Will Getty Scale Hill of Hopes?

Last Thursday, the J. Paul Getty Trust quietly made a make-or-break decision.

Naming a new president and chief executive to guide the powerful art institution into the 21st century has brought it face to face with a dilemma of critical importance. Simply put: How can the billion-dollar Getty Center, which is preparing for an eagerly anticipated December opening on its Brentwood hilltop, best be a patron for the public discourse of contemporary cultural life?

The answers aren’t so simple--especially when most attention currently seems directed at how best to get the public to patronize the Getty.

As expected, the Getty Trust turned to the American university system for a successor to Harold M. Williams, the man most responsible for shaping the trust that exists today.

Williams, president since 1981, came to the Getty after distinguished service in government (head of the Securities and Exchange Commission in the Carter administration), education (founding dean of UCLA’s graduate school of management) and business (chairman of Norton Simon Inc.). He will retire Jan. 5--his 70th birthday--just three weeks after the new Getty Center opens.

The resume of his successor, Barry Munitz, chancellor since 1991 of the California State University system, is not dissimilar: former college teacher, program assistant in a philanthropic foundation, eminently successful businessman, widely admired university administrator. Yet the situation Munitz steps into is considerably different from the opportunity Williams faced 16 years ago.

Of the myriad decisions Williams has made during his tenure at the Getty Trust, three big ones were decisive. They concern money, program and place.

First, Williams shepherded the phenomenal growth of an already extraordinary endowment. At his death, oilman J. Paul Getty unexpectedly left a $700-million estate to the Malibu museum that bears his name, astonishing the art world. Today, that endowment is six times its original size, valued at about $4.2 billion. The Getty is the wealthiest art institution anywhere, its potential staggering.

Second, with the help of his wife, former National Endowment for the Arts program officer Nancy Englander, Williams transformed the Getty from an art museum into an ambitious, multi-task center. It still collects mostly European art in its museum, but the Getty now also oversees a grant program to other institutions globally, along with operating five institutes of its own: art conservation, research, education, electronic information and museum management training. Each is influential in its field.

Williams’ third major decision was more debatable--but at least as dramatic as it was problematic. The plan to locate the new Getty Center on a conspicuous Brentwood hilltop overlooking the San Diego Freeway created a spectacular campus setting for a new museum and the various institutes, one that is likely to be an attractive draw for visitors. (The ocean-to-mountain views alone will knock your socks off.) However, deciding to build at a considerable remove from the day-to-day fabric of a city neighborhood also created a powerful symbol.

Culture, the shining campus-on-a-hill announces, is something that you visit, not something that you live.

In American society, art is already perceived to be remote, esoteric, even somewhat alien. The Getty’s new location only reinforces that unfortunate perception.

Not surprisingly, the Getty is now scrambling to figure out how to make itself seem an integral, more accessible part of the cultural life of all Los Angeles. The policy focus of the newly appointed president, who has been described as a visionary populist, must deal with this pressing issue.

One thing is certain: Populism is not the answer. In fact, it simply aggravates an already polarized cultural field.

Usually the question is framed like this: How can an “elitist” field like art be given more “popular” appeal?

On one side of that debate are the academic specialists, increasingly inbred, obsessed with intellectual faddishness, group-think and the ritual minutiae familiar to any monastic pursuit. On the other are what H.L. Mencken wickedly derided as “the booboisie,” for whom one diversion is as good as the next, as long as it conforms to easy expectations and doesn’t scare the horses.

Yet the supposed struggle between the values of elitism and populism is a false issue. For the truth is that any great American art institution already embraces both.

In a democracy, anybody can be an elitist, if he or she is willing to do the work and assume the responsibility. For the determination of what constitutes the finest, most compelling and distinguished artistic expression is not circumscribed by ancestry, wealth or eternally fixed tradition, as it is in aristocratic or theocratic societies. Instead, democratic culture must be fluid, mindful of established principle but perpetually open to the thrill of persuasive argument, which can come from any sector of society.

The crisis in American cultural life today is that possibilities for rigorously independent arguments are rapidly disappearing beneath the relentless bottom line. The public world, perpetually fragile and uncertain, has atrophied to a perilous degree.

Unfortunately, this authentic struggle is taking place over on the shrinking margin, while the terms “elitism” and “populism” mask the true and vexing problem.

Once, a public intellectual life flourished in the gap between these two extremes. Now, the old breed of nonacademic intellectuals who thought and wrote for the educated public has almost disappeared--and from every sphere of life. The health of our public institutions, including art museums, is suffering gravely for it.

It’s doubtful any other cultural institution save the Getty has the wherewithal to address this critical problem, particularly as it relates to visual art. The Getty’s wealth, stature and presence in L.A. are all ideal for the pursuit.

The urban bohemia that at one time fostered and supported public intellectual life is long gone. Whatever might replace it must flourish within precisely the diverse suburban economic matrix of which L.A. is emblematic.

As the Getty Center prepares to open and a new president gets ready to take the reins, no more pressing need than this could be imagined. The Getty should lead the way in setting aside the false issue of a struggle between elitist and populist values, and work instead to find creative ways to patronize a lively public discourse in contemporary cultural life.