0:54:21
Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Propeller
Reddit
Magnoliacom
Newsvine
Furl
Facebook
Google
Yahoo
Technorati
Icerocket
Contributor:
Indianapolis Museum of Art
Babble On. | Login
Babble On. | Login
Channels: Talks
Watch Dr. Maxwell L. Anderson, The Melvin & Bren Simon Director and CEO of the Indianapolis Museum of Art and James N. Wood, president and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust, discuss the state of the museum field, the role of technology, approaches to conservation, the challenges of a fragile economy, and the Getty’s strategic efforts to serve local communities while having a global impact.
This afternoon, we are very fortunate to have Jim Wood who joins us from the Getty Trust and all of the various aspects that he'll share with us
this afternoon that he has, himself, learned about freshly in the last many months. He joined in February of 2007 as the Chief Executive Officer and President Chief Executive Officer
of the Getty and Jim, many of you would know from his years of service as the Director of the Art Institute of Chicago, as President of the Art Institute of Chicago and Director, from 1980 to 2004
and all of us gained from that over many years of acquisitions, exhibitions, expansions, and contributions of all kinds.
He had begun a midwestern life, before that, as Director of the St. Louis Museum of Art and had been a key person in thinking through
how the collections would grow both there, in Chicago, obviously, leavened by an experience in Buffalo at the Albright-Knox
and, an institution of great consequence, as well, in collecting and in fostering the experience of a community and, like me,
he started at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and we are refugees from other experiences, as well. He sits on the boards of the Sterling and Francine Clark
Art Institute, the Institute of Fine Arts in New York City, which is part of New York University, and the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts.
Jim, thank you for joining us this afternoon.
Great pleasure!
It's been a herculean day for him; he flew in from Chicago, he had a few minutes of rest and then we spent two and a half hours in the galleries. He hasn't been here for a while. So, welcome back.
The best way to judge the vitality of a city is to get into their art museum, and this is a vital place.
Well, but the airport wasn't shabby, too!
The airport was remarkable. I must say! No, I had not realized that you had finished this, what, a week ago? I was pleased that you did this for me, Max!
Well, we like to impress our out-of-town guests and then, you know, we want to start there and then get you into the galleries, but you got to Los Angeles as an out-of-town,
not a guest, but a resident and as an easterner, Rhode Island boy, that, in some ways, was a big change for you and you knew it well from afar, but what's it had been like to make the transition?
I mean home, originally, was Boston, long way from Rhode Island.
But actually, I mean, as Max said, I came to New York for graduate school at NYU and then first job at the MET,
in a tiny little position but in this glorious, huge institution, and I've been really moving West ever since, Buffalo, St. Louis, Chicago, now LA...
and LA is totally is different. I mean, if you think about the Albright-Knox gallery in Buffalo, if you think about the St. Louis Art Museum and then the Art Institute of Chicago, they are all the product of world's fairs
and expositions at the end of the 19th century, and a city at the end of the 19th century that could do that,
and then have a permanent museum grow out of it, tells you a lot about the history of their civic commitment and LA is just the opposite.
I mean, LA is this extraordinary, energetic place. I'm loving it, but my template of Chicago, everything from the grid, the lake,
but much more importantly this cluster of great civic institutions in a public park, available from public transportation, supported by, not only
a remarkable tradition of donors, but citizens who, you run into people on the street, and once they realized you were the director of the Art Institute, they say "Don't mess up my museum."
LA very, very different. Of course, the Getty totally different. The result of one man's generosity. So in effect, we started with an individual
and now are trying to be a catalyst for encouraging, stimulating in a broader, sort of, civic commitment in L.A.
So, at the Art Institute, you had a very different remit and obligation around a civic institution and you were the one show in town, that was it.
You have a little competition in at LACMA, you have other sorts of arenas, and they're not competition, per se, but there is a more diffuse cultural universe
in L.A. than in Chicago.
True. I mean, Chicago had the Museum of Contemporary Art, a vital, good institution which, I mean, so many of these earlier cities there was this pattern
where you had- because the Art Institute, of course, began buying Monets when the paint was wet. They were buying contemporary art. They showed the Armory show in the museum,
which wasn't shown in New York. There was a tradition of the contemporary as part of this expanding general, universal museum. At a certain point, almost always, these institutions,
another institution springs up because the big institution is no longer contemporary enough and it's a good thing, it's a healthy thing. The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago,
was playing that role. In L.A., a truly a different... LACMA, Los Angeles County Museum
has always had a very vital contemporary component but, again, MOCA, the Museum of Contemporary Art, there, grew up from a group who didn't feel LACMA
was cutting-edge enough, wasn't focusing enough on it. I think the biggest difference in L.A. is these name museums,
I mean, The Norton Simon, The Hammer Museum, The Getty Museum, all the results of wealthy individuals who collected, who danced to some degree
with the big universal museum, the general museum, LACMA, and then pulled back and created their own thing and its created a remarkable cluster of institutions
which given LA's horizontal, spread-out growth has great advantages but has also deprived the city of that kind of cultural focus
that these earlier cities we've mentioned had.
So, Miami is a similar world where these amazing private collections have so far danced around the Miami Art Museum. What's the future in Miami, would you guess?
It's a good question. Miami really doesn't have any institution with the ambition, I think, of that, sort of, general universal collection
and the emphasis is very much on contemporary or recent past, as I see it. I mean, it seems to be over time,
I mean, two things will happen. It'll fragment into a number of, you know, sort of private collections, little kunsthalles, most of which will fail,
or maybe a group will come together at some point and say, you know, one-plus-one can be three, and we're going to have a particular focus
and that focus, I would assum,e would be some really vital connection with Latin America, but....
I have a naughty anecdote about Miami, which is a major collector of 20th century material, offered a suite of Rauschenberg prints to a museum there,
and it was said to him by a member of their collecting committee, "I'm sorry we don't collect reproductions."
There was always the sophistication problem.
So, tell us, you've got what some consider a mega-museum and you describe as a series of divisions and institutions, just give us a sketch
of who reports to you in terms of expertise around up at the Getty.
Well, the first crucial fact, and I have to keep reminding myself of this is, I'm not the director of the museum.
I'm the President.
I'm sure your director is greatful of that!
No, it's the reason that when I was offered the job, which surprised me tremendously, I took it, because it was a totally different challenge, I mean,
No one leaves the directorship of the Art Institution of Chicago and becomes the director of another museum as far as I'm concerned. It would be a step-down, Met included....
I mean the wonderful thing about the Getty, and my position as President of the Trust, I'm on top of, really, four programs.
We've just gone through a strategic plan and then sat, you know, sat down with the board and top staff and just challenged every one of our assumptions and the first one was, well, do we have the right number of legs on the stool?
and we concluded, yes! There is a museum which was the largest piece. A good museum with two remarkable, you know, sites, collecting in
very specific areas. Then there is the research institute which is one of the major, it's quite miraculous, I mean in a thirty-year period they put together one of the great art history libraries
in the world, over a million volumes and substantial special collections and they bring in scholars and so, it's a very active international research institution. Then there's the conservation institute
and their role really is to further the practice of conservation. So we are as involved in finding solutions with a technical or managerial, literally in terms of
how you manage sites, and working with people around the world to try to, you know, solve problems and then make those problems replicable
and the fourth leg of stool is a foundation, the Getty Foundation which gives us the ability to make grants within the specific area of the visual arts
to further the mission of these other three parts of the institution.
Then, there is accounting, and a legal...the missing piece, or let's say the absent piece, in the areas that report to me is, there's no membership and there's no development
which tells you something about the unique nature of this institution, I mean, it is totally dependent on, but also, hardly, so far
as of two weeks ago, able to function on it's endowment. This is quite a new challenge for me and probably most people in our profession. A tremendous advantage but, also I must say a tremendous responsibility, because every penny we spend
came from one gift and if we can't justify the way we spend it and there are lot of people ready to tell us we didn't do the right thing, we would be justly criticized.
Well, part of the pressure then, is also what seems to be a fairly new change, which is about Southern California being an obligation of yours, versus the world.
We're going to fix the world's problems and then over the last several years the Getty has come to a kind of binary focus, if it's fair to say.
I think the.... I mean, this was always... the early documents and after Getty died in 1976. So the institution, I mean, literally from 1976
until 2007, when they completed the expansion and, sort of, the redesign, to some degree, of the Villa and the surrounding structures of the Getty Villa,
it's an institution that has been in physical change, they've been building, expanding, redefining themselves, trying different programmatic areas, a...
I really have to call it a prolonged adolescence, in the best sense, but as you remember, adolescence isn't the time when you often
value your siblings, you know, you're often trying to kill them. We have now and I really feel, this isn't my doing, a great deal of it is the chronology of the institution
just the completion of a whole first stage of, you know, physically solving the institution. We are now entering young adulthood. That means, in a fundamental part
of our strategic plan was- we have... everything we do has to maximize the collaboration between our own parts and second we have to be absolutely sure
we are good citizens in Los Angeles but also that we are making use of cooperating with, collaborating with, these extraordinary institutions in our
Southern California region, of which there are a tremendous number and this is as much selfish on our part to make the most of what's around us as a sense of obligation
that we need to be a primary, you know, catalyst for improving the cultural life there. This is wonderfully challenging,
I must say, because L.A. is an incredibly diverse, dynamic place.
So, you have a mayor who is a vital, lively man who has clearly made culture part of the way he talks about the city, and what is it like to work with Mayor Villaraigosa?
Antonio is quite extraordinary. He is a ball of fire. He is not particularly knowledgeable in the arts but he is a...
How to describe him properly? I would say, I mean, he is determined for the best of reasons, to really speak for this incredibly
diverse community. He has a tremendous disadvantage and the first meeting I had with him which was shortly after I came, I mean, just to say "Hello,"
and present by credentials, we don't get money from the mayor or the county, but he said, "Ah...you spend a lot of time in Chicago...., boy do I envy
the power Rich Daley has!"
And, of course, what he meant was that he is the Mayor of the city, but there are also the administration of the county and, as in almost everything in Los Angeles,
it's a system that seems to have been designed to fragment itself, rather than to unify itself. So, I think we have
you know, a good working relationship. It's very different from institutions where you are dependent on, you know, funding from a political source. We are not....
That's not a problem we have here. So, you know moving up a notch to the gubernatorial slot, I introduced you to Arnold at the entrance,
the sculpture by Orly Genger.
I know, it was the biggest piece.
It is the biggest piece, it is the uber lebens grosse image of the body builders of Mr. Universe that Orly Genger sites around from the Efroymson entrance pavilion,
so tell us about Arnold, what's that like?
I mean I really haven't had that much... he actually lives in Los Angeles. The Getty, just by the nature of its visibility, its extraordinary site,
is a very appropriate place for politicians to do things and of course, we are careful to be sure that it doesn't make us partisan
but these aren't political rallies, but anything to do with the arts, you know? Where these political leaders are encouraging,
trying to build support for the arts or education, we are more than happy to be the venue, and that's really the context in which...I think,
in terms of the arts, his wife, who happens to be of a different political persuasion, is going to be a real asset.
I'm not talking about the Getty, now, in terms of support for us, but it is support for the arts and we all know, even if we don't get a penny, the attitude
and example set by top political leaders can have a tremendous effect on how people view the arts.
Are we intellectual and elite? Or is this something that's vital and assumed to be an absolutely basic part of everyday life.
And from your fresh Illinois roots, any Obama administration contacts yet, or is that something which is coming in? What do you expect to happen differently under the new administration?
I mean, not contacts in my own case. I think this is going to be extremely interesting and I'm very positive and let's leave the party,
regardless of what party, yes, it's a change of party, but it's really a change of personality and a totally different individual.
We have to remember that his first date with Michelle Obama, he took her to the Art Institute.
This is true!
I mean, this is a man who...first of all, there are going to be no apologies for intellect.
I think we are going to see in his desire, the way he builds his administration, an attempt to be both elite and populist and that is not an oxymoron in my opinion,
I mean Philippe de Montebello has done that at the Met, I think, brilliantly.
I also think that there was going to be a whole shift in the way we relate to the broader world, where soft power, cultural power, cultural diplomacy,
a term that we hear actually coming from England, our colleagues there, is going to be more and more important and now the questions seems to be, Max...I'd like to ask you this one.
Bill Ivy, who was the past head of the NEA, apparently is managing a transition team on the arts and culture. One has heard, just indirectly, that some people are floating the idea of a cabinet position
for culture.
Having chewed on that a bit myself, my feeling is this would be great mistake. I don't think what this country needs is a cultural position for the arts,
I think we need an administration that absolutely supports them, both psychologically, gives more money to our national endowments, without strings attached,
and maybe most importantly of all, absolutely defends the tax deduction and the inheritance tax.
Well, you spoke about elite and populists, but, and surely, the Getty is the epitome of elite and populists because you have got two plus million visitors a year
but you espouse the very highest standards in conservation, in research, in publication. So how do you go about taking a part, say the GRI or the GCI
in balancing the elite and the populist?
I mean part of this is a communication problem. I mean, most of our visitors, most people who think of The Getty, think of it as a museum with these two extraordinary campuses,
they really aren't aware of the research institute, the conservation institute. Ironically, the further you get away from the physical site of The Getty, Los Angeles,
the more people are aware of the research institute, the conservation institute because they have had over a thirty-year period now,
tremendous impact, really globally, within the narrow area of the visual arts, but the scholars program every year brings over, you know, approximately forty scholars
from around the world. They spend, you know, a substantial amount of time there and then they go back to where they come from.
I had a wonderful trip with our new head of the research institute recently to Germany. It was a kind of they way you travel, probably; Berlin, Cologne, Dresden, Munich in ten days, and it was fantastic.
Just meeting our colleagues, you know, focusing on the, you know, the museums, what they were doing, what they were going through in terms of reinstallations,
you know, everything from acquisition and installation to financial questions. In each one of those cities, the top people, three out of the four of them, have been Getty Scholars
and they had been Getty Scholars before they really had risen to the, you know, the top position they were now in and I just found that very, very gratifying
and a tremendous encouragement and responsibility that we continue to look for people at that middle level with potential and try to add something,
you know, to their development.
Speaking of responsibility, you were the first museum in the country to declare a moratorium on acquiring antiquities unprovenanced after 1970
and have since taken other, very progressive steps. So, fill us in about how that's working and how that's effecting the program of the museum in other aspects.
I mean, this occurred before I came in, it was negotiated by Michael Brand who was the Director of the museum, who did a very good job. Max has been very involved in these issues...
I mean, the results; first of all, I think the Getty did the right thing. We all know that the hardest call is where are the compelling legal grounds
if something should go back and where aren't there? My experience, actually, in this field was more in Chicago where we had two or three
of the earliest Holocaust challenges, you know, in terms of things in the collection. And it was very painful because there was a charge made
which we hadn't expected and then you are instantly tried in the press and it was the Institution against the Holocaust survivor,
and that was not the way you wanted to frame an issue. What we learned, and the profession learned, was that you just had to step back and then
really, absolutely openly, determine what the facts were. We gave things back, we negotiated some settlements. I am proud of what the Art Institute did,
but also the profession, I think, the whole question of the Holocaust issues, has acted correctly, and now if, I don't think there are going to be that many more claims
or if they come up, there is a whole context they can be dealt with, that is calm, not emotional, and not on the front page.
The antiquities question is much more complicated, tied up with resurgent nationalism, tied up with
and I think the Getty's decision was absolutely right to agree on this year 1970, which most of the museum profession has now accepted.
It drastically curtails your ability to buy, which in many ways is a shame, but I think, it's the price we need to pay, should pay, at this moment.
The other side of it is, we have negotiated relationships with the Italians and the Greeks, which were fair. Everything they claimed did not go back, but we went case by case,
you know, at the end of the day the things that went back, there was a compelling reason and we got agreement from the other side that, all right this is a good faith effort
and here is where we are going to draw the line legally. That has opened up the possibility of exchanges and loans and I think, something is just beginning though,
I mean, there is Asia, there is Africa. What we are looking at is a century of collecting under very different ethical
and even legal context and it's very dangerous to apply today's ethics. Less so today's law,
although you had to be very careful with that, too, to earlier situations. So we're going to have to go through each one of these areas and parse, hopefully, the right answer.
I mean, I am very much in favor of, believe passionately in the importance of, the world's art being in other places than where it was created.
At the same time, you can't break the law. How retroactively you apply the law, we are going to be talking about that for a long time.
Well, you spoke about self-imposed limits in collecting, and the Getty very conspicuously doesn't collect in certain areas of art history.
[Right.]
So, how is that feeling to you? Old art history buff that you are.
Well, my comment about directing the museum and the Art Institute, I mean I had the incredible good fortune to be the director of a wonderful museum with a universal ambition,
not a realized ambition the way the Metropolitan has, that's really ours and maybe the world's most comprehensive encyclopedia. The Getty is a wonderfully arbitrary place.
Its collecting grew out of Getty's interests. French, 18th century furniture, which we have one of the greatest collections in the world, it's basically complete,
I mean, it's hard to imagine needing to add anything. The European paintings up to 1900, where we could spend the rest of our lives and all our money slowly building and you'd never
get where you wanted to be, but we are making progress. European drawings up to 1900, very small collection, but looking to try to buy just major things
where it'll have real importance. European painting and sculpture up to 1900...
Excuse me... sculpture and, well... it includes the decorative arts and that is one department, again up to 1900. And then photography,
which begins with the invention of the medium and comes up to the present. And, of course, the Mediterranean antiquities; Greek, Roman, and Etruscan.
As part of our strategic plan, we looked at these areas of collecting and asked ourselves, "Well should we stop collecting in any one of these areas? Should we enter a new area?" And our conclusion was, "No."
Each one of them, in varying in degrees, we will be more or less active in, as I said, French decorative arts, it's an extraordinary, literally complete collection.
Photography, which brings us up to the present, and there is a wonderful serendipity, I think, not serendipity, this was really planned by John Walsh, the earlier director who created the photography collection
because Mr. Getty, I am sure, will be appalled that we are the spending his money on photography. But, the Getty has been able to build one of the great
historical photography collections and it brings us into the 20th century, and right up to the contemporary art, in a city which is its whole life was about manufacturing images, and the
communication of things through images, so it's, I think, it's absolutely appropriate for the Getty. Now, this leaves you with an institution that is very atypical.
I think that's fine. I think that is actually part of its appeal, and I am much more concerned with our going deep in these areas than trying to spread more broadly.
We were talking about Tim Hawkinson earlier, who had a great exhibition in L.A. the Whitney helped birth and, of course, Bob Irwins Gardens are essential to the Getty,
so you do have connections with artists of our time, Martin Puryear and others.
[Right!]
So how do you balance that to the existing mandate that is photography-focused in the contemporary world?
First let me say, Bob Irwin, one of the real pleasures of living in LA is just the incredible artistic ferment there and artists and Bob has become a great friend, and you've got a fantastic piece here,
you commissioned from him, and it is wonderful and just animates that space. I mean, I think that's a real coup.
We aren't going to collect much past 1900 anywhere except photography, maybe video, the research institute has actually
a large collection of video as an art form, so the scarier of the photographic and later types of, you know, moving image.
Yes, the living artist, beyond that our challenge, I think, is to tap the vitality and the excitement of the living artist as a way into the history of art but not be collecting.
Now, we'll do that. Irwin, of course, was commissioned to do the garden, so it's an accessioned object in the museum's collection and this garden is an extraordinary
perpetually contemporary experience. I don't see us doing that doing that again, there was not a place for it, no other reasons.
I do see us as with Hawkinson as really this is the decision of the museum, not mine, but selectively, very carefully looking for contemporary artists who can come in and realize an intervention
or a site specific installation for a period of time, that does two things. It could only happen at the Getty or at least, it takes tremendous advantage of the particular site we have
and an artist whose work hopefully will, perhaps, in a very problematic, unexpected way make you think about going back in time,
which is an entrance, an artist of your own time who you can then go from that back into the history of art. I think it is always better to go reverse chronology. I find it hard to come to museum and start with Egypt.
Since the stock market began behaving so oddly a few weeks ago, everyone is facing a lot of tough choices, so how are you in the board of the trust walking up
to those challenges in your case?
Well, first thing I am doing is not calling my chief financial officer on a regular basis. I mean, we, like everybody else, I mean, we're an institution that is, you know,
99 percent dependent on the flow from its endowment. We average the value of the endowment over three years
and take 5 percent, so we are insulated to a degree, as most institutions with endowments are, from immediate short changes. But, we are absolutely
working out scenarios of sort of good, bad, and really ugly to be sure that we are making decisions in terms of this year
where we have a substantial increase with what it may be two, three years out.
I think we have to wait and see, quite a bit. It's going to be setting priorities.
I mean we are not insulated from the loss of market value. I hope we are invested as intelligently and as diversely and you know, you have advantages with size,
but that doesn't make us immune. I don't want to be overly pessimistic, either, though...and this is going to be hard time for the arts
not just in the United States but everywhere, but it also may be a time where we become a little more aware of history
where we realize the need of the arts in hard times, which are always, I think, greater than in those decadent periods in-between,
so, we'll see.
Let me ask you a question which is a bit of a provocation in relation to what you just said about the Getty's focus: art before 1900, largely European...
and then we watch Asia rising, perhaps stumbling a bit as the rest of us are right now, but looking at India and China.
How do museums that have a primary focus on matters European, cope with, deal with, find energy from or in, someway offset the fact that the European
life is declining, American life is declining as the percentage of the World's creativity, activity, vitality...
This is a really important problem for us or opportunity for us, I would say. As I said, we are not going to change our collecting patterns but and already, I mean, in a way the Getty
has been a global institution from its inception, in the research area, in the conservation area. I mean, we do projects around the world.
One of the, you know, most, one of the earliest projects that was begun was in Western China in Dunhuang which
is one of the jumping-off points for the silk route, incredible complex of caves, hundreds of caves with some of the greatest, you know, it is the one of the key monuments in the history of Buddhist
cave painting. Getty has been involved in determining ways to conserve these for twenty years now. We've worked with the Chinese
to create something called the China Principles, which are, not only expertise in terms of restoration, but then once you have restored a site like this,
how do you manage the increased tourism and desire to see it? Because the great danger is, you restore something, the restoration creates new interest and new interest destroys the site
and this isn't the only place that is happening. We have just signed an agreement with the Egyptian Government to restore Tutankhamun's tomb, which has very sophisticated,
complicated wall painting problems. We've been in Egypt for a long time. We have done restoration in the Valley of the Queens a decade ago.
Again, the project is going to be restoration but perhaps more importantly developing with them a whole site management program to how, in this case, is not just
the flow of tourists but also the flow of water when you get these flash floods which can destroy the work, you know, of ten years, in you know twenty minutes
if you haven't engineered the site in a way that it prevents water from coming back into these tombs.
I mean that is one area and it will be nice if we could make it better known to people that this is part of the Getty's mandate and what we are doing,
but in a way I think if you do good things, eventually people will realize it. Now on the other side, we're not going to change our collecting patterns but we are absolutely convinced that it's essential
that in the mix of exhibitions we do, at our sites in Los Angeles and the programming we do, we absolutely not only look West to Asia
but South to Latin America and in the next several years the museum already has two exhibitions planned; one will be Aztec Sculpture drawn from The National Archaeological Museum in Mexico City and this will be shown in the Villa
and another exhibition that will be shown in the Villa will be Cambodian Bronzes from Phnom Penh.
In both cases, the idea is to bring other archeological traditions and bring them into this, you know, remarkable site in a faux-Roman villa
devoted to the arts, the archaeological arts of the Mediterranean, and it's really, you know, continuing on what was Marion True's, you know, the founding curator's, one of the most important
curator's vision, which would be the villa and the Getty will be a center for comparative archaeology. It won't just be the areas we collect but through loan
and conservation work and collaboration, we bring in these other cultures and show them in the context of what we have in the permanent collection and I think this is absolutely the way of the future and very important for us.
You mentioned the Dunhuang caves, of course, a big part of that proposition has been the photographic documentation historically and that touches on your remarkable commitment
to technology. I was wondering if you could share with us something of the things that are happening with new media at the Getty.
As you all, Max is the master in this and I am enough older than he is that I am bit of a luddite compared to your mastery at this.
I mean one of the important areas for technology with the Getty has been the technology needed for advanced conservation.
I mean if you visit the Getty, the campus you experience at ground level, the Institution is drilled down into that mountaintop, three floors down and there are really extraordinary
and very extensive laboratories and scientific facilities, which is very hi-tech.
The use of digital means of the web and all to communicate information, again as we went through our strategic plan,
the museum is well-documented. I think we have a good website, most of the collection is really quite available, there is more we can do,
the real challenge for us, an opportunity is the GRI, The Getty Research Institute and we set our priorities there that the collection, we have special collections
as well as this vast library. Those special collections are unique. Many of them are fragile. So the first priority, in terms of digitizing, is going to be these special collections.
Down the line, it will be interesting whether over time we find ourselves buying fewer books because these are shared digitally with more institutions
and put more of our effort into continuing to build the special collections, which are artists archives that, you know, unique things.
So, in one sense, we are trying to collect rare, individual things. The more of those we get, the more responsibility that we have to digitize
and make them available through the web.
You've been drilling a lot in recent years beyond down into the mountain, you've been drilling into the world of transparency
and opening up the Getty to public scrutiny, partly in response to challenges that you faced in leadership before you got there.
Tell us about what it's like today, things have calm down about the transparency issue but what kind of commitment should we all have in this field to that kind of openness
about our books and how we work and how we hire people and how we spend money and all the other ingredients.
It is better not to have the Attorney General in the back room. The Getty made mistakes there were indiscretions, it was absolutely correct
that they went through what they did. And, frankly, I mean the board that hired me had tackled that problem, had instituted, you know, had made fundamental changes
and it instituted, you know, enlightened governance. I think the real challenge going ahead is not that complicated.
I mean, that word transparency is thrown around a lot, but my feeling is almost anything that goes on at the Institution, you better be ready to see on the front page of the paper.
Secrets are something of the past. Not because we necessarily want to be utterly open in all of our transactions; you'd like to have the price you pay for this
or sensitive negotiations, you know, kept confidential and we'll be able to do that to a degree, but we are entering a world now where
you have to assume that almost anything...and I think the biggest challenge there is not fighting that.
The biggest challenge is not editing yourself so that all you do is talk, you know, things that you
don't think there is a chance you would ever be embarrassed by. I mean transparency cannot be at the price of risk-taking.
So, every now and then we are all going to get nailed for something, hopefully not illegal, but something where we were taking a risk and maybe someone else the other side says that was the wrong risk
or to risk that does not pan out. It's not going to be a risk about can we get away with buying this work of art with no problems, but it may be a risk of investing in something that turns out
you know, not give us the return and I am talking at a cultural return, not a monitory return now that we hoped.
I want to give a chance if there are some questions from our audience and before that one last question about the headquarters of the Getty now in Brentwood, it's been over a decade there
and surely in part of your strategic planning, you're grappling with the issue you've been so successful, so busy with visitors and acquiring
and what has to happen next to the top of the hill?
Well, this move from adolescence to young adulthood, we will keep growing but I hope it is going to be intellectually the quality of the collections,
the research, certainly one of my mantras right now is, "Not another square foot."
We don't want to expand our footprint and I mean one of the challenges of money is people just assume
you can and should do almost everything. And a lot of people's eye, I mean, at least twice a week there is a request that we would take over ex-landmark that would be the perfect place to house this,
it would save it. Our response to that is we are putting considerable funds into the first serious landmark survey that L.A. has ever had.
We are putting, as of now, after a five-year buildup, $5.5 million into a series of exhibitions that is going to be called,
"Pacific Standard Time" working with fifteen fellow visual arts institutions in Southern California where we have paid for the research for them to go back into their archives,
find out what they have got about the arts in LA from post-war '45 to 1980 and then there will be series of exhibitions and it is turned out that
there is tremendous material that's coming up. And now this whole group of institutions will be doing, you know, in 1911, a series of exhibitions on their different sites.
Now, I am convinced it's going to make a contribution to understanding a very vital period in, you know, American Art, World Art, that was in Los Angeles,
but also given what's happening in the economy and all, it is turning out this is coming at a very good time because it allows us to, for a broad thought-out part of our mission,
put meaningful money into the creation of exhibitions that are, you know, developed by these different institutions at a time when it's going to be harder and harder
to get money for special exhibitions and particularly special exhibitions, which, I think, can be very popular because they are dealing with our own culture
in Southern California, but aren't the ones that you would have much chance of getting outside sponsorship for.
That sounds like rich territory so...
We are not a political entity. By law, we really can't lobby in any political way. Obviously stressing the importance of these works of art.
I mean, it wouldn't be the Getty taking a position against the Taliban, I think that won't be particularly productive anyways, it's much more the importance of what is out there,
I mean if there is a position to be taken, to be blunt, it is helping persuade our government that if you go to war, one of the things you plot among everything else is where the great artistic
sites, the museums, the great library is, and be damn sure you are taking care of them as well as the Ministry of oil. I mean that was the horrendous embarrassment in what we found ourselves not doing in Baghdad.
We had been very involved, I mean following that and active now, with world monuments in developing a what you call it, sort of global tracking or locating system,
which is actually based in Jordan because it's a more stable country at this moment, but locating all the sites in Iraq which will be of great help in just knowing what's there
and through, you know, satellite photography being able to help them and as soon as we and other countries, if this will happen, I hope it will,
can get more people on the ground trying to restore and just protect those sites. So, this is a delicate...I mean, part of this documentation,
the more we can help document the world's monuments anywhere, God forbid if, you know, they are damaged or then at least you've got a crucial piece of information
to go back and try to restore them. Actively, politically trying to counter fundamentalism.... tough. I mean to get really philosophic, I think by promoting
the idea of the arts, you know, the universal validity and the need of the arts which is by definition anti-fundamentalist, any kind of fundamentalism, is essentially positive.
Yes...
Let me give you an example, this is how our different, you know, sort of, legs of the stool can collaborate with each other and enhance what we do as a total.
We've been involved in Tunisia for quite a while developing ways of restoring and maintaining mosaics. Of course, I mean, the Mediterranean, all around the Mediterranean,
there is tremendous tradition of Roman mosaics, one of the great art forms of antiquity and you know, often in many ways
the hardest to sort of preserve and the conservation institute has been, for years there, developing techniques for restoration.
It's funny, I asked one of the experts there and I said, "What's one of the most important things we do?" And he said, "Grout."
And, you know, when you think about it, developing the right grout for the right situation is a real hi-tech challenge. As we help to uncover,
restore many of these mosaics, the role for the researchers is enhanced tremendously. You know, things are made visible, they are photographed,
we learn a great deal about them, I mean, the Getty Research Institute has researchers and also archeologists and art historians,
so we are one of few places, under one roof, where you have what at moments can be warring different professions all committed to at least a single goal.
Then the third step is, and this happened in the Tunisian situation, in many cases, some of these were lifted up so they could be preserved on a solid backing.
At that point, it became possible for us to borrow a drop-dead exhibition of Roman mosaics from Tunisia, which we borrowed, helped restore, then sent them back, obviously to their,
you know, where they would be there. And, finally, the Foundation was able in a couple of cases to provide a grant that would make parts of this happen.
It's not as though in every case all four arms of the Getty can work that well together, but this was a wonderful example where we have really enhanced
the different parts of the Institution. When you come up to the Getty, people use different words for it, some call it an Acropolis,
one person called it Masada- that was tough, that was back I think when we were still getting our act together.
The analogy I like is an Italian hill town, with the piazza and civic buildings around that piazza which constantly meet in the piazza and I believe the ideas,
as in the earlier Roman forum, are worked out collaboratory in the piazza. The problem with Acropolis analogy is that's the place with temples to different gods, often competing, so...
[Like it used be...]
To get back to you... our desire is, let's say Spoleto and not the Acropolis. [Yes.] Yeah.
That's a good question. I mean, I really appreciate your observing that, remembering it. But, particularly, if you are directing a museum, particularly a large complex museum.
You know, it's amazing. The only person who sees the dust ball is the director. I never understand it...but
the great danger in the museum is to use that luxury of being in the galleries alone, which has its own excitement, but then you never see the public
interacting with what you are doing and there is nothing like, you know, walking behind the two nuns and hear of what the hell they are saying
and what's the give and take. In the Getty, I am not the director, so it's a less direct, let us say, responsibility. At the same time, I mean,
the situation at the Getty is whenever possible to walk around the whole place, you know, the galleries, but walk down into those laboratories, you know, see what's happening,
what are the research projects going on in the GRI. Partly, because, it's a great pleasure and a luxury, but also because it's really the only way
you get a feeling of what is going on and for people to get some idea that you are interesting in what they are doing. And it's amazing how many people
in a complex institution don't think you really care what they are doing and if you convey that, even if you may feel otherwise...not good.
Yeah, your next trip here has to be on a weekday, so you can see our conservation laboratories and all the work of everyone working in the museum. Time for couple more questions. Yeah...
Good, but it should be better. I've just hired a new head of the research institute which would be probably the most obvious connection, man named Thomas Gaehtgens. Thomas is a German but he.... not but.... but in addition to,
you know, teaching in... in addition to teaching in Berlin and being really a central figure in the whole European art history world, he concluded
that Germany had two wonderful art history research institutes, in Italy, their former fascist ally.
and he said, in France, we have none and he created literally from whole cloth, the German Institute for Art History in Paris,
not huge, but an incredibly dynamic, wonderful institution. Thomas had gotten to the point where the German government said, alright, you know this is such a success, we will now take it over and pay for it,
and I was very fortunate because he then accepted to come to the Getty. So I have got somebody now as the head of the research institute who is absolutely committed to doing research,
but also, you know, collaborating with the other academic institutions in the area. One of the first things he did was, you know, made appointments with, you know, people in the leading universities
in our area.
Part of this is, I mean, we are up in the hill, I think the responsibility is for us to reach out.
We are doing that, I think we're going to have more collaborative projects now. At the same time, we do not want to be restricted just to the L.A. Institutions
because in many cases there may be an area of the Getty that is working on where the most dynamic faculty member of what not, you know, maybe the University of Wisconsin or...
So, it's balancing the local, where you got the students, of course, who can actually come up and participate more directly
and our academic involvements elsewhere in the country and abroad.
I want to thank the members of the IMA staff who came in on a Sunday, I think they felt that it was a command performance and I am certainly grateful to you
and everyone who came today to benefit from Jim Wood's presence in town. Jim, we are so grateful to you for coming and making the trek and hope you will come back again and see more of what we are up to.
I plan to... Look, Max has given me an intense three hours in the museum, and it is a marvelous place. You have got one wall, far more than one,
but there is certainly one wall that maybe the greatest wall in any art museum in America, which has your Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Cezanne.
Three of the most moving, powerful, talk about synergy or interconnected, those three works talk to each other in a way that it's extraordinary.
It's a wonderful note to end on. Thank you so much Jim for coming in. Thank you...
[Applause]
Post new comment