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The Getty complex on the hill in Brentwood is already a paranoid place to work, and now blogger Tyler Green at Modern Art Notes reports he's been told that Getty Trust officials have ordered that email be monitored for leaks about the poisoned atmosphere. Also, he blogs today that departing museum director Deborah Gribbon was denied the customary farewell event on her final day Friday, but that when she emerged from her office an impromptu hallway gathering gave her a warm ovation. Meanwhile, in Sunday's L.A. Times critic Christopher Knight wrote that one major problem (CalendarLive) with the Getty is its management structure, with the director of the famous museum reporting to a CEO who isn't necessarily into art:
True or false: For more than 20 years, the person running the J. Paul Getty Museum has had not a whit of professional experience in art, art history, art collecting, art museum management or curatorial practice.Time's up. If you answered "false," go sit in the back of the class.
The correct response is "true." The final word on the Getty Museum has been in the hands of an amateur since at least 1983, bizarre as that might seem.
As for Getty Trust CEO Barry Munitz, with whom Gribbon clashed before she decided to leave, Knight writes:
Munitz, a former university administrator and businessman, raised a lot of eyebrows when he assumed the Getty CEO job nearly seven years ago. Some of it came from his involvement in the 1988 collapse of a Texas savings and loan. But partly the consternation was caused by the absence of any art, cultural or museum experience on his résumé....On the volatile matter of the resignation of his most important employee, Munitz is surely compromised. Either he's mendacious or a bad manager. The choice is not encouraging.
Knight and others were on last week's "Politics of Culture" on KCRW to discuss the Getty situation. Here's the audio link.
Previously:
Trouble at the Getty
More on Getty tensions
Getty reverberations