After a two-year, much-speculated-about search, the J. Paul Getty Museum has chosen a new director: Timothy Potts, the current director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and the former director of the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth. Like his predecessor, Michael Brand, who abruptly left his post in 2010, a year before his contract was set to expire, Potts hails from Australia and boasts a hefty acquisitions record.
“I have known Dr. Potts for almost fifteen years and have worked closely with him on policy positions taken by the Association of Art Museum Directors," J. Paul Getty Trust president James Cuno, who announced the appointment at a staff meeting Tuesday morning, said in a statement. "I know him to be a person of integrity, intelligence, advanced learning, and refined connoisseurship." Potts will be the second director in Getty history to oversee both the Getty Center and the Getty Villa sites.
During his nine years at the Kimbell (which, the Los Angeles Times notes, has a similar acquisitions budget to the Getty), Potts proved his mettle in the field of acquisitions, scooping up sculptures by Bernini, Donatello, Michelozzo, and Gian Cristofero Romano. This is undoubtedly part of his appeal: In previous interviews, Cuno has emphasized his desire for a director with an "appetite" for big acquisitions.
Trained as an archeologist, Potts received his doctorate in ancient Near Eastern art from the University of Oxford, and has conducted excavations in Jordan, Iraq, and Greece. In a statement, Potts pointed to the Getty's own strong acquisitions record as a reason why he looks forward to taking the reins: “Like others in the museum world, I have for many years admired (and sometimes been frustrated by!) the quality of its collecting and the innovative way it pursues its scholarly and educational mission," he said.
But Potts's history isn't all Renaissance sculpture acquisitions and early Middle Eastern art. During his term as director of the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia, where he served before moving to the Kimbell, Potts was embroiled in a controversy surrounding Andres Serrano's photograph of a urine-submerged crucifix "Piss Christ." After two separate incidents of visitors attacking the artwork, Potts set off an uproar when he decided to close the exhibition in an effort, he claimed, to protect the gallery and its staff.
As the fourth person to take on the Getty director position (the museum opened to the public in 1998), Potts will have to contend with the complex bureaucracy that has led to the ouster of many previous Getty higher-ups. While the director (and the board) usually have supreme authority at most museums, the Getty presents a complicated balance of power among not only those two parties but also the CEO of the Getty Trust. Brand reportedly resigned due to a personality clash with the late former CEO James Wood, while the museum's first director, John Walsh, had similar conflicts with the founding CEO Harold Williams. Perhaps Potts and the recently-installed James Cuno, who joined the museum in May of last year, can finally get along.
Meanwhile, those looking to get a window into Potts's directing philosophy before he hits the west coast should check out an op-ed he wrote for the Washington Post back in 2007, which focuses on the perils of populism and the dangers of overexpansion. Just how this sits with Cuno's admiration for "appetite" is something that museum watchers will have to wait and see.