More PR work awaits Getty

The signs emanating from high in the Brentwood hills are unmistakable: The world’s richest art institution is toiling to rehab its image.

This week, the J. Paul Getty Trust’s internal public relations manager -- hired little more than two years ago -- announced she was resigning. And since February, the trust has paid more than $250,000 to Sitrick and Co., a high-powered public relations firm best known for steering the prominent through times of crisis.

The $9-billion trust’s expanding list of problems would challenge even the most skilled spin meister.

The California attorney general recently initiated a wide-ranging inquiry into the trust’s financial practices in response to a Times story describing the lavish pay, travel and perks of trust Chief Executive Barry Munitz.

As the trust prepares to reopen the Getty Villa, renovated to display its antiquities collection, senior curator Marion True faces trial in Rome on charges of conspiring to receive stolen artwork.

Several upper-level executives have left the Getty since museum Director Deborah Gribbon abruptly resigned last October, including her interim replacement and the trust’s longtime head of publications.

The latest to leave is Pamela Johnson, vice president for communications and corporate relations, who was responsible for both internal and external PR, overseeing a department that in 2003 had an operating budget of more than $4 million.

Johnson said the decision to resign was hers alone.

“I can confirm that I am leaving the Getty for personal reasons to return home, to Nashville, Tennessee,” she wrote in an e-mail to the Times on Thursday. “Any attempts to characterize my departure as otherwise will simply be wrong. This was not an easy decision and I regret leaving the Getty with so many promising opportunities ahead.”

Other than Johnson, Getty officials did not respond to questions concerning her departure.

Before joining the trust, Johnson ran her own public relations firm in New York, helping institutions plan and advertise cultural programs.

Arriving at the Getty in summer 2003, Johnson received a $127,500 signing bonus, records show. She was among the trust’s highest-paid officers. In the fiscal year that ended June 2004, her total compensation was $317,861.

Nevertheless, early this year the trust went to Michael Sitrick for additional PR help, paying his firm a $60,000 retainer and a $10,000 advance for expenses, records show.

Sitrick’s Century City-based firm represents a range of companies, magnates and sports franchises, including the Los Angeles Dodgers.

But he has become a signature presence in Los Angeles and beyond for his work for celebrities (Halle Berry, R. Kelly, Rush Limbaugh) and organizations (the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles) in crisis. Forbes magazine once called him “The Flack for When You’re Under Attack.”

Records show that his firm has charged the Getty as much as $650 an hour to design strategies to respond to questions posed by The Times and other media outlets, draft letters to Times editors on behalf of Munitz and Getty board Chairman John Biggs, and confer with Munitz’s chief of staff, Jill Murphy.

Sitrick’s firm also coached friends of Munitz likely to be interviewed by the newspaper, creating “talking points” for former Paramount studio chief Sherry Lansing, records show.

Getty officials would not comment on why Sitrick was retained or on whether the board of trustees had approved his hiring or set limits on his fees.

Some experts called the Getty’s spending on outside spin control an improper use of tax-exempt money. By law, nonprofits such as the Getty must use their resources for the public good.

“It’s a sad day when a museum wants to spend that much money on crisis management instead of saying, ‘Wait a minute, what are we doing wrong?’ ” said Marie Malaro, a former professor at George Washington University’s museum studies program and the author of “Museum Governance: Mission, Ethics, Policy.”

“Why do they bring somebody in to gloss things over? A crisis-management organization comes in not with the purpose of remedy, but with selling the public on the idea you’re really good guys.”

Others, however, said it was legitimate for embattled tax-exempt organizations to use message managers to protect their reputations or to assess risk, much as their for-profit counterparts do.

“I don’t think it’s wrong that they hired a crisis-management consultant,” attorney Betsy Buchalter Adler said of the Getty. “You’re looking at an institution that needs to be taken seriously in the community to function.”

Adler is a partner at a San Francisco firm that specializes in nonprofit law.

“Whether $650 an hour is the right price to pay, I have no clue. It’s a question of what expertise costs in the market,” she said.

The Getty’s prestige and internal morale is critical as it moves to fill its highest-profile job, the directorship of the museum.

In recent months, the trust was publicly taken to task by Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), whose committee is leading a push to tighten rules governing nonprofits, and became the subject of an inquiry by the Council on Foundations, the industry group that represents nonprofits.

“So much in the nonprofit world is about appearance,” Malaro said. “People start losing confidence.”