[CPProt.net] Getty: Buying into fresh challenges

[MSN CPPnet (Ton Cremers)]

Buying into fresh challenges
Sebastian Smee
August 19, 2005

MENTION the Getty Museum to many people and their first response, says
Michael Brand, the Australian who this week has been appointed its new
director, is: "Oh, that's the place that can buy anything it wants."

Brand, 47, insists this isn't true. But it's truer for the Getty than it is
for any other art museum in the world. The Getty, which opened its gleaming
hilltop campus on the outskirts of Los Angeles in 1997, has access to a
$US5.5 billion ($7.2 billion) endowment.

But, wouldn't you know it, most of the controversies in which the Getty has
been embroiled for the past year revolve around money; in particular, how to
spend it. 

When the previous director, Deborah Gribbon, resigned suddenly 10 months ago
after falling out with Getty Trust president Barry Munitz, the issue at
stake was the acquisitions budget. Munitz tells The Australian: "I didn't
ask her to go. She resigned. I still have no idea why." 

But his claim sounds disingenuous in light of the widespread understanding
that Gribbon and Munitz were at loggerheads over how much money should be
available for acquisitions. "It was the red-hot topic," Brand says. 

A respected scholar in pre-modern Indian and Islamic art, Brand has been
director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond since 2000, where
he successfully raised $158million to fund an upcoming expansion. "Sometimes
I think it helps to come from the outside," he says in a lengthy telephone
interview from the US. 

Before that, he was assistant director of the Queensland Art Gallery for
four years and, from 1988 to 1996, founding head of Asian art at the
National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. He was overlooked in the long and
difficult struggle to find a replacement for Betty Churcher in Canberra.
Modestly, he admits he was always an outsider for the job. But, he says,
"that whole selection process was very unfortunate in a number of ways. The
search was not conducted professionally, something everyone recognises now
... It was just a very, very bad situation." 

News of his appointment to the Getty, not only one of the richest museums in
the world but the third most visited museum in the US, has been met with
widespread approval and, in some quarters, relief. 

"Michael Brand has an excellent reputation and rock-solid credentials as an
art museum man," wrote art critic Christopher Knight in The Los Angeles
Times. "That's a good thing because he's going to need them." 

The Getty Museum is the jewel in the crown of a four-part organisation run
by the Getty Trust. The other three are a conservation institute that
conducts research and scientific analysis, a research institute that focuses
on art historical scholarship and a foundation that helps fund and run
conservation and similar programs across the world. 

The issue has been whether these other three parts, which have expanded in
scope under Munitz's watch, have taken away funds from the museum. 

Several artworks that came on the market and that many expected the Getty to
procure - including a $US35 million painting by Georges Seurat and the
$US28million Descent into Limbo by Renaissance artist Andrea Mantegna - have
escaped its clutches. And in a move that has angered jealous colleagues at
other, less wealthy museums, Munitz instigated fundraising at the Getty, in
part to supplement a shrinking acquisitions budget. 

According to Brand, the main emphasis of his negotiations with Munitz for
the job were on this issue: "At what level should the Getty keep its
acquisitions budget? Why has it missed out on buying certain works? Is the
museum suffering because the trust's other three bodies are being too
ambitious or is it a wonderful partnership that is unique?" 

The Getty for many years has been one of the most active buyers at the top
end of the art market, forking out sums in the tens and scores of millions.
The problem, Brand says, is that "at the level the Getty is collecting at,
the market is so hyperactive and unpredictable that it's very hard to
budget. Huge acquisitions budgets can be wiped out by one purchase. Or a
huge amount can be put aside, only for the museum to be outbid." But "we are
definitely still building the Getty collection. I'll be encouraging that." 

Other controversies have rocked the Getty in the past year. First,
Getty-owned land was sold to a friend and business associate of Munitz. Then
The Los Angeles Times broke a story about extravagant spending by Munitz's
office, triggering an inquiry by an industry group representing non-profit
organisations (of which the Getty is one). Munitz insists the spending was
in the service of Getty business. But the most serious issue facing the
Getty is that its head of antiquities, Marion True, has been charged by
Italian authorities with knowingly acquiring stolen artefacts. This comes
just months before the Getty is to reopen the Getty Villa, a building
dedicated to the display of its antiquities collection. 

The theft of artworks, in particular antiquities, is a huge problem facing
the international art world and the Getty is not alone in having had to
return stolen objects in the past. 

That Brand, a proven fundraiser, has been appointed to the Getty would seem
to suggest an intention to continue and conceivably increase fundraising.
But Brand says he is looking forward to "less fundraising and less dealing
with government" in his new role. "I'm really looking forward to having more
time for thinking, talking with the curators and being part of a place
that's full of ideas," he says. 

He is particularly keen to develop the exhibitions program. The space
available for temporary exhibitions is small. He likes the idea of being
free from the pressure to mount big blockbuster shows that bring in
thousands of paying visitors (the Getty is free). "It's not that we want to
do exhibitions that are deliberately esoteric, but the nice thing is that if
we have good ideas we can do them." 

The appointment of a specialist in Asian art to a museum that does not
collect such work may seem unlikely. But, says Brand, "the principle for a
director is the same: you still need your brilliant curators, your
conservators and your educators". 

The Getty will never collect Asian art, says Brand, but he does hope to
encourage partnerships with museums in places such as China, Southeast Asia
and India, not just exchanges of expertise in scholarship and conservation
but also of exhibitions. 

"Just as I'm passionate about Asian art," he says, "it's important that
people in Asia get to see, for instance, Greek and Roman antiquities which,
at the moment, they almost never do." 

Echoing these thoughts, Munitz talks about "reaching out to Australia, China
and India, making the world shrink a little". 

Referring to Brand's move from Virginia to Los Angeles, he adds, "We've
brought him a little closer to home."