YES, YOU CAN BE TOO RICH

THE J. PAUL GETTY TRUST has a problem. I’m not talking about the possibly looted Greek and Roman antiquities in its museum collection or the investigation by the state attorney general’s office of past financial shenanigans in the executive suite. Those are certainly problems, widely reported in these pages, which the Getty is now addressing with sobriety.

I’m talking about something else. I’m talking about a predicament at least as big, if not bigger. Think of it as the meta-problem -- the one that helps to drive the others.

Simply put: The Getty is too rich.

Sounds crazy, I know. How could such a thing be possible? Don’t they say you can’t be too thin or too rich?

Well, yes, they do. But everyone also admits emaciation is bad for the health. It’s time to acknowledge that damage can be done by excessive wealth.

This occurred to me the other day when the Getty Trust announced the formation of a search committee to find its new president and chief executive officer. The art world promptly took a deep breath -- and rightly so.

The Getty is an art institution, not a business or a profit-making corporation, yet businessmen and corporate chieftains have held the top job there for the last 25 years. If you’re wondering why the place has not lived up to the highest expectations -- in spite of inarguable successes and an endowment now approaching $6 billion -- the misplaced faith in corporate leadership is an excellent place to look for answers.

The last time the nation’s wealthiest art philanthropy went down the CEO-search road, in 1996, it drove into a ditch. It would be hard to imagine a worse fit for the job than the man they chose. Barry Munitz abruptly resigned the Getty presidency in February with several years left on his contract, under a dark cloud of ethical strife and legal suspicion.

By contrast, Munitz’s predecessor in the top job was benign. Harold Williams, who held the post from 1981 to 1997, was a very different kind of leader. Instead of cronyism as an organizing principle, which Munitz seemed to favor, Williams addressed the Getty’s future as a straightforward management problem. He assembled a cogent team of art experts and forged ahead.

Despite these sharp differences, however, the resumes of Munitz and Williams share critical similarities. The likenesses explain a lot. And where they intersect is at the giant dollar sign.

First, both Getty chief executives were former businessmen. They held top jobs at powerful corporations.

Munitz trained at the knee of Texas takeover tycoon Charles Hurwitz. (At Maxxam Inc., a Fortune 200 holding company, he presided over one of the largest savings-and-loan failures in U.S. history.) Williams worked for Hunt Foods & Industries, rising to the chairmanship of Norton Simon Inc. He came to the Getty via Washington, where he was head of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Second, neither man had a shred of professional experience with art. Norton Simon, Williams’ erstwhile boss, was arguably the greatest art collector of the last half-century. But neither Williams nor Munitz could claim a robust history of private enthusiasm for painting and sculpture.

Third, both had university administration on their resumes, Munitz coming directly from the Cal State chancellor’s office. I dare say that, for former Getty search committees nervous about turning over All That Money to the art crowd, the university link offered a humanistic veneer to a pair of corporate tycoons.

Therein lies the source of the money trouble. The Getty Trust is blessed (or cursed) with billions, and the enormity of its bank account catapults the institution into an art league by itself. Its endowment dwarfs the runner-up Metropolitan Museum of Art by a factor of more than six.

Why is that a problem? Ask Adam Smith.

In “The Wealth of Nations,” the Enlightenment moral philosopher and economist recognized a quandary that bedevils the corporation concept. It’s as much a problem today, in our foul era of Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, Adelphia, ExxonMobil and the rest, as it was when Smith published his book in 1776. He characterized the formidable conundrum as “other people’s money.”

As businesses, corporations are distinctive because they separate ownership from management. Stockholders own the company, but they do not run it. Boards of directors and their hired executives do.

That means corporate managers are using other people’s money, rather than their own. Smith warned that “negligence and profusion” -- profusion meaning extravagance -- were an inevitable result.

The structural flaw in the corporate ointment is this inherent lack of functional accountability. Among the directors of such companies, he wrote, it “cannot well be expected that they should watch over it with the same anxious vigilance with which the partners in a private guild frequently watch over their own.”

Negligence and extravagance -- were two words ever more precise in characterizing the rising tide of woe at the Getty Trust over the past many years?

The Getty is not a business, of course. Nonprofit philanthropies do not have the exact equivalent of stockholders.

What they have are public stakeholders -- namely, you and me. Unlike a profit-making corporation, the ownership of the Getty Trust is, in theory, the same as its management. A board of trustees, which finally calls the shots, is ideally composed from representatives of those public stakeholders.

This is where the “too rich” part comes in. Unlike trustees at virtually every other art institution you might name, no Getty trustee needs to put a single dime into the place. Its huge fortune means the scramble for cash is not pressing, setting it apart from American nonprofit art centers.

As a result, the Getty Trust is less like a typical charity and more like the corporations Adam Smith warned about. Getty trustees only manage other people’s money. Smith’s analytical model explains why, following the first explosive story of Getty executive suite chicanery in December 2004, trustees languished in denial, month after painful month. Even in the face of shocking profusion, the board was negligent.

Sure, trust officials are now making a lot of the right noises to signal that they’ve learned from the awful recent experience. Board Chairman John Biggs stressed the search committee’s “strong ties to the Los Angeles community,” an obvious response to widespread feelings of local alienation from the Getty’s complex, far-flung program.

Trustee Louise Bryson, who will lead the committee, also made a point of reaching out. She cited “the incredible team of arts professionals and staff who have made the Getty the excellent institution it is.” Alienation of staff from employer was born of eight long years of indifferent leadership.

This thoughtful rhetoric is a good sign, but it won’t suffice. The search committee will work with Los Angeles-based executive recruitment firm Korn/Ferry International, which last year put Michael Brand in the vacant director’s chair at the Getty’s art museum. But that was easy, compared with this.

Munitz packed the Getty board with a narrow range of successful corporate executives, making the problems inherent in a system of managing other people’s money even worse.

Getty trustees don’t remotely resemble the Getty’s putative stakeholders. Five of the search committee’s seven members, including cable TV executive Bryson, hail from the corporate management suite. (Most are in the financial services industries.) This homogeneous echo chamber has scant expertise in the Getty’s programmatic mission.

So, what to do? As it begins to search for a president, how can the Getty Trust mitigate the prickly problem of being too rich?

Simple: Listen to Adam Smith. Stop separating ownership from management.

First, cross off “corporate leadership experience” as a search criterion; in fact, use the resumes of Williams and Munitz as examples of what not to look for now. Then, give priority to remaking the board. In the boardroom and in the executive suite, let representative stakeholders run the place.

Art is the fountainhead of the Getty’s mission, from which all else must flow. The job of Getty Trust president cries out for evidence of lifelong fervor for art. (How bizarre that such a qualification even needs to be flagged, because it might seem unorthodox!) A muzzy enthusiasm for “culture” or a fuzzy affection for education cannot match a deep and abiding passion for the specific fascinations of art. For this particular vocation, academic degrees are beside the point, but love and sensitivity are not.

L.A.’s singular perspective, characterized by its artists and art institutions, past and present, needs asserting -- and the Getty Trust could and should be its mega megaphone. Yet the trust’s first two presidents were artistically provincial, even as the city grew cosmopolitan.

The next one needs an enlightened understanding of art in the vivid context of today’s complex cultural ecology -- at the Getty, in Los Angeles and globally.

Candidates should also be closely quizzed about remaking the board, on which the president also sits. Typical art institutions cannot afford to stray very far outside the moneyed classes, since fundraising is continuous. The Getty, free from that constraint, could range far and wide. Twenty-five years on, it is inexcusable that it hasn’t.

Given the Getty’s unparalleled institute for art conservation, why is there no great scientist on the board? With an incomparable art research library, why no brilliant historian? Why no major artist? Smart leadership could build a vibrant board that meshes the specific demands of the mission with the actual range of public stakeholders in it.

That’s a lot to ask, I know. Something approaching a miracle will be required.

But I suppose that’s another characteristic of enormous wealth: An expectation of miracles comes with it. The Getty might be too rich, but finally it’s too rich not to make it happen.