Reassembly required

THE departure Thursday of Getty Trust President and Chief Executive Barry Munitz from the executive suite is a cause for extraordinary relief and extreme sorrow. Relief because the unparalleled potential of a great cultural institution could not be realized while the slow, steady trickle of horror stories dribbled out, concerning his eight-year tenure as leader of the nation’s largest art philanthropy. And sorrow that it had to come to this -- to a crescendo of personal and professional humiliation for both Munitz and the Getty.

How did it happen? Those details will continue to emerge, perhaps from a report of the trust’s administrative practices being compiled under the direction of attorney Ronald Olson, brought in by trust board Chairman John Biggs to get to the bottom of things. When completed, Olson’s report -- or some carefully written and comprehensive version of it -- must be made public.

The Getty is a colossus among private charitable institutions devoted to public benefit, but it has operated for years beneath a heavy veil of secrecy. The private aspect has increasingly been writ large, while the public side has been allowed to wither. It is time to open the curtains, pull up the blinds and let in a whole lot of sunshine.

Still, even without knowing all the details, the reason for the tragedy is simplicity itself. The president of the Getty Trust had no passion for art, lifeblood of the $5-billion institution. He had given no evidence of it before he came to the job in 1997, and he gave no evidence of it during his tenure. And when he hired a young, inexperienced chief of staff to manage the day-to-day operation -- a chief of staff who by all accounts had even less passion for the mission than he did -- the fate of his tenure was sealed.

Without that passion, you cannot successfully operate an institution filled to the brim with talented men and women who have spent their lives marveling at the pages of medieval manuscript paintings, inventing ways to prevent the decay of ancient carvings in Chinese Buddhist caves or researching the rise of Futurist art in early 20th century Italy. It becomes a silent rebuke to their lifelong personal commitments, their public careers and the very mission of the organization.

If the special trustee committee led by Olson continues to do its work well, the light it sheds on the last eight years is likely to be blinding at first. But our eyes will adjust. As they do, it will also become clear that a rush to find a successor would be a grievous mistake -- or, perhaps should I say, another grievous mistake.

The bad fit between the outgoing president and the critical job of leading an indispensable art institution is hard to overstate. Yet the trustees who vetted the candidate in 1997 missed it by a mile. And as the first and still most stunning news story in the Munitz saga erupted in December 2004, chronicling a shocking real estate deal between the Getty and a friend and business associate of the Getty president, the board sat on its hands for month after agonizing month. Inaction allowed the scandal to fester and grow.

A friend asked at the time whether laws were broken. I did not know then, and I do not know now. That is a question to be answered by the state attorney general’s office, where a formal investigation was opened last summer.

Frankly, though, the answer is only of secondary relevance. Legal standards are far lower than ethical standards, and a tax-exempt charitable institution is obligated to operate according to the highest standards available.

“The law is not designed to make us honorable, only bearable,” noted Marie C. Malaro in “Museum Governance,” her incisive 1994 book that has become a standard text on nonprofit mission and policy. Ethical integrity is essential to the success of a philanthropic mission, because its effectiveness is directly related to public perceptions of its integrity.

By contrast, the law merely works to keep us from tearing one another limb from limb.

The Getty board has much soul-searching to do, long before it begins to consider a replacement for the executive officer.

I’ve noted before that under Munitz the board has been foolishly weighted toward wealthy businesspeople -- for no discernible purpose, given a $5-billion charity that requires neither fundraising help nor corporate largesse. Next most prominent are trustees affiliated with education, traditionally defined as school-related. But art, at its most profound level, teaches us through the depth and resonance of our experience of it; lesson plans instructing us about art are of decidedly lesser concern.

For two decades the Getty Trust has been headed by businessmen of varying skills who lacked this understanding -- that this passionate artistic engagement can be life-altering. Mere cultural empathy is not enough from the president of the Getty Trust. And it is especially not enough for an institution with the exceptional promise of this one.

Before the trustees begin to consider what should always have been a given, they first need to recommit the Getty to art. The focus has blurred, the spotlight has wandered, the purposes have grown muddled and confused. When J. Paul Getty, aficionado of all things Roman, left his vast fortune to his art museum and to the advancement of general knowledge, he meant those words in their classic sense. It’s time for the Getty to return to its roots.

And it is also time to return to a commitment to Los Angeles -- not to London, not to Dresden, not to the bottomless well (or pit) of genuine artistic needs around the globe. I do not mean the Getty should become provincial and crabbed; it can and should be a good -- and generous -- colleague, especially as the world continues to shrink. But if ever there was a time to take the bumper sticker to heart and think globally, act locally, this is it.

Frankly, though, I doubt the board has a clue about any of this. How could they? Their diverse and abundant talents lie elsewhere, and they have had no guidance from the executive suite.

And I also doubt the board has a clue as to the deep vein of anger felt within the L.A. art community toward the Getty, or the inchoate sense of monumental disappointment over what might have been -- and might never be.

So I make this small proposal to the Getty board. Convene a town hall meeting. Invite Los Angeles in. Have no agenda and no plan, except to listen. I suspect you will get an earful. It will be informed, maddening, insightful, loony, counterproductive, funny, critical and inspiring. Most of all it will be passionate about art, which is what has gone missing from the Getty mission.

The Getty Trust is at a critical juncture. It needs to change -- in deep and fundamental ways. Productive change almost never comes from the top down, only from the bottom up. It won’t result from grand gestures like travertine palaces built on mountaintops or flashy glad-handing while jetting about the globe. Been there, done that.

It’s time, in other words, not just for something meaningful. It’s time for a thousand small and meaningful things, which together might make the Getty’s mission dazzle and shimmer.