The Getty Gets Off the Hook

CultureGrrl is SO behind the news on the Getty! Of course, the California Attorney General’s office just had to release his report on Yom Kippur. I’ll belatedly throw you some links, for starters, then give you more extended commentary, probably on Wednesday. Today I’m diverting you with my latest Wall Street Journal article, and I’m temporarily abandoning my keyboard to join New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (along with lots of other cultural journalists) in my native borough, the Bronx.
The California AG has declined to take civil or criminal action against the Getty or its officials, but has appointed an independent monitor, or what Christopher Knight of the LA Times cheekily characterizes as “a chaperon to accompany the J. Paul Getty Trust for two fiscal years. The Getty…apparently requires some adult supervision.” This, according to Tom Dresslar, the AG’s press spokesman, “marks the first time ever [that] a California Attorney General has imposed such a requirement in a charitable trust enforcement action.”
Jason Felch and Ralph Frammolino of the LA Times note that “the attorney general’s probe focused narrowly on issues identified in the Times articles—investigators identified no new issues in their 13-page report, which provided little detail about the expenditures it criticized.” The relentless investigative reporting of Felch and Frammolino played a large role in spurring the AG’s investigation and the Getty’s soul-searching,
Christopher Knight, also in the LA Times, calls it a “big mistake” that the Getty “has declined to issue a report of findings in its own internal investigation, claiming that strict confidentiality precludes it.”
The NY Times comes up with a self-serving comment on the AG’s report by the Getty’s deposed president, Barry Munitz.
Here’s the Getty’s press release issued in response to the AG’s report.
And here’s the AG’s report.