Trouble is two kings, one hill

True or false: For more than 20 years, the person running the J. Paul Getty Museum has had not a whit of professional experience in art, art history, art collecting, art museum management or curatorial practice.

Time’s up. If you answered “false,” go sit in the back of the class.

The correct response is “true.” The final word on the Getty Museum has been in the hands of an amateur since at least 1983, bizarre as that might seem.

If you got the answer wrong, you were probably thinking of one of the two people who has held the title of Getty Museum director since then. First, until 2000, came John Walsh -- a distinguished museum professional with a lengthy resume studded with exceptional cultural credentials. Then came Deborah Gribbon, Walsh’s deputy during much of his tenure as well as his successor. Gribbon was director until last week, when she stunned the museum world by announcing her resignation, effective today.

Having the title of director is one thing, but having the power is quite another. At the Getty Museum, unlike most every comparable institution, final authority on the professional staff is not vested in the director.

Authority rests instead in the hands of the president and chief executive of the $4.8-billion Getty Trust. Neither Harold Williams, who held that job until the Getty Center opened on a Brentwood hilltop in 1997, nor Barry Munitz, who followed Williams in that role and is CEO today, could claim a lick of professional expertise in the art museum field.

“Barry and I have differences on a range of things,” Gribbon told this newspaper when she quit. “They are real differences.” And because Munitz, not Gribbon, has the last word at the art museum, how could she continue?

Precisely what those differences are she did not say. Common practice at the Getty Trust is to require confidentiality agreements from departing senior staff, if they’d like to keep their severance package intact. Inevitably it smacks of hush money, although other explanations might apply.

But Gribbon’s resignation from one of the most coveted, prestigious posts in the museum world clearly turns on this issue of management authority. Walsh has essentially confirmed it.

The management dispute is not about financial allocations. The museum is one of four main programs administered by Munitz for the Getty Trust, the others being art research, conservation and grants. According to Getty officials, the museum gets just over 62% of the trust’s annual allocation. If so, insufficient money is an unlikely culprit.

The New York Times has reported that Gribbon, frustrated by interference from Munitz, intervened with board members during Munitz’s contract renewal deliberations last December. Munitz, who signed a five-year extension a month later, claimed he knew nothing of it. He also told the L.A. Times he was “dumbfounded” by Gribbon’s resignation.

Notably, however, the chairman of the Getty Trust’s board was not so shocked.

John H. Biggs, the highly regarded former financial services administrator (he lives in New York), said he knew there were tensions between the museum director and the trust’s CEO. Gribbon’s departure, he told the L.A. Times, was “not a complete surprise.”

Now wait a moment. Something doesn’t add up.

The most critically important department head at the Getty, who holds one of the most enviable jobs in the art museum profession, was about to take the drastic step of quitting -- and her boss did not have a clue?

Yet her boss’ boss did?

The Getty is a very big place, but the flow chart is pretty simple in the organization’s upper echelons. There are only three layers. At the top is the board, led by Biggs.

Next comes Munitz, hired by the board to manage the far-flung art institution. Munitz, a former university administrator and businessman, raised a lot of eyebrows when he assumed the Getty CEO job nearly seven years ago. Some of it came from his involvement in the 1988 collapse of a Texas savings and loan. But partly the consternation was caused by the absence of any art, cultural or museum experience on his resume.

Third on the Getty management tier are the department heads -- top-ranked art professionals in their fields, including Gribbon. Given the central position reflected in the museum’s hefty budget priority, the museum director is first among equals.

Alas, this corporate management setup is a recipe for disaster. Why? It contains an inherent structural flaw, which gave way last week.

The problem is this: The museum’s director does not report to the board, as normally happens at an art museum, but to the board’s paid CEO. That makes the CEO the art museum’s de facto director. A corporate administrator without any professional training or relevant experience can unilaterally call the shots at the art museum, regardless of what the director might think.

University museums, where directors sometimes report to school officials, might be an exception to this general rule. Munitz has a lengthy background in university administration. But by no stretch is the Getty comparable to a university art museum.

That structural flaw -- two directors for one job -- can also be exacerbated by personalities, or exploited. On the volatile matter of the resignation of his most important employee, Munitz is surely compromised. Either he’s mendacious or a bad manager. The choice is not encouraging.

So here’s another question.

True or false: The structural problem could be fixed by removing the museum from the jurisdiction of a CEO and making its director responsible to the Getty board; or, a distinguished art museum professional could be made CEO of the trust.

Even those sitting in the back of the class know the correct answer to that one.