CSU Chancellor Munitz to Lead the Getty Trust

Ending six months of speculation about who would be the next leader of the world’s richest and most far-reaching foundation devoted to the arts and humanities, Barry Munitz, chancellor of the California State University system, has been appointed president and chief executive of the $4.2-billion J. Paul Getty Trust.

Munitz, 55, an experienced private- and public-sector administrator known as a visionary populist during his six-year tenure as head of Cal State, will succeed Harold M. Williams, who last summer announced his intention to retire on his 70th birthday, Jan. 5, 1998, just three weeks after the $1-billion Getty Center is scheduled to open in Brentwood.

In his new position, Munitz will lead the group of organizations governed by the Getty Trust: the J. Paul Getty Museum, a grant program and institutes for art conservation, education, research, information and museum management.

Cal State board members said they will schedule a special meeting next month to set up the search for a successor to Munitz as head of the 22-campus system. They said Munitz has promised to stay through Jan. 5, giving them time to find a strong replacement.

“Well, it looks like the Getty has struck oil again,” said state Supt. of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin, who called Munitz’s decision “a huge loss to California higher education. He’s been an incredibly important champion.”

Munitz’s appointment, announced Thursday by the Getty, ends an international search involving dozens of prominent candidates from the fields of business, academia and the arts. Finalists were thought also to have included California Institute of the Arts President Steven Lavine, Harvard University President Neil Rudenstein and Getty Museum director John Walsh.

Munitz was the Getty’s choice for the highly coveted position because of his track record and proven interest in the arts, said Robert F. Erburu, chairman of the Getty’s Board of Trustees and chairman emeritus of the Times Mirror Co., who headed the trust’s five-person search committee.

“First and foremost we wanted someone who had a passion for the arts and the humanities, and had the intellectual capacity to develop an ongoing vision of what the Getty Trust could become. It’s not a static institution,” Erburu said.

“Clearly Barry’s performance at Cal State is very impressive, both in terms of his leadership and his vision and ability to bring his colleagues along, and in his record of outreach,” Erburu said.

“There’s no other Harold Williams, but it is intriguing that [both he and Munitz] have had a public service life, a corporate life, an educational life and a cultural life. There aren’t that many people in this country who have that mixture of portfolios,” he said.

Williams, who is a director of Times Mirror, said he felt “terrific” about Munitz’s appointment: “With the opening of the Getty Center, it needs an outstanding leader for the next decade. . . . I didn’t make the decision, but once I heard of Barry’s interest, as far as I was concerned, the search was over.”

Munitz, who says he plans to try to bring the resources of the Getty to the broadest range of people, remarked, “This should be the single most influential arts and humanities voice in the country. In a society that is increasingly technical and uncivil and fragmented, there is a core of humanistic value that should be the adhesive. This [job] seems to me the single best opportunity to provide that adhesive.”

Born and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., Munitz studied classics and comparative literature at Brooklyn College and Princeton University. He began his academic career in 1966 at UC Berkeley as an assistant professor of drama and literature, then served as associate provost and academic vice president for the University of Illinois system. He moved to the University of Houston as chancellor in 1977.

He left that institution in 1982 to become a senior executive at Maxxam Inc. in Houston and remained at the company until 1991, when he joined California State University as chancellor.

Gov. Pete Wilson praised Munitz on Thursday as “one of the premier stewards” of the Cal State system and said his leadership has positioned it well for his successor.

“Barry leaves the CSU system in solid shape after making it one of the preeminent state university systems in the nation,” Wilson said.

Munitz had been approached by the Getty months ago, but he had fended the trust off, saying he had no plans to leave Cal State. Just eight months ago, he told The Times he was too young for the Getty job. “I’m planning to be here [at Cal State] as long as [the trustees] want me to be here,” he said at the time.

But the Getty--particularly Williams, who is a friend--kept calling. Munitz said he and his wife, Anne, agonized over the decision during the last week.

On Thursday, Munitz said he changed his mind largely because Getty board members convinced him that he had misunderstood the job.

“I perceived it as a traditional foundation job or as a traditional museum-oriented job. It turns out what it is is a university and a museum and a foundation, and there’s nothing like it in the world,” he said.

The new president’s job will differ sharply from the role Williams played in shaping the trust and “creating the physical reality” of the Getty Center, Munitz said.

“The key now is to put that time and energy to the policy side. . . . The building blocks are all there.

Although the Getty is in a strong spotlight, Munitz said he has been under such intense scrutiny running a huge, publicly funded institution that moving to the trust will give him the luxury of relative isolation.

Still, there are daunting challenges. Among them, he said, is “weaving together the components of the center, strengthening the other components alongside the museum, which is already so strong, and being as certain as I can be that at the top of each there is the strongest possible leadership.”

Munitz’s decision sent shock waves through California’s education community, where the charismatic administrator is known to be one of the nation’s most articulate spokesmen on education issues.

Munitz quickly rose to prominence as a deft strategist and savvy administrator at Cal State. He set out to repair the frayed relationship between Cal State and the University of California, prompting the two top public college systems to work together to lobby the Legislature in tough budget times. He also joined efforts with Eastin, since Cal State trains the majority of the state’s teachers for kindergarten through 12th grade.

Munitz incurred the wrath of some faculty by putting in place a merit pay plan to reward top performers and prod underachievers. He also lighted a fire under the presidents of his 22 institutions, making private fund-raising--virtually nonexistent when he arrived--a part of their job description.

But he also gave presidents more room to operate, urging them to take more initiative and backing them up when they did.

Mostly, however, Munitz wanted to change the way Cal State, which draws its students from the top third of California high school graduates, saw itself. He became an ambassador for regional universities--what he called “comprehensive, inferiority-complex-driven institutions.” Cal State might not be as choosy as the University of California, he would say, but its type of institution delivered the most important education in the nation, transforming raw potential into accomplishment.

Well known as an artful consensus builder, Munitz “has such a gift of looking people in the eye and getting them to do the right thing. He’s not timid, he’s not afraid,” said Eastin, who noted that while the UC Board of Regents devolved into bitter bickering over affirmative action, the Cal State board did not take up the issue and remained civil.

“There’s a reason the [Cal State] trustees didn’t take a vote on affirmative action,” Eastin said. “It was Barry’s stewardship. It just never came up.”

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Profile: Barry Munitz

* Born: July 26, 1941

* Residence: Long Beach

* Education: Bachelor’s degree in in classics and comparative literature, Brooklyn College, 1963; PhD, Princeton University, 1968

* Career highlights: Staff associate, Carnegie Foundation Commission on Higher Education 1968-70; academic vice president, University of Illinois system 1971-75; chancellor, University of Houston, 1976-82; vice chairman of Maxxam, a Houston- based holding company, 1982-90; chancellor, California State University, 1991-present.

* Interests: Chess, tennis, reading.

* Family: Married to Anne Tomfohrde

* Quote: “This should be the single most influential arts and humanities voice in the country. In a society that is increasingly technical and uncivil and fragmented, there is a core of humanistic value that should be the adhesive.”

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Profile: Harold M. Williams

* Born: Jan. 5, 1928, in Philadelphia

* Residence: Los Angeles

* Education: Bachelor’s degree, UCLA, 1946, at 18; law degree, Harvard Law School, 1949

* Career highlights: Went to work for industrialist Norton Simon as a tax attorney at Hunt Foods & Industries in 1955 and rose through the ranks, becoming chairman of the board of Norton Simon Inc. in 1968; dean and professor of management at UCLA Graduate School of Management, 1970-77; chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, 1977-81; president and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust, 1981-present; he serves as a director of Times Mirror Co.

* Interests: Jazz and classical music; reading works by Eastern European and Latin American authors who grapple with their countries’ problems

* Family: Married to Nancy Englander. He has two children from a former marriage and she has one.