$2 million a week to spend

Charles Foley

Malibu, California It is given to few of us to enjoy the best of both worlds, but such is the genial destiny of a dozen men — mostly board- room figures — who make up the J. Paul Getty Trust. Thanks to the symbiotic rela- tionship between big money and fine art, they control the prodigious fortune left by Mr Getty to the museum which bears his name at Malibu, overlooking the Pacific near Los Angeles — but they have no Mr Getty to account to.

The ultimate value of this notorious be- quest, which may well be quadrupled by what Americans are calling the greatest stock takeover in history, has yet to be determined. But certainly the Trust is now worth over $2 billion and it must, to preserve its tax-free status, spend at least $2 million a week from here to eternity. That news has sent inevitable tremors through the world of art. The British press has rais- ed the ritual cry of 'plunder and pillage' of `our national heritage'. Are these fears justified? Is the Getty the great white shark, ruthlessly snapping up every multi-million dollar bauble it can from global sales- rooms? What is its record over the decade `It's a proposal of marriage from the typing pool.' of the museum's existence?

For an answer, one must first glance

the Getty's origins. Twelve years ago, while he was still building his museum by remote control from England, I met the oil baron at his Surrey country house. He assured rne that his brainchild — a $16-million recrea- tion of the ,Villa dei Papiri where cuesars wife grew up before it was swallowed by the lava of Vesuvius in 79 AD — would have to pay its own way when he died. He gave the same warning to Mr Stephen He the British architect who served as his locum tenens in Malibu, so that when four years later Mr Getty, then 83, went to a Bet- ter Place (if better than Sutton Court there be) and his will was read, I found Mr Gar rett in a state of inheritance shock. He was pacing the 350-ft formal gardend enclosed by plaster colonnades an''' frescoed loggias which lead to the n'Inu.Y`:s marbled museum, so endearing in I California staginess, and its $300-rnilli°: cornucopia of treasures. He feared hubil'i `All this money', he murmured. 'We nnis sobeware of dollar-waving. We could do , much instead to help the art communitYs. general.' But probate would take Year `We'll see what happens when the °31 comes.' The day came, and Mr Garrett has gone' replaced as director by a studious Bosto- nian, Mr John Walsh, who — the Truste.Z rather brashly declared — would TrovI'" leadership for an ambitious acquisition P4ru5, gramme'. Walsh himself, an ebullient to pleads that while the Trust is anxious „f broaden the collection it has no intention.y: c

distorting the art market; that it strives inn. stead to enhance art scholarship in :faiu servation everywhere, not least in where so much art in private hands is literw,,

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ly disintegrating. He thinks that the

being unfairly branded as a marauder. _„)rs the media, that alarm over its cannot be justified by anything in are record, which shows how `deePlY aW 1 the Trustees are of their responsibilities- think he is right. must One enduring myth is that the Trust — .11 spend the obligatory slice of its wealth ea'

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Year solely on acquiring works of art. In fact, only a minor share goes on acquisi- tions, and it need not spend a penny to buy art unless it so wishes. In spite of lamenta- tions over Getty 'raids' on Britain, the total number of purchases has been small and the value of acquisitions in the UK is less than 15 per cent of the Getty's total expenditure on art over the years. Now comes the case of the disputed Duccio, a 14th-century Sienese crucifixion valued at £1.8 million, °nee in the home of the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres. Its export is being delayed while matching funds are raised to keep it in England, thus, according to the Sunday Tonesh, giving the Getty 'a bloody nose'. What are the facts? This item in our 'na- tional heritage' was procured by an English- inn five centuries after it was painted in Italy. It has been in Britain since 1854, rare- lY seen by the public, and not seen at all for the Past seven years, since its purchase at auction by a collector whose name was never divulged. The National Gallery in ,Lei,11, don has six genuine Duccios and fine `onections of Sienese painting exist in Bri- tain. Some pillage. Paul Getty was, when one comes to think of it, a latter-day Lord Hertford, Whose sallies into the continental market snve us the nucleus of the Wallace Collec- tion: both men were miserly curmudgeons in person, princely benefactors where art was concerned; nations, I daresay, will call them blessed. The director's office at the Getty is tuck- e,,c1 to between the Greek vases and Renaissance manuscripts on loan from the British Library: panelling, bucolic pain- tings, a view of the grounds. When he was curator of Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, john Walsh told me, he shared the ap- el3rehension that the Getty would outbid

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v yone on everything of quality. 'Nothing of the kind happened, or I wouldn't be here all°W. I believe we should be judged on our :tions. We do not send agents out to the great houses and snatch masterpieces from tneedy peers. Dealers come to us. We don't talce tiP one offer in es a hundred or pay over- ;Le-Mar k p et ric. We've exercised nebs!taint, Passing up many chances to buy jests which we decided were genuinely cP:11 of a nation's patrimony — the most re- example being the illuminated Gospels °f Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony, which n,.'rit to a German group for a record price s.1 some $12 million. We didn't bid because h,sthought the German claim to it, Wt°.ricallY nationally and emotionally, as Justified.' However, said Walsh sternly, the Getty ivakes no apologies or excuses' for woks for for America. 'Most Americans have European roots, including British toots, and we're very sure that people in coots' like LA, with its vast hybrid popula- tion nave the right to see great art collec- '-',Os. It's their heritage too.'

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Few Britons, I suggested, seemed to buy ;Isat argument — except perhaps the 9,000 British who live in California. Are you sure? Very few objections have

been raised over our acquisitions, and only once was an export licence refused. We respect the letter and spirit of the law.

Every important purchase is considered by your experts, and the national collections are given a chance to respond if they wish. I don't pretend we aren't out for great ac- quisitions to build up our collection. That's one thing that helps make this job the most exciting in the world.'

Another thing is the new $100-million Getty tripartite art complex in the hills above Malibu. This will include, on 160 acres, a second museum, a conservation in- stitute, and a centre for studying the history of art and the humanities. The conservation institute will train visiting experts in ad- vanced techniques, work with Europeans in the field and do what it can to help preserve monuments here and abroad. The art history centre will house a world-class library of half-a-million books and a vast photographic collection. A programme to create an international community of scholars-in-residence is already under way. The Trust will fund publishing and educa- tional projects while working towards a 'universal library' of art in museums around the globe stored in computers, for the general use.

Meanwhile, says Walsh, the Getty is sponsoring projects in Britain, such as com- pleting and computerising an index for the Warburg Institute and working with it on photographing the Queen's prints. It is also planning an index for the million photographs in the Courtauld Art Library. The Trustees held their last meeting in Lon- don, 'so that we could discuss with friends there what we are doing — and not doing'.

The new museum will house Getty's pain- tings, furniture and other European pieces, leaving the Greco-Roman collection, likely to become the best in the United States, in its present pseudo-classical setting. The founder liked his pictures big: statuesque females, mythological scenes, overwrought French furniture; already this collection has been enriched by several important new ac- quisitions. No Louvre, the new museum will be about the size of Scotland's National Gallery, Walsh's ideal: 'It's a glorious place. Seldom more than one or two pain- tings by any one artist, but all of them tops.'

Not a bad start, for an enterprise once mocked as 'Pompeii on the Pacific' and now hailed in the local press no less tastefully as 'the coming American Acropolis'.

As for further plans, the Getty Trustees have power to 'redefine their mission' (Walsh's words) on a still broader scale; in- deed, given those unstaunchable millions, they must look for new horizons in the years ahead. One would like to think that something will be done for contemporary art and living artists, but that, it seems, is too much to ask: the founder never liked the stuff.