A Gift Freshens Up the Getty Endowment

The Getty Museum has announced a gift to its endowment from Maria Hummer-Tuttle and Robert Tuttle. The funds will support museum exhibitions and educational programs. The gift also makes the museum directorship an endowed chair, henceforth the Maria Hummer-Tuttle and Robert Tuttle Director of the J. Paul Getty Museum.

Attorney Hummer-Tuttle long served on the Getty board and has spearheaded a drive to raise funds for the already wealthy Getty. In 2016 the Tuttles (he a car dealership entrepreneur and former UK ambassador) pledged $2.5 million to Caltech. The Getty press release describes the couple's generosity as a "transformative gift," but no dollar amount is given (and the T word tends to be used loosely in such announcements). For fiscal 2019 the Getty Trust reported an endowment of $7.3 billion.

Another gift, evidently anonymous, is a 1779 painting, Portrait of José Nicolás de Azara, Marquis of Nibbiano, by Anton Raphael Mengs. It's the second version (on canvas) of a near-identical panel painting in the Prado. The museum has a finished pastel portrait by Mengs, but this is the first oil painting by the artist. José Nicolás de Azara is now on view.