Enter James N. Wood, a no-nonsense museum executive charged by the board of directors with refocusing the beleaguered organization on what it does best: collecting, preserving and educating the public on art. Wood is the former director of the Art Institute of Chicago and head of the St. Louis Art Museum. At the Getty Center, a majestic $1 billion facility perched in the Santa Monica Mountains above the Los Angeles Basin, Wood spoke to Worth features editor Douglas McWhirter about the Getty’s future, skyrocketing art prices and the hallmarks of a true collector.

(Photograph by Gary Moss.)

You now lead an organization recently at the center of a storm of negative press and scandal. How do you plan to move the Getty beyond this difficult period?

We must keep our eyes on the basics and develop a sense of trust. I already feel there is a great deal of that here. I really feel we turned a corner before I got here.

After the challenges of the last two years, what is the public’s greatest misperception about the Getty?

It is very hard for people to get an idea of what this institution does. They look at the size of the endowment and the money involved and they wonder where it all goes and what those in charge do. That’s understandable. But I think the public overlooks the actual work we carry out and the impact the Getty makes through conservation and research. This is not news, and probably never will be, but it is tremendously important. We need to articulate that better. Unfortunately, some of the things the Getty achieves will never become a household story.

Some of the Getty’s antiquities are the focus of a legal battle between the countries where the artists created the objects and the objects’ current owners. Where will the struggle between museums and the nations that want to control their cultural legacies end?

We have a total commitment to ethical standards of acquisition and ownership. That said, I feel strongly that great works of art are, to some degree, citizens of the world. People living in a country today may have little in common with the people and cultures that created art there hundreds and thousands of years earlier. I am very sympathetic to a nation wanting great representation of its own cultural heritage, but I’m also committed to making that heritage accessible to the world. You have to do it legally, and that’s complicated because the definition of legal has changed over time.

The Getty is in a unique position because we can ask, "Is money better spent trying to preserve a masterpiece that we cannot move, or should we spend money to buy one?" It’s not an either/or situation for us. We are committed to both sides of that equation.

Is the Getty still acquiring antiquities?

We maintain a very strict policy for acquisitions, which affects acquisitions in the antiquities area. We absolutely intend to continue to acquire, while respecting the requirements of provenance. I have no reason to think we won’t. We’re intent on collecting major works that meet our acquisition requirements. We’re trying to do a number of things.

What is your take on the current status of the art market
as a whole? Is it overvalued?

I would say overpriced. Truly great works of art are both valueless and priceless. It’s a matter of supply and demand at any given moment. That doesn’t bother me. I’m concerned a bit for collectors and many institutions in what I would call overpriced areas—areas where people buy for a variety of different reasons. Some buy for investment, some buy out of passion for the object. A lot of status comes from buying certain works, and a number of strange motivations determine prices. Museums need to think long term and rationally, and not get caught up in the frenzy. I’m always suspicious of investors collecting art.

But aren’t all collectors, to a certain extent, investors as well?

I’m very sympathetic to an art collector who really worries about making a disastrous investment, particularly if his means are very limited. There are other individuals who simply buy to play the market and get out at the right time. That’s not collecting; that’s investing.

What, then, makes a true collector?

A person who buys out of passion by learning and looking. This person asks for advice, visits museums and, in the end, makes up his own mind.

Collecting is a process, and anything you buy must ultimately move you as a work of art. If you look at 10 works and you buy one, that’s pretty good. If you look at 100 works and you buy one, that’s even better. Then you really get into connoisseurship. I can’t guarantee that piece will become more valuable, but I would put odds on it being a better work of art, one you’ll get more pleasure out of. If you are lucky, it might hold its value and increase in the long run.

There are great fortunes being made in China, India
and other developing nations. What impact will these
emerging wealth centers have on the international
art market?

People buy art for a number of reasons, but one is to affirm their own culture and their own sense of identity. Currently, the Chinese set auction records for Chinese art. It gets more complicated with contemporary art. Now there is a cachet in being a collector of contemporary art. That’s not bad, but it isn’t necessarily good either. There are some collectors whom art seduces—or perhaps this international market legitimately fascinates them. If you make your money globally, there is almost an inevitable desire to compete globally with these other contemporary collectors. There is nothing wrong with that, but I would question if a museum should pay those same prices for contemporary artists. Whatever the Getty buys is for the long, long run.

How is the Getty going to compete with private collectors and auction houses in the global market?

It depends on the objects. Many areas of art exist that are not particularly popular with private collectors. Auction houses are a reflection of private buyers and some institutional buyers, obviously. There are still areas where you don’t want to go head-to-head with a private collector. They have a motivation to buy, which would make it irrational even if you had the money. I think we are a pretty rational group.

Would the Getty ever sell any of its own collection?

It has. Just recently, we did some housecleaning. There were several paintings we had not shown in years. The sale raised a meaningful, but not large, amount of money. However, we are not in the business of buying something and then trying to time the market to double our money. We are collectors, primarily. Not a business.

Would the Getty open museums in other locations, like
the Guggenheim?

No. We want to lend generously to others and borrow. But it has never been part of our mission to have museums in other locations.

One of your resources is a truly impressive photography collection. Do you plan to continue acquiring in that area?

We have the advantage of having put together the old masters of photography, with incredible depth, in the autumn of the period in which you could still buy whole collections. The market was still not terribly inflated. Now individual objects are selling for more than the Getty was able to buy whole collections for. The advantage of having such a large collection is that you can spend more money on fewer things and get exactly what you need, and we have every intention of doing that. Photography is the one area where we absolutely flow into the 20th and 21st centuries.

How would you rank your new home, Los Angeles, as a center of art?

In terms of the living artists in this city, a contemporary creative energy exists that is really extraordinary. Manhattan and London are the marketing centers and the central creative centers, but I would certainly place Los Angeles in the first tier. The interesting thing to me is that no single institution or cluster of institutions is equivalent to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Yet, in this city with multiple centers, numerous museums exist, and, when you bring them all together, they create an incredible center of gravity.

If you could own one piece of art, what would it be?

Any day my answer to this will vary, but I think I would go back to the Art Institute of Chicago and take Cézanne’s The Bay of Marseilles, Seen from L’Estaque. Unfortunately, I don’t think they would part with it.