Sit Down and Think Awhile

John Walsh retired as director of the J. Paul Getty Museum in September, ending a distinguished 17-year tenure in the international art world’s limelight. A scholar of 17th century Dutch art who oversaw the vast expansion of the museum’s collection as well as its move into elegant new quarters at the Getty Center, and who also guided plans for renovations to the Getty Villa, Walsh bowed out at 62 to work on book projects. “I love the Getty and L.A.,” he said, “but to restore my perspective and sharpen my eye, I’ve got to get away.” He still lives in Los Angeles and does a lot of thinking about art museums. Times art writer Suzanne Muchnic caught up with him just after his recent return from a trip to Prague and London.

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Question: What have you been up to lately?

Answer: Traveling and catching up on new museum projects. And trying to decide whether we’re making progress or not. I keep thinking, what price success? Museums are drawing huge audiences, but to what? To dazzling new buildings or renovated ones, very often, or to ballyhooed exhibitions of overexposed art (even things with a dubious place in art museums like motorcycles and guitars). In settings like that, looking at works of art is becoming a point-and-click sort of thing. There’s a crowd flowing around you, noise . . . glance, move on. I want museums that help people slow down, clear their minds, concentrate their attention, stretch themselves, feel changed by the experience. You need contemplative spaces for that.

Q: Did you find any?

A: Not a lot. In Prague, there’s now a museum in the Trade Fair Palace, a great Functionalist building of 1928 that has been rebuilt for 19th and 20th century art from the Czech National Gallery. It’s another industrial landmark recycled into an art museum, like the Musee d’Orsay in Paris and the Tate Modern in London. The Prague project shows both the good and the bad of this. The building was a wreck, and now it’s a stirring sight, especially the facade and atriums, and it has plenty of room. The stirring part pretty much stops as you pass through the public space into the galleries, seven floors of uniform, fairly low-ceilinged expanses with artificial light, relentless and seatless. Neither the art nor the visitors seem very comfortable there. It’s installed conscientiously and there is good educational material, but you don’t want to be there very long.

Q: You mentioned the Tate Modern. What did you think of it?

A: Another make-over of a huge monument of sorts, a power station across the river from St. Paul’s with vast spaces of various shapes for the permanent collection, all elegantly reshaped. Plus an amazing panorama from the top floor. So far so good. The problem comes in the galleries, which are mostly hard, cold, inhospitable. No seats, either. What does that say to visitors? Keep moving, I guess--exactly the opposite of the message I want museums to give. Visually there’s a familiar tough industrial chic, particularly in rooms with concrete floors, a lot of black and gray (“So ‘90s!” people are going to say, and already it looks dated). Despite the grandeur of the project and the importance of the collection, I don’t sense a place that will do much to encourage contemplation.

A new development in London is Somerset House. It’s a monster government building, mostly of the early 19th century, very distinguished architecturally. The British IRS is still there, but parts are being renovated for artistic purposes by a private trust. The Courtauld Galleries have recently been reinstalled there, and that’s among the great places in the world to look at paintings and sculpture. The pictures are spectacular, and the atmosphere is just wonderfully conducive to looking and thinking. The other end of the building, on the Thames side, has been made over into exhibition space. Part of it is used for loans from the Hermitage in St. Petersburg--the Russians have made similar deals with Amsterdam and the Guggenheim in Las Vegas!

The other part has the Gilbert collection of silver, gold boxes and micro-mosaics in an installation that’s a bit claustrophobic, dark and jewel-boxy, but beautifully done.

Q: That’s Sir Arthur Gilbert of Los Angeles.

A: Yes. What you see at Somerset House--the Russian deal and Gilbert deal--is American-style opportunism. The government would never do it. They were arranged by an entrepreneurial Englishman, Lord Rothschild, who’s been paying a lot of attention to how American museums function, particularly with corporate help. He offered Arthur Gilbert, who was born in London and had been lending his collection to LACMA, a lot of very glamorous space and prominence. He took it. Oh--and for weeks, by the way, Czechs and Brits wanted me to explain the election. Not the Florida recount, but the year of empty-headed rhetoric, the posturing, the zillions of private dollars raised and spent on brainless TV ads. I had to admit that the sound-bite world of American politics responds to the impatient, impressionable way our electorate thinks--and vice-versa. This has made me wonder whether, if we can provide more museum experiences that help restore the attention spans of our visitors, help them think more critically, we might actually help build a citizenry that’s wiser, more demanding.

Q: What do you foresee for museums in Los Angeles?

A: It’s been a year of changes. The next generation is now running things: Jeremy Strick at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Ann Philbin at the UCLA Hammer Museum and Deborah Gribbon at the Getty. This is terrific for L.A. Their ideas are up-to-the-minute, but they’re all fundamentalists, all serious people. They are used to creating excitement and building an audience of lay people, but not one of them goes in for cheap thrills to attract people. I think they all believe that an excellent museum challenges the visitors, doesn’t talk down to them, and gives them peaceful, comfortable places to absorb their experiences. At the Getty, we see how much visitors love being treated that way. The renovations at the Norton Simon Museum have had a similar effect. If LACMA treats the May Co. building with these values in mind, it will demonstrate how to take a fine building designed for a different purpose and make a successful museum out of it. Others in L.A. are going to expand in the next few years, and I like to think that this city’s museums will set new standards of respect for art and for hospitable treatment of visitors.

Q: As museums with spectacular new buildings--including the Getty--have become popular destinations, some critics have said we are producing theme parks instead of cultural temples. Is that a danger?

A: You could also have said shopping malls. And after all the Getty is trying to do some of the same things as theme parks and malls: attract reluctant or first-time visitors, make the place a delight, encourage return visits. But we’re free, and the essential experiences are different. I mean unpressured contemplation of important things, discovery, learning.

Q: You have witnessed the evolution of Los Angeles’ art scene during the past 17 years. Have you also seen changes in outsiders’ perceptions of the city’s cultural resources?

A: Definitely. But there’s always such a lag in perceptions! I suspect for most Europeans, L.A. is still the beach and the Strip with freeways in between, though educated people have been following the news about expanded museums here, and a lot of them have been coming. I think our image in the rest of the United States has changed too, and certainly American visitors are planning to stay longer than they used to. I have a couple of hard-core New York friends who are threatened by the idea that Los Angeles might have become a serious place with a high culture as well as a popular one. The other day when I heard them say, “We liked it better when we could just come out there and relax,” I knew we’re gaining ground.