Is the castle under siege?

To understand the extraordinary nature of Monday’s news that the director of the J. Paul Getty Museum had quit, there’s something you need to know about art museum directors: They are the most reticent, tight-lipped professionals imaginable.

It is simply not in their DNA to speak publicly, on the record, about anything even slightly tainted by controversy. Better to say nothing than to say something that might alienate somebody, somewhere, who might be helpful to the always struggling art museum cause.

But they are speaking out now, mixing sorrow with anger. What they’re saying is that the Getty is in trouble. I agree. And the reason, I believe, is mismanaged priorities at the Getty Trust.

Here’s an indication of what it has taken to light a fire under the highest ranks of the art museum profession.

Last year, a Boston art museum agreed to make a seven-figure rental of paintings from its collection to one of the most powerful commercial galleries in the world. The exploit broke every ethical standard in the book. America’s art museum directors sat silent.

Two years ago, a group of wealthy local philanthropies came up with a harebrained scheme to dismantle Philadelphia’s Barnes Foundation, the greatest collection of Modern art ever assembled by an American collector, and turn it into a downtown tourist attraction. The move would wreck an irreplaceable national treasure, and art critics from coast to coast went ballistic. Art museum directors kept mum.

But Monday, when Getty Museum director Deborah Gribbon abruptly announced her resignation, all hell broke loose. The scant two weeks’ notice she gave was a clear sign that she was being forced out, lending credence to rumors that had swirled for months. Art museum directors promptly lined up with megaphones to support an esteemed colleague. They spoke openly to reporters, loudly denouncing the event and even criticizing Getty Trust President Barry Munitz.

“A black eye to the Getty Trust,” said retired Getty Museum director John Walsh, one of the most revered senior figures in the profession.

“I am sorry that she is leaving,” said Philippe de Montebello, director of the mighty Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, who almost never discusses personnel issues elsewhere.

“My chief concern is that Barry Munitz, who came to the Getty without any background or knowledge of museums or art history, is making moves that have enormous consequences for Los Angeles, for culture in Southern California and beyond,” said Hugh Davies, director of San Diego’s Museum of Contemporary Art and former president of the Assn. of Art Museum Directors. “I am very worried that there is a toxic atmosphere at the Getty, and I lay it at his door.”

“Black eye,” “sorry,” “toxic” -- like I said, extraordinary.

Then there was Gribbon herself. The protagonist issued a statement notable for its candor and its courage. Director of the Getty Museum since 2000 and a curator there for more than 20 years, she used the formal language of diplomacy to declare that she was leaving her enviable job because the Getty Trust had become an impediment to fulfilling the founding benefactor’s mandate.

“J. Paul Getty left a great legacy to the people of Los Angeles and to the world,” she said, “and the Getty has extraordinary potential. I remain optimistic that this potential will be realized.”

Meaning, of course, that nearly 30 years after the wily oilman died and left his huge estate to his small art museum, making it a multibillionaire and the richest in the nation, the promised land was still way off in the distance, somewhere out beyond the blue horizon. And the Getty Trust was the perp.

For longtime museum watchers, this avalanche of public dismay from within the upper echelon of American art museum administration amounts to a stunning rebuke. It’s the art world equivalent of a public slap-fight between Colin Powell and Dick Cheney in a Georgetown restaurant.

Gribbon’s highest priority, like Walsh’s before her, has been the direct encounter between the public and great works of art. The trust’s priorities have been more diffuse -- scattered among secondary matters like scholarship, criticism, conservation, educational symposia, grant making and family fun events as much as art.

Consider the Vermeer. In July, a rare painting by Johannes Vermeer came to auction -- one of just 36 known to exist. It was far from the best Vermeer, but it was the only Vermeer left in private hands. (Queen Elizabeth is nominally a private collector, but I consider her Vermeer part of Britain’s public patrimony.) Today the painting is parked at a Pennsylvania art museum, on an eight-month loan from an anonymous collector widely believed to be Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn. In the spring, expect its ownership to be unveiled to promote his new resort on the Vegas Strip.

The Vermeer should be hanging in Brentwood. It should hang in the next museum gallery after “The Massacre of the Innocents,” painted by Vermeer’s immediate Flemish predecessor, Peter Paul Rubens. Except the Rubens is now in Toronto. The two most critically important Old Master paintings to come to public auction in the last two years were both acquired by private collectors rather than the cash-rich, Old-Master-poor Getty.

Two weeks after the Vermeer was sold, the Getty Trust happily announced more than $7 million in cultural heritage grants to 51 colleges and universities around the country.

The issue here is not -- repeat, not -- about inadequate money for art acquisitions. It is about who will be the public face of the Getty and thus the major public player in an internationally influential institution.

The Getty Trust can give worthy campus heritage grants to colleges from Alaska to Mississippi until the cows come home, and few will sit up and take note. Ditto the other laudable secondary activities, including scholarship, conservation and education. But the art museum will always be squarely in the public eye, and the art museum director will always be identified in the public mind as the Getty’s key leader.

For Munitz, who is famously fond of his flashy Hollywood and Sacramento coteries, it must be tough. In fact, absent his demonstrable interest, professional or otherwise, in art before taking charge at the Getty, it must be insufferable.

Munitz, as president and chief executive of the Getty Trust, plays public second fiddle to the art museum’s director, even though it’s but one of four program areas and he has greater authority. Playing down the centrality of the museum and its art and fluffing up the secondary activities are the only options.

How does he get away with it? Simple. Since coming to the Getty Trust in January 1998 from a background in business and university education, Munitz has done what any corporate CEO would do. He has remade the board of trustees in his own image.

Just three of its 13 members are prominent figures in art, all as collectors. Businesspeople and university educators make up the rest. Crucially, roughly half owe their slots on the prestigious board to Munitz.

That’s why Monday’s defensive statement, issued by Munitz about Gribbon’s departure and their conflict over priorities, rang both hollow and disingenuous.

“[The] Trustees have emphasized for some time,” he said, “that the Getty must also support conservation, scholarship and philanthropic service.”

That Munitz would hide behind board members as merely the humble executor of their keen directives on art is laughable and pitiable. L’etat, c’est moi, as Louis XIV put it -- or, to paraphrase, “I am the Getty Trust.”

What does this all mean for the future? Two things.

Inside the Getty Museum, staff morale will remain low, where it has languished for many years. Outside the Getty, the effect will be severe on a search for a superlative director to succeed Gribbon.

Oh, and a third thing: The Getty’s extraordinary potential will remain intact; and it will continue to go unrealized.