English translation of the original personal essay; historical observations, figures and legal discussion reflect its publication date. Some photographs were not embedded in the supplied PDF; available images and the original captions are retained.
The soil in which it grows
On this study trip to America with my child, we travelled from Dallas, Texas, to Los Angeles, California—from cowboys to fashion. We saw two American styles, traditional and modern, each distinctive and each complementing the other.
Flying from Dallas to Santa Ana in the Los Angeles area, we enjoyed Laguna Beach’s clear water and fine sand. American families gathered for beach barbecues in the joyful atmosphere of Independence Day. At Newport Beach, near NBA star Kobe Bryant’s home, I shared a seafood feast with my former colleague Carter Chen, then visited my old friend Uncle Hu in Irvine. Ocean views, mountain views, lake views: apart from frequent earthquakes, California seemed to have everything.
Leaving Irvine in a Hyundai rented through Avis’s website, I drove northwest. Soon after joining Interstate 405, I saw an extraordinary group of buildings on a cliff 881 feet above sea level against the Santa Monica Mountains. This was Los Angeles’s celebrated Getty Center, comprising a strikingly modern J. Paul Getty Museum, an art research centre and a beautiful garden.
The museum’s website, http://www.getty.edu/museum/, introduces it this way: “The J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center in Los Angeles houses European paintings, drawings, sculpture, illuminated manuscripts, decorative arts, and photography from its beginnings to the present, gathered internationally.”
The little girl in the photograph above, like Van Gogh’s famous Irises beside her, is priceless.
The museum’s dazzling, invaluable works are almost more than the eye can absorb. As the introduction suggests, masterpieces by Van Gogh, Ingres and drawings by La Velde, alongside original paintings by French, Dutch and Italian masters from the early fourteenth to the late nineteenth century, radiate warmth in this temple of art. One hundred and forty-four medieval Byzantine manuscripts quietly speak of humanity’s gifts of wisdom and spirit. The collection of costume arts from Louis XIV to Napoleon is extraordinary, while sculpture and glass from the Renaissance to the late nineteenth century reveal changing artistic fashions.
Ever since the film All the Money in the World came out a couple of years ago, I had wanted to visit. The Getty Museum and the Getty Villa in Malibu were essential stops on my Los Angeles itinerary. At the museum bookshop, I also bought Paul Getty’s autobiography, As I See It. I wanted to understand how the “world’s richest private citizen”, so miserly and harsh towards his family, could also earn lasting respect through philanthropy.
Taken on the museum’s two-level terrace, with the maze garden behind—another work by a master designer.
The trust
Legally, this vast museum belongs neither to the government nor to an individual: it forms part of the J. Paul Getty Trust’s property. By 2017, the trust’s assets had reached $6.9 billion. Its founder and settlor was J. Paul Getty himself. As early as 1953, he established a living trust, subsequently making and revising twenty-one versions of his will. Combining a living trust with wills ensured that most of his property would enter the J. Paul Getty Trust.
Through this estate planning, assets already placed in trust would no longer form part of Getty’s estate at death and would not need to pass through probate. Their administration would follow the trust terms, closing off the prospect of descendants competing for them. Getty died in 1976. Only a small portion of his estate went to his family; his priceless collections and most of his other wealth entered the J. Paul Getty Trust.
Image of J. Paul Getty’s will.
The 1953 trust indenture states its purposes at the outset: to found, maintain and perpetuate in California, under Division 12, Chapter 1, Article 2 of the California Education Code, a museum, art gallery and library for the diffusion of artistic and general knowledge.
Getty committed almost all his assets to the trust, whose central focus was the museum: open to the public and free of charge, a clear expression of major philanthropy. Numerous provisions addressed the trustees’ rights and duties in establishing and operating it. These forward-looking terms laid the groundwork for the Getty Center’s later design and operation.
After decades of operation, changing circumstances led the trustees to petition the court. Court orders amended provisions that no longer suited the times and supplied instructions for the trustees. In a 1980 order, for example, the judge held that the trust’s nonprofit and charitable requirements did not restrict trustees from funding programmes they operated or initiated themselves.
Image from the Getty Center’s official website.
The trustees initiated this petition. Trust administration ordinarily requires no court intervention, but intervention is sometimes necessary. A beneficiary may want the court to replace trustees, compel an accounting or order a distribution. A trustee may seek a ruling on the validity of the trust or an amendment, or interpretation of a trust provision. The Getty trustees’ petition fell into the latter category.
This offers a lesson for family trusts in China. Many are intended for succession across generations and may last a century. But can our wisdom today truly give the right instructions to people a hundred years from now? If trustees find that provisions no longer advance the trust’s purposes, there should be a mechanism for adjustment—especially for charitable trusts. In America, that authority rests with the courts. Through a petition somewhat analogous to a special procedure under Chinese civil procedural law, a judge can clarify the trust instrument and give trustees directions.
Further petitions produced three more orders in 1983, 1992 and 2004. Two clarified the scope and standards for use of the names J. Paul Getty Trust and Getty Villa. The most interesting is the order shown below.
Image from the Getty Center’s official website.
The trust was established in 1953, while the law continued to evolve. For trustees overseeing such substantial assets, an important aspect of fiduciary duty is ensuring that the trust’s existence and operations remain compliant. In the order illustrated, the judge amended the terms to specify that the trust is irrevocably dedicated to charitable purposes and that none of its net earnings may benefit a private person. On termination, once liabilities are settled, assets must go to nonprofit charitable organisations or organisations lawfully selected by the trustees. The relevant law here is principally American tax law: philanthropy and taxation are closely connected, and the development of charity cannot be separated from the tax system.
In short, the family trust Getty established developed over decades into a mature, well-run charitable trust through the work of many people. This is instructive for China. Our Charity Law provides that charitable trustees must be trust companies or charitable organisations. The banking and insurance regulator’s Circular No. 36 also provides that family-trust trustees must be trust companies. Notarial practice has also seen civil trusts under the Trust Law. Yet a family trust or civil trust may ultimately become wholly charitable after the settlor’s death. When planning estates for wealthy clients, I encourage a charitable fallback: what happens if none of the beneficiaries named in the will or trust remains? Does the property go to the state, to whatever arrangement the trustee considers appropriate, or to a judge’s conjecture?
These questions ultimately become philosophical: where should wealth finally go? Getty possessed an immense fortune, installed a payphone at home to prevent guests from using his telephone at his expense, and refused to pay a ransom that was a fraction of his wealth when his grandson was kidnapped. The public called him the world’s richest miser. Where, then, should his wealth have gone?
Today, the J. Paul Getty Trust has assets of $6.9 billion, using the 2017 figure. The museum receives 1.6 million visits annually and is among America’s most popular. The trust continually funds and trains other museums and cultural nonprofits. It also has a library, publishing programmes and visiting-scholar programmes. As its purposes state, it seeks to establish, sustain and perpetuate the spread of artistic and general knowledge.
Through his trust, this world-famous museum and generous support for the arts, Getty offered an answer to the philosophical question of wealth’s ultimate destination. As I write, I remember the greeting I saw when driving in: ART IS JUST THE BEGINNING…
End.