LONDON—The Getty name is legendary in art circles. The oil baron John Paul Getty founded a namesake museum in Los Angeles in 1953, and John Paul Getty II, who died in 2003, was Britain’s best-known philanthropist: From 1984 to 1994 alone, he gave away £140 million ($217 million), with London’s National Gallery receiving the largest single gift, of £50 million ($65 million), for acquisitions. Now John Paul II’s son Mark has been appointed chairman of the museum’s board of trustees, taking over from the barrister Peter Scott, who had held the post since the beginning of 2000.

Mark Getty formerly worked at both the securities firm Kidder, Peabody & Co., in New York, and the private bank SG Hambros, in London. In 1995 he partnered with a former Hambros colleague to found Getty Images, the first company to license photographs via the Web; in 2005, American Photo Magazine awarded them the No. 1 slot in its list of the “100 most important people in photography.”

Nicholas Penny, the director of the National Gallery, says the museum’s new chairman will bring to the role “astute financial and commercial advice” as well as “a cosmopolitan and diplomatic point of view.” Noting that the younger Getty inherited his American father’s cultural interests and Anglophilia, Penny adds, “He is an art lover committed to developing and protecting the National Gallery.”

"Chairman Getty" originally appeared in the September 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's September 2008 Table of Contents.