Rich’s Appointment Is Epic Change for LACMA : Commentary: The balance of power at the museum has been tipped to the UCLA administrator who will now hold the purse strings.

These are interesting times--and the board of trustees at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has just made them a little bit more so.

Monday’s announcement that highly regarded UCLA Executive Vice Chancellor Andrea L. Rich will assume the newly created post of paid president and chief executive officer means that the top job at the Wilshire Boulevard museum will now be held by an administrator, rather than an art historian or curator who has moved up through the professional museum ranks. The long-vacant and still-open position of museum director, who is responsible for setting the institution’s artistic tone and who has hitherto been the institution’s CEO, will henceforth be No. 2 in LACMA’s hierarchy.

Here are two instant distinctions created by the dramatic news: On Nov. 1, Rich becomes one of the highest-ranking women in the art museum profession, while LACMA paradoxically becomes the nation’s only major art museum without a trained art museum professional at the helm. The change is no less than epochal.

For at least 30 years the art museum world has debated the radical proposition of replacing artistic directors with professional managers. In 1963 the Minneapolis Art Institute created a stir by hiring a bank president as CEO. In 1972 the Art Institute of Chicago named as its director a former chancellor of the University of Kansas, who held a Ph.D. in psychology.

Both institutes have long since abandoned the practice. Just as universities have found that a faculty background is usually the best preparation for a college presidency, so some art museums have learned that defending the integrity of their professional standards cannot be best accomplished by a purely administrative head.

Nonetheless, other museums have been tempted to give it a try--most recently, New York’s Museum of Modern Art. MOMA ultimately backed away from the cliff, but hiring a CEO remains a contentious option for many institutions.

Today, two premier American museums do retain paid administrative presidents, in addition to directors who are art professionals. The bifurcation of the top job is generally regarded to have been OK, if not stellar, at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, while it has proved rather more rocky at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where program conflicts have occurred. Yet, however well or badly the scheme has functioned, the governing structure at both the Met and Philadelphia is far different from what LACMA has just inaugurated.

At both Eastern museums, power has been divided into equal parts . The director is responsible for curatorial affairs, education, the library, the registrar’s office, conservation and all other artistic aspects of the institution; the president oversees the multifarious business side, including finance, operations, development, marketing and membership. As coequals, the director and the president report to the board of trustees.

LACMA has yet to finalize its administrative chain of command, but this much is clear: The director and president will not be coequals. The director will report to the president, who holds the power of the purse.

A split but coequal leadership such as the Met’s and Philadelphia’s is fraught with potential problems--including the muddying of clear lines of authority. Can development really be separated out from an exhibition program? Or marketing from education? The “unequal” plan at LACMA eliminates the potential for conflict in day-to-day operations.

But it also creates a whole new set of contingencies. Not least is the inescapable impact it will have on the pool of candidates for the vacant job of LACMA director, whose diminished position can’t help but be more like a traditional chief curator.

American art museums have always been oddly organized. A board of trustees is composed almost exclusively of amateurs, who represent the public, while a museum staff is made up of professionals, who represent the discipline of art. A precarious balance between them is pursued.

At LACMA, the balance has just been sharply tipped. The ranking professional position has now been re-created in the board’s own image: An art amateur will lead the professional staff.

In no way does it diminish Rich’s impressive credentials earned during 34 years at UCLA--first as a student, then a faculty member, finally an administrator--to note that the new president is not, according to a LACMA spokesman, on the membership rolls of the art museum she has just been hired to guide into the 21st Century. The absence simply illustrates the enormity of the board’s decision.

Optimistically, the parallelism drawn between the new CEO and the board of trustees could prove beneficial in one important way. LACMA’s board, with a longstanding reputation for being by turns sluggish and interfering, needs to be shaken up and rebuilt. A skillful CEO who speaks a common administrative language might be able to pull off what a more traditional art professional might not. Rich, as an Angeleno who knows the community well, can also hit the ground running.

As amateurs, though, great museum boards learn to prudently stand behind the artistic vision of a gifted professional. The unique absence of such a professional from LACMA’s top slot opens a Pandora’s box.

For example, during the board’s multiyear search for a leader, the buzzwords emanating from Wilshire Boulevard have been about reshaping the museum as an educational institution. The hiring of a university administrator as CEO underscores that aim.

The problem is this: While education is nice, and educational programs can be important, they are a secondary pursuit. They can never supplant the museum’s primary responsibility, which is to preserve works of art and offer a distinctive platform for visual experience.

Personal chemistry between a dynamic president and a talented director will, of course, make or break any plan, however cleverly crafted. But because LACMA’s top post will not be occupied by an articulate professional spokesperson for the museum’s fundamental charge, the as-yet fruitless search for a director has just had its flame turned up several degrees. An art museum professional of impeccable credentials is now even more critical for LACMA to secure than it has ever been before.