In the Arts: Getty Museum Names New Director

Timothy Potts, an Australian-born expert in ancient art, will take over leadership of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Associated Press reports.

Mr. Potts, currently director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England, and a former head of the Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth, will begin the position on Sept. 1. He replaces David Bomford, the Getty’s interim director, who has stepped down to return to scholarship and writing.

Mr. Potts will be the Getty’s fourth director in 12 years, a turnover rate the Los Angeles Times attributes to the museum’s administrative setup, in which the director reports not to an institutional board but to the president of The Getty Trust, which includes three other divisions.

That administrative structure, unique among U.S. museums, is a “recipe for friction” and competition among the trust’s units, asserts the Culture Monster blog in the Times.

In other arts news, President Obama’s proposed fiscal 2013 budget includes $856.8-million for the Smithsonian Institution, which is seeking a cash influx for its biggest new project and renovation work on its historic buildings, reports The Washington Post.

The requested allocation, up nearly 6 percent from this year’s federal spending for the Smithsonian, includes $85-million for construction of the planned National Museum of African American History and Culture and $16.5-million to repair damage to existing structures from last summer’s East Coast earthquake.

Read more in The Chronicle of Philanthropy on arts funding in the president’s budget proposal.