Broken Harness

Whenever museum trustees and the director fall out, the art world braces for a struggle of mythological proportions. Almost inevitably, it is the embattled director who is seen as Jason; the trustees are billed as the golden fleecers. Too often such a storybook approach ignores not only the subtleties involved in any corporate relationship but also the stresses and strains produced in seeing a huge cultural enterprise through its birth pangs.

Such is the sad case in Los Angeles, where trustees of the new Los Angeles County Art Museum, open just eight months, voted unanimously to dismiss their director, Harvard-trained Richard F. Brown, 49. He leaves for a new post as director of a planned museum in Fort Worth, which will house the multimillion-dollar collection of the late Kay Kimbell. But for Brown, who had been director since 1961, when the old county museum was mostly mastodon tusks and geological specimens, parting was such sour sorrow.

Cultural Deprivation. Having succeeded in the nearly impossible task of delivering the new museum, largest to be built since Washington, D.C.'s National Gallery, Brown in recent months found himself backed into an impossible situation with the trustees who had bankrolled his dream. "We would have preferred to see Ric go on the friendliest of terms," said one trustee, "probably with a big civic dinner and all flags flying." But Brown, who still rankled at his short tenure, could not resist a farewell blast: "Individual board members have forced decisions and taken unilateral action not consistent with good museum administration." Not so, replied Ed Carter, president of the board of trustees and head of California's Broadway-Hale stores. "The board's decision to request Brown's resignation was based primarily on his demonstrated inability to deal adequately with the administrative problems of a major art museum."

What the barrage of acrimony was in danger of obscuring was the achievement brought off by Brown and the trustees while together in harness. Sprawling Los Angeles has long suffered from the guilt of cultural deprivation; it felt overshadowed by San Francisco, which boasts an opera house and no fewer than three museums. But in the span of seven years, a surge of civic unity has given Los Angeles a new $33.5 million music center and, 61 miles away, the terraced pavilions of the $12 million art museum. Los Angeles has become the U.S.'s second art capital, no longer threatened with losing its collections of old masters to prestigious museums elsewhere.

Picasso & Pop. The museum was a triumph of individualistic donations. Its pavilions were named for their donors, the late realtor Leo S. Bing, Bankers Bart Lytton and Howard Ahmanson, who laid out a total of $3,675,000. Industrialist Norton Simon gave a $250,000 wad as well as a loan of $15 million in art treasures. From the movie colony (Billy Wilder, Bob Hope and Burt Lancaster) came a flood of art from Picasso to pop. Capping it all was Simon's loan of the $2,234,400 Titus by Rembrandt. To keep the floodgates open, the trustees started yet another $12 million fund drive for new acquisitions.

After the opening, trustees could not resist tinkering with their new showcase. When the museum got a major acquisition, five trustees wanted it hung in five different locations. Says Brown: "There were too many cooks stirring the broth, and each wanted to stir it in a different direction. I just tried to get them to stir in the same direction."

Trustees, for their part, were irked that Brown was devoting too much time to organizing traveling shows (13 in seven months), too little to administration. The pressure was heavy on a staff of 150, one-seventh that of New York's Metropolitan, handling 1,700,000 visitors since opening, a record surpassed only by the Met.

Wealth & Pride. To set guidelines of authority and responsibility, an independent Manhattan business consultant was brought in, but it was too late. By then, says one trustee, "the air was so filled with recriminations that nobody could see straight." The board tabled the consultant's recommendations, then ousted Brown.

The brouhaha will probably continue for a while. A "Save the Museum Committee" has raised the issue of "professional v. amateur standards." The Los Angeles Times, pointing out that overall responsibility for museum operation rests with the trustees, admonished them "not to circumvent the director's authority in administrative or creative fields." More important, the Times recalled, "thousands of persons contributed to the building of the museum and all citizens share the sense of community pride it inspired."

With a good building, a sound and growing collection and Los Angeles' wealth to draw on, the museum should continue to spearhead a great city's obligation to its future.

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