Room at the Top at 2 L.A. Museums

One city. Two art museums looking for leaders.

And not just any art museums. Both are among Los Angeles’ premier artistic showcases, and their future directors will play leading roles in shaping the city’s cultural vitality.

The J. Paul Getty Museum, a world-renowned jewel box that’s the public face of the $6.8-billion Getty Trust, lost its director in October. Deborah Gribbon, 56, a 20-year Getty veteran at the helm of the museum since 2000, resigned abruptly, citing philosophical differences with trust President Barry Munitz.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the largest all-encompassing art museum west of Chicago and the leading publicly supported art institution in Southern California, also needs a new chief. Andrea L. Rich, 61, its president and director, announced Monday that she would retire in November, ending a 10-year tenure. Her announcement came amid power struggles over governance of a planned facility for contemporary art, funded and named for the museum’s most visible trustee, philanthropist Eli Broad.

Those in the know don’t take these vacancies lightly.

“It’s as if the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York had openings for directors at the same time,” said Millicent Hall Gaudieri, executive director of the New York-based Assn. of Art Museum Directors, which represents directors of 175 museums in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

“I can’t remember when there have been two large institutions with openings in one city,” she added.

The period of simultaneous headhunting will be “a critical time” for Los Angeles, said Richard Koshalek, president of Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and former director of L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art. “The decisions that these museums make now are going to define how people perceive Los Angeles far into the future.”

The Getty’s search has barely begun, and LACMA’s has yet to take shape, but the two museums have plunged into a highly competitive job market. The museum directors group lists 20 openings for directors, “as high a number as we’ve had in a long time,” Gaudieri said.

“Some of it has to do with retirement,” she added. “We have a generation issue here. But it concerns me that we have so many large institutions looking for directors.”

Potential candidates for the L.A. jobs are likely to consider comparable open positions at the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

These posts are at the high end of the salary scale, with annual compensation ranging from about $250,000 to $500,000.

According to tax documents for the fiscal year that ended in June 2002, Gribbon earned a base salary of $425,378. Tax records for the next fiscal year show her receiving $301,226 from Museum Associates, LACMA’s private support group, and $104,899 from the county. Rich also has had the use of a house owned by Museum Associates and valued at $48,000 annually.

Job descriptions for directors have changed over the years as art museums have become popular attractions with aggressive marketing departments. And the turnover rate has increased as scholarly leaders have tried to hone new skills in politics and fundraising.

Whether the talent pool is big enough to provide qualified directors for all these large museums and a host of smaller ones is a subject of debate.

“There is a shortage of people who have experience and creative instincts,” Koshalek said. “It’s not like looking for another lawyer. These people have to take over complicated situations and provide creative leadership, which involves taking risks.”

Big museums with ambitious backers also need “high-profile directors who are well connected to leaders of institutions globally,” he said. “If you are not connected to what’s going on all around the world, your institution is not going to be relevant.”

But others contend that there are plenty of up-and-comers waiting to be discovered.

“I think there are some very talented directors in our membership who certainly are qualified to move up to new challenges and opportunities,” Gaudieri said.

Munitz, head of the Getty’s search committee, has already heard from some of them. The 11-member panel held its first meeting March 28, but inquiries about the job started coming in last fall amid controversy over and media coverage of Gribbon’s resignation.

“There has been enormous interest,” Munitz said. “I may have been overly conservative or defensive. But I have been amazed and delighted with the contacts I have had from people inside and outside the country.

“Every couple of weeks someone of stature has either come forward or has been recommended by someone who says, ‘Don’t think this person couldn’t be recruited,’ ” he added.

The opening at LACMA might appear to pit the two Los Angeles museums against each other, but the Getty and LACMA jobs are quite different -- “apples and oranges,” as Gaudieri put it.

At the Getty, the museum is part of a multifaceted organization with three other major components: art conservation, research and philanthropy. The museum director, who oversees a collection of European art, photography and Greek and Roman antiquities, reports to the head of the trust, who in turn reports to the board of trustees. With its enormous endowment, the Getty doesn’t need to engage in fundraising.

LACMA is a stand-alone museum with a wide-ranging collection. Originally funded largely by the county, the museum now raises 57% of its $41-million annual operating budget from private sources; the rest comes from the county.

The director, chosen by the board of trustees with the approval of the county Board of Supervisors, reports to the trustees and maintains a working relationship with supervisors. The mix has been complicated by a building project designed by architect Renzo Piano that will unify the campus and add the Broad Contemporary Art Museum.

LACMA recently announced that it had raised $156 million, enough to bankroll the first phase of construction. The figure includes $60 million donated by Broad, $50 million of it for his building and $10 million for art acquisitions.

“When you think about these two jobs in a general way,” Munitz said, “it sounds like the same pool: people who love art and are intrigued by youthful institutions, people who are drawn to Los Angeles and want to be in a city where you’ve got this extraordinary communications and media technology environment, where it is not 12 degrees below zero two or three months every year.

“But when you think about what these people will do when they get up every morning, what their days will be like, the pool begins to differentiate itself,” he added.

“Somebody who feels strongly about having everything under their own belt, who loves the politics and the fundraising and feels strongly about reporting directly to a board is going to be intrigued by LACMA and isn’t going to pay much attention to us,” Munitz said.

“Somebody who is really focused on the art objects, loves the fact that conservation and research and philanthropy are all strong at the Getty and doesn’t want to bother every day with fundraising and governance is going to be much more attracted to us,” he added.

Broad too downplayed any concern about fighting over the same candidates but said that LACMA’s board of trustees carried the fundraising burden and that Melody Kanschat, the museum’s executive vice president, handled much of the administration, including the construction project.

“Andrea has done a magnificent job for 10 years,” he said of Rich, who went to the museum from UCLA with considerable administrative experience but no formal art training. “She recruited me on the board. I have enjoyed working with her.”

Some insiders at LACMA privately complain of low morale and express frustration with what they see as an autocratic leadership that balances the budget at the expense of the art program. Whether the museum will find a chief with strong art credentials remains to seen, but Broad said that was the goal.

“Ten years ago, you needed someone who had Andrea’s organizational strength and leadership,” he said. “Now LACMA needs a director who has an art background. We need someone who is respected and knows the art world, not only in North America but throughout the world. We’ve got to find a world-class director.

“We are defining the mission as encyclopedic,” he said, “but we also want to make LACMA, with the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, a leading light in the contemporary art world.

“That requires a lot of energy,” he added. “It requires someone who knows all the players -- the artists, dealers, collectors, curators and directors throughout the world. It requires a whole new energy that, frankly, we haven’t had.

“For example, when collectors here go to the Venice Biennale, the Basel art fair [in Switzerland] and openings overseas, they go on trips sponsored by New York museums,” he said.

“We need someone who knows the art world, loves it and will get everyone excited about the institution, someone who doesn’t mind spending evenings and weekends on the campaign trail, someone who is out there at the galleries and major international exhibitions, showing that LACMA is a world-class museum,” he added. “We have been a little AWOL, but that will change.”

Both museums will probably cast their nets internationally, but the chances of hiring a European director are much higher at the Getty because of its international programs.

“We have no specific credentials,” Munitz said. “We are not only looking at current museum directors. We want to be flexible. We will absolutely be open to a brilliant second-level person at a great museum or someone running a big, complicated organization inside a university.”

William Griswold, who stepped in as acting director of the Getty Museum after Gribbon’s departure, will also be under consideration.

Speculation about potential candidates has produced a few names. They include high-profile leaders Maxwell Anderson, former director of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, and Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum in London and former director of the National Gallery there.

Other possible contenders include heads of smaller museums: Michael Brand, director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Va., and Susan Ferleger Brades, former director of the Hayward Gallery in London; and a curator: Douglas Druick of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Before Rich announced her plans to retire, Broad had approached several people about a newly created position for a deputy director to oversee his building and other contemporary art programs at LACMA.

They included David Ross, former director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney; Michael Govan, director of Dia Center for the Arts in upstate New York; Bruce Ferguson, dean of the School of the Arts at Columbia University; and Lisa Dennison, deputy director at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Whether any of them aspire to directing all of LACMA remains to be seen.

The drama of wooing new cultural leaders for Los Angeles could continue for a few months -- or much longer. The Getty plans to make a decision by mid-September but will take as much time as needed. LACMA has yet to form a search committee or set a timetable.

“Frankly,” Munitz said, “both of the new Los Angeles directors will be stepping in at a time when there has been controversy about who we are and how we work. They will be picking up the newspaper and listening to the rumor mill and saying, ‘Is this what I want?’ These are very public jobs. You have to want it and love doing it.”

Nonetheless, he added, “I think it’s a magical moment for the arts in Southern California, with the burden on us and the LACMA leadership to do this right. It’s a great opportunity and a great responsibility.”

Jeremy Strick, who left his curatorial position at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1999 to take charge of MOCA here, assessed the situation with a mixture of hope and trepidation.

“There are a number of strong candidates out there,” he said. “But the fact that there are so many attractive jobs open means that it is especially important that the [L.A.] jobs be clearly defined and that any institutional ambiguities be resolved.

“Los Angeles is at such a remarkable moment in its cultural history, with institutions that are thriving and an art scene that is more productive and prominent than ever,” he added. “It is essential that these two museums find leaders that are energetic, informed, wise, adept and willing to work with a variety of partners to help make the city realize its rightful place.”