Sally Oral History Flashcards
penurious
Norris Bramlett, who was his accountant and actually was the one who had the idea to start the Getty Museum back in the fifties. Because he said, “Why give your things away to other museums? You can just set up your own museum in your name and get your tax write offs.” Because it was all about taxes. Getty was frugal—some would say penurious—and Norris was the same way. I think he came by it naturally, and also wanted to please his boss. So there was always the battle for funds for things, for buying library books or travel or equipment, anything that you needed that was not already in the small operating budget. So that was concerning.
tax write off
Norris Bramlett, who was his accountant and actually was the one who had the idea to start the Getty Museum back in the fifties. Because he said, “Why give your things away to other museums? You can just set up your own museum in your name and get your tax write offs.” Because it was all about taxes. Getty was frugal—some would say penurious—and Norris was the same way. I think he came by it naturally, and also wanted to please his boss. So there was always the battle for funds for things, for buying library books or travel or equipment, anything that you needed that was not already in the small operating budget. So that was concerning.
penny wise and pound foolish
We bought an electric pencil sharpener for this kind of central—this group of work stations, I guess, in an office near the director’s, with a few other offices nearby. So there were about ten people who would come and use this electric pencil sharpener, instead of the old hand ones or thing at your desk. Somehow Mr. Getty saw this invoice and had a fit. He said, “Why do you need an electric—” well, he didn’t tell us; he talked to Norris Bramlett and Norris wrote this memo to Stephen: “Why do you need an electric pencil sharpener?” So there was this constant monitoring of expenses, even tiny ones. On the other hand, he spent a fortune on the Villa. Marble bathroom stalls. It was sort of penny wise and pound foolish. Anyway, that was always kind of [a concern]: would there be enough money to buy supplies, equipment, things you needed to do to operate? Plus things for programming.
lorry
walking into the office that morning after it’d been announced on the news with a big smile on his face. It was like, yippee! So everybody was very excited and thought wonderful things were going to happen. Which they did, but it took a long time. We were pretty quickly disillusioned from the idea that a lorry was going to come driving up the drive with sacks of money, because there were all these lawsuits. It took a long time for the estate to settle.
trustee
Not immediately, but the trustees kind of sat up and took notice, and they started meeting about what will the future be like for the Getty Museum. I can’t remember; I think they brought new board members on. Then they hired Franklin Murphy, who was the chancellor of UCLA—had been—to conduct a search for a president; [they] decided to form the Trust and decided to [have Franklin Murphy] conduct a search for a president.
deaccession
No. [Into museums.] Private collectors would sell them to museums. Once they’re in museums, it’s pretty hard to buy them, buy something good. Museums do deaccession in this country, but they don’t usually deaccession their best things. And that’s what the trustees and the staff aspired to.
acquisitive
We had a very acquisitive curator of antiquities named Jiří Frel, who was able to get many, many donations of little pieces of antiquities, little fragments. So those were all coming in; they had to be registered and tracked. So that took a lot of time. Then we had a program of doing conservation. Our conservators would do conservation for other museums, for collectors. It was a revenue source, and so there were contracts for that. That was something I had to manage, as well as doing the billings and collecting the payments.
bailor/bailee
Well, loan agreements were constantly being modified, which I guess in legal terms, is a bailor/bailee agreement.
indemnify
So it became more balanced as time went on, where some of the liab[ility], it wasn’t totally on the person we wanted something from to assume all the liability and indemnify the Museum. As our curator of antiquities, Jiří Frel said, “And they want you to give them your first-born son.” It was that kind of language.
preparator
Yeah, a little bit at first. I remember one preparator coming up to me— somebody was late or a delivery was late—and this preparator, art handler person came up to me and said, “Well, that wouldn’t have happened with Pamela,” who was the registrar before me, who had kind of a reputation of kind of being really—could get really nasty. Then this friend of mine who was a conservator was there, he said to the guy, “Yes, Steve, but nobody liked Pamela.” But I was definitely a little bit green when I started and became more competent and sure of myself. By the time I left, people were much more—was it respectful? No. They tended to agree that what I thought was probably the best thing.
peristyle
Well, so there’s this long peristyle pool above you, and the parking’s underneath, the public parking.
substantive
That’s interesting. Now, you’ve mentioned that early on, one of your duties was to start creating some policies and procedures for the Registrar’s [Office] and for the Museum in how you were handling art. I’m wondering first, can you explain, I don’t know, I guess the substantive difference between a policy and procedure?
patrimony
I remember early on, there was this manuscript. Illuminated manuscripts are one of the collections at the Getty, which are—do you know what they are? They’re Renaissance books that have paintings in them. There was this fabulous manuscript of Henry the Lion. It was a German manuscript. The Getty wanted to bid on it, but it was part of Germany’s patrimony and the Germans were all upset, and the Getty backed down, said, “Okay, we won’t bid on this and we’ll leave it to you.” So it was acquired by the German government.
illuminated manuscripts
I remember early on, there was this manuscript. Illuminated manuscripts are one of the collections at the Getty, which are—do you know what they are? They’re Renaissance books that have paintings in them.
Henry the Lion
There was this fabulous manuscript of Henry the Lion. It was a German manuscript. The Getty wanted to bid on it, but it was part of Germany’s patrimony and the Germans were all upset, and the Getty backed down, said, “Okay, we won’t bid on this and we’ll leave it to you.” So it was acquired by the German government.
