Getty Trust to Slash Budget as Investments Tumble

The blog has suggested alternatives to layoffs, including asking the 11 volunteer trustees to contribute money and cutting the pay of top executives.

Wood, at $1.11 million, and Williams, at $1.28 million, were last year's top earners, with seven others making from $397,000 to $906,000, according to documents posted on the Getty website in keeping with the trust's policy, adopted in the wake of a mid-decade scandal over improper spending, of being unusually open and detailed about its finances.

"Everything is on the table," Wood said of the blog's calls for lower executive salaries and a toll on board membership, but he added that the Getty's problem was too big to be solved by such "piecemeal" measures.

A respected art historian and museum director, Wood ran the Art Institute of Chicago from 1980 to 2004.

The Getty lured him out of retirement two years ago to bring a steadying hand to an institution that had been racked by back-to-back scandals.

In 2004 and 2005, morale sank as allegations surfaced about financial impropriety and cronyism under then-president Barry Munitz. Munitz was ousted early in 2006, and his departure was followed by extensive turnover on a board that had been widely seen as unresponsive and out of touch.

It wasn't until September 2007 that the Getty emerged from the second scandal -- its past acquisitions of looted antiquities -- by returning 40 objects to Italy.

In a prosecution that has moved forward at a sluggish pace, Marion True, the museum's former antiquities curator, remains charged by the Italian government with conspiring to acquire looted items.