‘Mona Lisa’ in Tiny Pieces

The resignation Monday of the J. Paul Getty Museum’s director, Deborah Gribbon, after a long feud with the J. Paul Getty Trust’s president, Barry Munitz, shows that even the world’s richest museum doesn’t have enough money to satisfy everyone.

There are hints that Gribbon’s departure had its corporate gladiator aspects, with the loser booted from the field. The public face of her disputes with Munitz was about something more interesting: a growing tension in cultural institutions between old guard, “art for art’s sake” leaders such as Gribbon and less traditional leaders such as Munitz, who describes himself as “a political animal in the most profound and intense sense.”

Munitz and others see art as a tool to educate and transform society. Scholars in residence at the Getty are studying, for example, the effect of art on African identity and “the impact of consumerism on postwar art.” Gribbon’s camp would spend most of the available funds acquiring aesthetically important works to keep them in the public and noncommercial domain.

Those sympathetic to Gribbon argue, sensibly enough, that well-heeled trusts such as the Getty, with a $4.4-billion endowment, must counter the privatization of art. They point to the 1990 disappearance of Van Gogh’s “The Portrait of Dr. Gachet” after a Japanese financier bought it for $82.5 million and squirreled it away in a bank vault.

More recently, some critics have complained that great art is increasingly falling into the hands of people such as Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn, who is most recently rumored to be the buyer of a rare item, a painting by Johannes Vermeer. What’s next, some joke, a multibillionaire buying the “Mona Lisa” and carving her into postage stamp pieces to sell to the highest bidders?

Those sympathetic to Munitz counter that the Getty cannot reverse privatization of art by itself. The several million dollars that Munitz is faulted for spending on the Getty’s humanities grant program would not even get Gribbon a seat at Sotheby’s for a major auction.

The feuds have escalated in recent years with the stock market downturn. Philanthropic organizations such as the Pew Charitable Trusts have been paring back gifts to the arts to address priorities such as healthcare. That has put intense pressure on wealthy arts institutions such as the Getty to step into the breach. That’s too much to ask of museums alone. Even the Getty isn’t rich enough to fill the public arts funding gap.

What the Getty’s struggle can’t ever settle is the Steve Wynn question. If he takes good care of artworks, lends them to museums and even hangs them in his casinos, isn’t that a better fate than a bank vault? Is Wynn really worse than the rich merchants who financed Vermeer?