Keeper of the Flame

Last summer’s announcement of Barry Munitz’s appointment as the new president and chief executive officer of the $4.5-billion J. Paul Getty Trust ended a year of speculation about who might succeed retiring Harold M. Williams as head of the world’s wealthiest foundation exclusively devoted to the arts and humanities. But to many people in the art world, the news seemed to come out of left field--if not outer space. Even those who didn’t expect a traditional art museum director to head the trust frequently asked: Barry who?

In academia, the reaction was quite different. Munitz, who has been chancellor of the 23-campus California State University system since 1991 and will assume his new position Jan. 5, is about as prominent as one can be in higher education. Credited with winning new respect for CSU, which has always played second fiddle to the more prestigious University of California system, the 56-year-old administrator has become California’s leading public-college spokesman.

Munitz, born in Brooklyn and educated at Brooklyn College and Princeton University, began his career teaching literature and drama at UC Berkeley but quickly moved into administration.

In 1968, when UC President Clark Kerr became chairman of the Carnegie Foundation Commission on Higher Education, he took Munitz with him as a staff associate. Two years later, at age 29, Munitz became associate provost at the University of Illinois; at 30 he was an academic vice president. In 1976, he was appointed vice president and dean of faculties at the University of Houston-Central Campus; the next year he became chancellor. He left academia for the business world in 1982, when he went to work for Maxxam Inc., a Houston-based holding company, but he returned in 1991 to head CSU.

Poised to take over the multifaceted institution conceived and realized by Williams--including a museum, a grant program and institutes for art conservation, education, research and information--Munitz reflected on impending challenges:

Question: You are arriving at the Getty as an outsider and facing expectations that you will bring a new perspective and make changes. Is that an accurate perception?

Answer: I have been at the opposite end of the tunnel vis-a-vis public image, at what is now the strongest and best-known nontraditional university in the country--with older students, part-time students, evening students, the non-elite aspects of society, as contrasted with the Caltechs or the MITs. Now I’m going to a function that’s perceived as elite by nature, and to a component of that function that’s perceived as even more elite. From a personal point of view, that’s probably the most dramatic transition.

I take that to be an intriguing signal from the Getty board. Anybody who knows the Getty or me or CSU knows this is clearly a statement saying, “Yes, we understand, and that’s what we want. That’s what we feel this generation of leadership requires.” That is a profoundly important statement on the board’s part. Not because it’s me but because of what choosing someone with my background and commitment signals and symbolizes.

Q: Still, one of the nagging questions in the community concerns the Getty’s rather schizophrenic identity--whether it means to be elitist or populist. Can you be all things to all people?

A: No, but I’m more and more convinced it’s not either/or. It’s really terribly insulting and demeaning to suggest that if you are bringing the most elegant and superb of the arts and humanities to a wide range of people, it must mean you are coming away from being elitist--rather than saying a much wider array of people than usual are going to be engaged. Certainly, we can’t be all things to many people, but we can be this thing to many people.

Q: The Getty actually has been involved in education and outreach for years, but it is still perceived as being exclusive. Is your agenda really fundamentally different from Harold Williams’, as some press coverage has inferred, or will you mainly expand upon existing foundations?

A: The notion that the Getty is going from Harold Williams to Barry Munitz and the world is going to change is just not true. I don’t see a dramatic change in agenda or style. An enormous amount has already been done, not only by the museum but in conservation, education and technology. Basically, my hope is to continue exactly along the lines that have been constructed.

Q: What are some examples of your plans to engage a broader audience?

A: They aren’t so much changes as taking advantage of opportunities, now that we are open. For one thing, the American Assembly--a group of about 80 people that meets every year at Arden House, at the old Harriman estate in New York, to discuss a particular topic over a couple of days, issue a publication and have some public dialogue--is taking a break from its usual meeting place to convene here in April. They called me after my appointment, saying the topic this year is “The Current State of American Philanthropy” and asked me to present a paper. I said I’d be happy to, but I invited them to meet here, and they accepted. We’ve always had a grant program, but people don’t quite realize it because they see us as an operating trust, just running our own programs. Now we can gather all those people in a place that is intriguing enough to get anyone in the world to come.

Another example, to me the most beautiful one, is school visits to the museum. Starting in the fall, we have set aside 9 to 11 a.m. every weekday for school groups. We’ve always had school visits, but now we can continue the interaction on a larger scale and really turn our efforts to bringing the children’s families and neighbors to the museum as well.

Another thing that is of emphatically greater interest to me with each passing day is the relationship between the Getty and the entertainment community. Here we are, 10 minutes from the world center of the entertainment business, and it’s not Tinsel Town. The economy of the state of California would not have recovered were it not for the multimedia entertainment industry and the high-tech biotech industry. We need to connect to both.

Q: What are the Getty’s major responsibilities?

A: Internally, there’s a responsibility [for components of the trust] to talk to each other. They have to lean on each other, learn from each other, reinforce each other’s work and share resources.

Outside, the responsibility is upholding values. This may seem naive, but we are a model. You can’t talk about ethics and morality and values if you are not living them. There are projections of as many as 1.8 million visitors this first year at the Getty Center, so a lot of people are going to be exposed to who we are and what we do.

We also have a responsibility in the sense of outreach and community development. We can’t solve [community] problems by ourselves. I have to be careful to not seem to be saying we are going to use our resources and strength to reform society or raise values. But I think we can play a major role as a convener and a facilitator on major public policy issues.

We are not credible as a fund-raising organization, but we can create partnerships and alliances. So I think part of our responsibility is to be the connective tissue for art and humanities policy issues. The Getty Center may be the world’s greatest mousetrap. No one turns down an invitation to come here.

Q: What do you see as your primary challenge?

A: The single most important thing I have to do is remind everyone that our resources are not infinite. Not a day goes by when someone doesn’t tell me, “You must have the greatest job in the world. You never have to worry about money.” I’m getting tired of saying, “That’s just completely wrong.”

Compared to most places? Absolutely. Are we grateful? Absolutely. But does it mean we come to work every morning and say, “Isn’t this wonderful?” We can’t. Over and over in a recent board meeting, the theme that emerged was: setting priorities, making choices, trade-offs, focus. The magic of this place is we will always have more exciting opportunities than real choices to make.

Q: What are your concerns about finances?

A: We are unlike a university or a philanthropic foundation, two major models that have key endowments. If you are a university and you project a certain level of return from your endowment, maybe at most it’s 10% to 15% of your operating budget. So if things go wrong for a year or two, you cut back a program, raise tuition, or if you are a public university, you make a more aggressive pitch to the legislature. If you are a philanthropic organization, you simply lower the level of grant making.

Our entire operation is tied to the return on the endowment. It’s in the nature of being an operating trust. So market difficulties are by definition program difficulties. And just as the Getty Center is opening, we’re getting a fiscal earthquake--a reminder that there are limits.

Q: How do you plan ahead for a downturn?

A: You look at your long-term investment strategy for the portfolio so that you are protecting yourself against some of the extreme gyrations. You remind people that you have to be cautious and conservative about what you do and how you plan. And you build enough contingency into a budget so that you are not going into a given year assuming that every penny you theoretically could spend is committed.

Q: A decision to use stock index options to protect the Getty’s portfolio from a predicted decline in the stock market reportedly deprived the trust of nearly $400 million in 1995-96. How do you guard against that kind of well-intended but badly mistaken judgment?

A: There’s no guarantee. The best you can do is get very bright and experienced people, be as careful as possible, listen to as many people as possible. Ironically, this was a very conservative strategy, undertaken by a group of thoughtful people wanting to be absolutely certain that, with the Getty Center construction at its height, the endowment was protected. And it didn’t mean the savings plan was gone; it just meant that an awful lot of money could have been an even greater amount of money.

Q: The museum is the major public component of the new Getty Center. What does that mean in practical terms?

A: The museum is the primary door into the center, and the primary magnet. That means it has a much more profound obligation to be thoughtful about the other pieces [of the trust] than any of the other pieces have to be thoughtful about the museum. [The museum staff] has to think about education and outreach. They have to be sensitive to the use of their exhibition space. They are taking the lead, but that means reaching out to conservation, reaching out to research, building a program together. They have the basic burden to take the intellectual leadership because they are the 800-pound gorilla.

Q: But if the museum is the acknowledged leader, why does it have to promote the business of the other programs? Wouldn’t it be more logical for them to support the museum’s activities?

A: I’m not concerned that the museum promote the other programs so much as that they work together. I’m not in love with the notion that we are a museum, five institutes and a grant program, even though we say it over and over again. I want it to be understood that we are the Getty Center, not a museum and a bunch of programs.

Q: What about the museum’s acquisition budget? Has it been cut drastically, as some recent press reports indicate?

A: Over the past three years, the acquisitions budget has been reduced by 50% [following a push to fill holes and acquire entire collections in new areas], but that’s not a very useful number because when major opportunities come along, the museum makes commitments totally apart from the regular acquisitions budget. We have no intention of de-emphasizing acquisitions for the museum or coming away from active collecting.

Q: The Getty has committed itself in many different areas. Will you have to cut back or refine some of them?

A: Well, certainly refine and focus. During my tenure here we inevitably will face the situation where opportunities will arise--a new program, a component of a program, a new direction or a new partnership--that will require taking out the least critical pieces [of an existing program]. We can’t just add one more program. That’s the only way we will be healthy, and the only way we will have credibility if we want new partners.

Q: You have been in charge of a huge, state-funded university system that serves a broad segment of the public. How does that relate to your new position?

A: Well, there are some lessons learned--outreach issues, community development issues--and I’ve had a lot of experience working with very bright, creative, ambitious, egotistical people at the university.

But, obviously, one key difference is the source of money, from public tax to private endowment. Another is the order of magnitude: I’m going from 37,000 employees to 1,200. At the university, I spend every year the total of the Getty endowment. And of course the university has hundreds and hundreds of programs--including the arts and humanities, which is all we do at the Getty.

At Getty board meetings, the biggest difference is there are no seats for the press. I keep looking around and asking myself, “Do they want to say that?” And then I realize, “The press isn’t here. This is really wonderful.” It’s also a luxury to focus on key issues with very smart board members who were chosen not because they were nominated by a governor and confirmed by a Democratic Senate for a great variety of reasons but basically because they cared about this institution and we thought they could contribute.

Q: What about art? How does your personal taste relate to the Getty’s collection?

A: This is really a wonderful place for me because my view of art in general stops about the First World War. I have never quite gotten the hang of contemporary art, literature or music. I am intrigued by the painting collection and understand a good part of it, and I am mesmerized by the photographs. I know a great deal about the illuminated manuscripts, having done a lot of graduate work in medieval literature and languages, so that’s a piece that comes very naturally. My biggest disappointment is that [decorative arts curator] Gillian Wilson won’t let me have any of the furniture for my office, at least without posting security guards 24 hours a day.