policy and raising money. As they attempt to restore luster to the museum’s tarnished image, they must be conscious of their own collective image. Indeed, some staff members say that Maguire’s memo about the management transition team is evidence of a trustee takeover.

“It’s a fine line,” Maguire acknowledges, when questioned about the difference between facilitating and interfering. “What we have to do is enable curators and other staff members to do their best work.”

Such questions are not new to Maguire. He arrived at a mid-August interview with a fat file of facts and figures that defended the trustees’ record of philanthropy. Exhibit A was a chart comparing private donations and gifts of art to LACMA with contributions from the county. Every year since the museum’s opening, the private side has provided more monetary support than the county. During the museum’s 28-year lifetime, the Museum Associates have brought in $618 million in revenue and artworks while the county has contributed $165 million, Maguire explained. Private donors have provided a collection that is valued at $765 million and buildings that are worth about $124 million, he said.

“The point is, you can’t do everything,” Maguire said, referring to the museum’s $21-million endowment, which is shockingly small by national standards. “You can’t do it all at the same time, not if you are preparing a museum for the future. Look at what has been accomplished in 28 years. We have built collections, programs and buildings while depending on the county for an endowment. We did way more than we were obligated to do.” Just a few months ago, he passed the hat among trustees and came up with $1.8 million for operations to help make up for lost county funds, he said.

A few minutes and a lot of facts later, he summed up his feelings about the county’s budget reduction: “It stinks. The cuts took the guts out of the place in terms of how we operate it.” But bad as the situation may be, he says, “all the problems are resolvable” and the museum has a promising future.

The concept of endowment remains a sore point, however. Many trustees patiently explain that LACMA was modeled after the National Gallery, which gets the bulk of its funding from the federal government. What they fail to note is that the National Gallery has an endowment of $195 million, about $95 million of which is not restricted for acquisitions.

But now the board is committed to increasing the museum’s endowment, to about $200 million, Maguire says. He plans to schedule a retreat for trustees and staff to consider the implications of the Boston study, as well as a strategic plan developed by Los Angeles-based Andersen Consulting. “There’s a wealth of useful information in these studies, and we need to look at it,” he says.

HOW OTHER INSIDERS SEE THE PROBLEMS

As head of LACMA’s board, Maguire is its chief spokesman but far from the only one. Several other trustees willingly air their views about the museum and their relationship to it:

* Attorney Daniel N. Belin, chairman of the board, ushers a reporter into his austerely furnished 22nd-floor office in Brentwood. A conversation about the museum will be “a pleasant interlude” in his hectic schedule, he says, but the subject worries him.

Eager to put the current problems in the context of past success, he offers an analogy: “It’s like the stock market in 1987. Stocks lost 15% or 20%, but it was a momentary setback. . . . I am disappointed in recent events. But, in terms of the big picture, I’m not disappointed. I’m very proud of what we have accomplished and optimistic about where we are going.”

* Dr. Richard A. Simms greets his interviewer at his spacious dental clinic in Harbor City and offers a tour of his collection of German drawings before settling into his wood-paneled office. During a two-hour conversation he talks about the county’s past encouragement of the museum’s growth and the importance of LACMA as a community resource where people of all backgrounds can discover their roots and learn about other cultures.

The big obstacle to developing this resource is no secret: “M-o-n-e-y, that’s it,” he says. And replacing lost public dollars with private funds is difficult, especially in a dismal economy. “We all know the museum needs a larger endowment. Rob Maguire came into office talking about the endowment. But the size and complexity of the museum make it like a battleship. The brakes are not going to stop it suddenly, and it takes a long time to turn it around.”

* George Boone, a retired dentist who has contributed generously to the museum’s education program, registers a vote of confidence by telephone. “I can’t think of any other museum that has done as well in such a short time,” he says. “It is just a marvel. I hold my head very proud.” Having joined the board “to help the children of Southern California” and “to say thank you for being raised here,” he says he has been stung by criticism of trustees who have given time and money to LACMA.

* Real estate investor Arthur Gilbert takes a different approach, in keeping with his reputation as a single-minded collector. Answering a telephone inquiry about his LACMA trusteeship, he says, “We all have our roles to play. My job is to build the best collection I can”--then he invites his interrogator to dinner. At the ensuing party in his sumptuous Beverly Hills home, Gilbert wears a sporty lemon-yellow outfit and holds forth on two of his favorite subjects: his distaste for modern and contemporary art and his love of “beautiful things,” such as the decorative arts he collects.

“I think everything in the Anderson Building is junk,” he says, referring to LACMA’s wing for modern and contemporary art. But he is pleased that his donated collections of silver and micro-mosaics are installed at the museum, even if some unnamed curators fail to recognize their importance. His final gift to departing guests is a close look at his collection of gold snuff boxes that he plans to give to the museum--if it meets his conditions.

* Meanwhile, trustee Stanley Grinstein is tired of running into people at cocktail parties who read newspaper reports of the museum’s problems and ask him if LACMA is still open. He calls The Times to protest what he believes is unduly negative coverage. “The museum isn’t dying,” he insists as his voice rises. “It’s a healthy institution with normal problems.”

THE POWER OF THE BOARD

Former LACMA Director Powell also defends the trustees. “I had a great relationship with the board,” he says in a telephone interview. “I never, ever felt the board interfered in areas that are the domain of the director and staff. . . . The old legacy of meddlesomeness was something I heard about, but I didn’t experience it.”

Powell weathered a major upset in 1988, however, when the late industrialist Armand Hammer broke a 17-year promise to donate his collections of paintings and Daumier prints and a Leonardo da Vinci manuscript to LACMA. Making demands of the museum that were not negotiable, while claiming that the museum couldn’t provide adequate space for his collections, he instead built his own museum in Westwood with funds from Occidental Petroleum Corp. (UCLA has agreed to manage the Hammer Museum, but the new program will not begin until legal complications are resolved.)

Hammer was a special case, Powell says, “and we said no to him.”

The board didn’t say no soon enough, according to one staff member, who alleges that other trustees “watched Hammer and took lessons.” Powell disputes this, noting that Hammer gave generously to LACMA and that he didn’t make his final, unacceptable demands until shortly before they parted company.

Art museums almost inevitably include collectors with strong “points of view,” Powell says. But they play an important part in an ideal mixture that includes community representatives and trustees with business expertise. “The networking of board members is really important,” he says. “Trustees don’t need to give money if they can put the director and the development office in touch with someone who can.”

The question of who can and will support LACMA has assumed increasing urgency now that the county has reduced its contributions to the museum, and trustees acknowledge that Southern California’s philanthropic track record is not encouraging. “There isn’t the tradition of supporting cultural institutions here that has been established in the East,” trustee Walter L. Weisman says. “At the end of the day, we need to establish those traditions.”

One big push in fund raising for LACMA should be in the business community, Maguire says: “We’ve got to get corporate support increased and consistent. That has been erratic in the past. We also need to develop the museum’s revenue sources, such as restaurants and parking. We need to make sure we understand who we are trying to attract to the museum and do things that are appealing to the public.”

Publishing magnate Cleon T. (Bud) Knapp (no relation to Bliss Knapp), who joined the board a few months ago, thinks the trustees should broaden their fund-raising vision and tap foreign headquarters of companies that do business in Los Angeles, particularly those that are based in Latin America and the Far East and have ties with large segments of Los Angeles’ population.

Board Chairman Belin contends that funds will be forthcoming once the museum settles down and has a new director. Planned education programs, aimed at community outreach, will bring in “major, seven-figure gifts,” he says.

SO, NOW WHAT?

As the museum’s staff and trustees look beyond finances and think of the future, they talk about LACMA’s role in the community. The museum seems to be in no danger of losing its place as Southern California’s encyclopedic art museum, although it may need to build up areas that would serve community interests and coordinate its collecting with other local institutions. No longer the only game in town, LACMA is one of many Southern California art museums that have grown up in the last few decades, including the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Norton Simon Museum and half a dozen smaller showcases.

Despite its problems, LACMA is particularly well situated to march boldly into the future, curator Barron says. “We have an opportunity to do here what can’t be done in New York. This is a much more open city; it’s not burdened by history. We have the possibility to be leader in not just the ‘what’ but the ‘how.’

“Geographically, we are in the right place in America. We have terrific colleagues--the extraordinary strength of the Getty, the Museum of Contemporary Art and many other cultural institutions. We have the potential for expansion, and not only in terms of real estate. We have to believe in the future of the institution, not just focus on the ‘now’ but the future--10 years, 20 years from now. We need the support of the community to do it. We have always had it, and we have always enjoyed it. We need it more than ever so that we can get there.”

Steven D. Lavine, president of CalArts and author of the 1992 book “Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture,” offers his thoughts on the County Museum’s mission: “LACMA is in a better position than any other museum here to deal with issues of intercultural complexity. With its core holdings of Indian, Near Eastern and, of course, European art, it has a range that can be interpreted to reveal more about what the past has to do with our present.” The challenge is to stop separating different cultures, he says, and to exhibit art in ways that illuminate relationships between various peoples and periods.

“The museum has great curators, like Pratapaditya Pal, Rob Singer, Maurice Tuchman and Stephanie Barron, who have a history of doing exhibitions that go beyond narrowly construed art themes,” Lavine says. Such exhibitions “tell social stories that need to be told,” he says, and he would like to see more of them.

The museum also needs to “aggressively establish more interesting and complex relationships with the communities of Los Angeles,” he says. “It needs to think of itself as one of the great gifts available to a whole broad range of people who live in Los Angeles under more or less adverse circumstances. It should ask, ‘What should we do so that a single mother who wants to make a gift to her kids thinks of a trip to the County Museum as that gift.’ It should find ways to listen to more communities about what they really want from a museum. There needs to be a feeling of ownership and participation by people who can’t afford memberships.”

But first the museum needs a director. And that too is a subject of widespread discussion. The fact that LACMA trustees passed over more qualified candidates in favor of Shapiro, coupled with the museum’s mounting financial problems, puts the museum in a far less attractive position than it was when Powell resigned. Privately, many museum directors say that the trustees will have a difficult time wooing top candidates. But others disagree.

“At this point, it would take a real masochist,” Lavine says. “But if the board sits down with the art staff and works out its direction, good people will want to come here. . . . One thing the new director will inherit is that the board and the staff don’t want this (series of problems) to happen a second time.”

Furthermore, Lavine says, “You have to remember that Los Angeles is one of the two world cities in the United States. That’s a pretty strong lure.”

Henry T. Hopkins, chairman of UCLA’s art department and director of the university’s Wight Gallery, bases his hope for LACMA on human nature. “There’s always someone who wants a challenge,” he says. “Let’s hope the right person is out there.”