Getty Trust

The Washington-based Council on Foundations, which put the J. Paul Getty Trust's membership on probation in December amid questions over finances and leadership, has restored the trust to full membership. Council President and Chief Executive Steve Gunderson cited "significant reforms" at the trust, where controversy flared last year over the spending habits of President Barry Munitz.

Two years ago, when the Getty Trust helped organize and fund more than five dozen exhibits on 20th century art in Los Angeles, a massive enterprise it labeled "Pacific Standard Time," it wasn't difficult to guess which era the museum would focus on. It was clearly going to be the postwar period, and the 1950s, '60s and '70s in particular. There wasn't much of an art scene in L.A. in first half of the century, after all, and World War II itself, in a range of ways, helped fuel a transformative boom in both industrial and cultural production here.

James Cuno, director of the Art Institute of Chicago, was named president and chief executive of the J. Paul Getty Trust, taking over the world's wealthiest arts organization, with a $5.3-billion endowment and $250-million annual budget, but one that has suffered management turnover in recent years. Cuno, 60, has led the Art Institute through its most ambitious expansion in its 130-year history. He will take over the vast Getty Trust, which consists not just of the museum — its most public face — but a grant-making foundation, a conservation institute and a scholarly institute.

After dozens of meetings and a few orphaned ideas, the Getty has settled on a theme for a 2017 sequel to the 2011-12 museum exhibition extravaganza known as Pacific Standard Time. It will be "Los Angeles and Latin America," or "L.A./L.A. " for short. "The fact that nearly half of the population of Los Angeles has roots in Latin America is so profound that it warrants a major exhibition and research project with accompanying publications," said Getty Trust head James Cuno. "These are complicated roots, over many generations, and relationships between the U.S. and those antecedent countries have changed considerably over time, so we want to be respectful of those complexities.

The president of the Getty Trust will speak at a meeting of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn. Wednesday. Harold M. Williams, president of the trust that is building the $1-billion Getty Center opening Dec. 16 on 110 acres in Sepulveda Pass, will talk about the unique connections between the museum and the city of Los Angeles and how local residents can use the museum as an educational tool as well as a cultural haven.

USC President Steven B. Sample has resigned his relatively new seat on the board of the J. Paul Getty Trust, citing conflicting duties. In a three-sentence resignation letter dated Feb. 28, Sample said his responsibilities to USC "make it impossible for me to continue" as a Getty trustee. His resignation was effective immediately, and he declined to comment Tuesday. Sample joined the Getty board in September 2004. Trustees typically serve four-year terms.

The J. Paul Getty Trust is offering summer internships for undergraduate students interested in exploring careers in the visual arts and the humanities. Students of all cultural backgrounds and academic disciplines are encouraged to apply. A new aspect of the intern program is a collaboration with the master's program in Museum Studies at USC.

The J. Paul Getty Trust is embarking on a major program to aid the conservation of architectural landmarks worldwide but with a "special" emphasis in Los Angeles. The program marks a dramatic expansion of the trust's grant program beyond the research and conservation of the fine arts and the humanities into the more substantive and community-sensitive issue of landmark preservation.

In March, a "help wanted" ad appeared on the J. Paul Getty Trust's website. Amid listings seeking an HVAC technician, a security officer and an audiovisual specialist came four succinct paragraphs, highlighted by this description: "The trust is currently seeking a Director for its Museum. The individual will be critical to the success of the organization, reporting directly to the President, with responsibility for all Museum activities including budget, acquisition strategy and personnel decisions.

The Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy will receive 27.3 acres of open space from the J. Paul Getty Trust on Wednesday. The dedication ceremony will be at 2:30 p.m. at the Crestwood Hills Park Clubhouse, 1000 Hanley Ave., Brentwood. The land grant was made possible by Crestwood Hills Assn., which bought the land, a wooded parcel in Kenter Canyon, from the Getty Trust and donated it to the conservancy for preservation and public recreational use.

Last time around the focus was Southern California's art history; now homegrown architecture is getting its time in the sun. Getty Trust leaders are announcing Monday the final roster of exhibition and event partners in its Pacific Standard Time spinoff, Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in Southern California, slated to run April through July. They will also be releasing the specific grant amounts given to various museums and institutions: roughly $3.6 million in all. Eight exhibition partners received grants from $260,000 to $445,000 to help mount shows and publish catalogs; eight event partners received grants ranging from $20,000 to $246,000 to organize panels, tours and other programs.

NBC defended its new series "Stars Earn Stripes" after nine Nobel Peace Prize winners complained that the show treats military maneuvers like athletic events. Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the other Nobel laureates protested Monday in an open letter that the show glorifies war and armed violence. "Preparing for war is neither amusing nor entertaining," they wrote. NBC said the show, which was to premiere Monday night, isn't "a glorification of war, but a glorification of service.

The Getty Museum has added a new partner in its expanding cultural accord with Italy -- the city of Rome. The museum said it has signed a bilateral agreement with Rome's Capitoline Museums to create a framework for the conservation and restoration of artworks as well as future exhibitions and long-term loans. The Capitoline Museums are a group of art and archaeological museums that date to the 15th century. They are among the oldest public art museums in the world. James Cuno, president of the Getty Trust, marked the new partnership with the unveiling of an ancient sculpture titled "Lion Attacking a Horse," which is being loaned to the Getty.

A month after laying off more than one-third of the education staff at its museums, the J. Paul Getty Trust has named one of Southern California's top K-12 educators as the newest member of its volunteer board of trustees. Thelma Meléndez de Santa Ana, superintendent of the 56,000-student Santa Ana Unified School District, will fill the seat on the 14-member Getty board that's being vacated by investment executive Luis Nogales, who has reached the limit of three four-year terms.

The J. Paul Getty Trust, the visual art world's ultimate one-percenter with about $8 billion in net assets, has decided that it can't get by on investment income alone and will begin raising money in earnest to pay for special projects. J. Timothy Child, a fundraiser for the University of Chicago since 1989, will assume the newly created position of vice president of institutional advancement on June 11 - the first time in its 30-year history that the Getty has hired a chief fundraiser.

Over the last five years, the J. Paul Getty Museum has earned a reputation as a leading reformer on a topic that has embroiled American museums in scandal for the past decade: the acquisition of recently looted antiquities. After evidence of the museum's longtime participation in the illicit trade was uncovered by Italian and Greek investigators, the Getty agreed to return 49 of its most prized pieces of ancient art, cultivated collaborative relationships with those countries and adopted a strict acquisition policy, setting a standard that has been adopted by museums across the country.

The J. Paul Getty Trust announced plans Monday for a massive yearlong study and restoration of a 3,200-year-old Egyptian tomb. The project, a joint operation of the Egyptian Antiquities Organization and the Getty Conservation Institute, will include a joint scientific study and conservation treatment of the badly deteriorated wall paintings in the tomb of Nefertari, a queen of Ramses II, in upper Egypt. The tomb is in the Valley of the Queens in West Thebes.

The J. Paul Getty Trust has purchased the late Wilhelm F. Arntz's art library and archive for about $1.8 million, The Times has learned. Considered by experts to be the largest and most comprehensive 20th-Century art library in private hands, the cache contains about 60,000 pieces including books and catalogues, manuscripts, illustrations, sketchbooks and ephemera collected in Germany by an eminent scholar.

Along the 405 is L.A.'s version of a shining city on the hill -- a castle of culture in all its incarnations. The Getty Trust is more than its collections and museums; it's about worldwide research, preservation and philanthropy. Its new chief, James Cuno, blew in four months ago from the Windy City, where he headed the Art Institute of Chicago and, before that, Harvard's art museums. Cuno regards himself as something of a California kid, spending his teen years at Travis Air Force Base and later heading the Grunwald Center at UCLA.

James Cuno, 60, does not consider himself a marathoner. He has finished only one full-length race, the 2009 Chicago Marathon. But he is, in other circles, known for his endurance -- a museum leader who in one job after another has tirelessly and tenaciously worked to improve the reputation of some of this country's great museums, most recently the Art Institute of Chicago. This is also one of the challenges facing him in his new job as the CEO and president of the J. Paul Getty Trust, an organization with a staggering $5.3-billion endowment.