Museum Staff Quarterly: Director's Note
Museum Staff Quarterly: Director's Note
Museum Staff Quarterly: Director's Note
Quarterly
WINTER 2022 | FOR ALL STAFF
Lake Steamers at Winter Mooring, Switzerland, about 1865, Adolphe Braun. The J. Paul Getty Museum, 84.XM.503.11
Director's Note While it now seems like ages ago, I hope you all had a wonderful Winter break and have come
back reinvigorated for the year ahead.
This year we will see the opening of several exhibitions that were delayed by our extended
closure in 2020 and 2021. Poussin and the Dance opened on February 15th. Today we open
Imogen Cunningham: A Retrospective, and then Persia: Ancient Iran and the Classical World
next month. Later in the year, we will celebrate the opening of Working Together: The
Photographers of the Kamoinge Workshop and Conserving de Kooning: Recovery of a
Masterpiece. These exhibitions – along with others – were deferred because of the Museum’s
more than yearlong closure. These adjustments have been very challenging for several
departments across the Museum, and I am grateful for everyone’s continued flexibility,
support, and hard work, especially those who continued to work onsite throughout the
pandemic. Our curators and exhibitions teams are also working on a future schedule that is
very exciting. We look forward to sharing details with you in the year ahead.
Like many of you, I have been deeply troubled by the current situation in Ukraine. The images
and stories are horrifying. To those of you who have family and friends in Ukraine, please know
that our thoughts are with you. We also keep in our thoughts those colleagues in the arts who
are consumed with caring for their families while also protecting their country’s cultural and
artistic heritage. Let us hope for a peaceful resolution very soon.
Tim Potts
Diversity, Equity, Accessibility,
& Inclusion Update
Dear Colleagues,
After serving for two years, the inaugural Your energy and creativity are extremely
members of the Museum DEAI Task Force important to keep us moving forward to
will begin to rotate off to let other museum create positive change!
staff members contribute their ideas and
energy to this cause. Henry Alvarado If you have any questions, please feel free
(Design), Dulcinea Cano (Sculpture and to contact us at
Decorative Arts), and Natalie Espinosa MusTaskForceDEI@getty.edu
(Registrar’s Office) joined the Task Force in
December 2021, and there will be a full Museum Task Force,
rotation of members before the Spring. Henry Alvarado, David Bowles, Eric
Bruehl, Dulcinea Cano, Robert Cuellar,
We would like to thank all of you for sharing Jens Daehner, Mustafa Eck, Natalie
your experiences and opinions over the past Espinosa, Laura Gavilan-Lewis, David
two years, through lunch conversations, Glickman, Amy Jacinto, Sharon Kendall,
email, and by participating in our Museum Cody Phaphol, Amanda Ramirez
Community DEAI Dialogue and the series of
Coffee Chats we held this past Summer. To
share our learnings and our progress, we
have prepared a Progress Report that we
will be sharing with you in the coming
weeks. We look forward to hearing your
thoughts and ideas about the work we have
done and the work that the new members
of the Task Force should take on in the
future.
What excites you most about working with history, heritage and the arts?
I think it is important to make museums a space
of agency for their community. I love that art and museums have the power
to tell stories and connect people with history and heritage. Studies have shown that art has the power to teach historical
empathy. Being able to work in a space where history, art, and heritage come together to tell and share these stories is a
dream come true.
What do you find interesting about working with young people in the arts?
I have a deep passion for working with young people, since I see pedagogy as an inherently
creative practice. Some of my best mentors were teachers with whom I worked; people who
opened a world of possibilities through their examples and taught me things about myself that
have served me in my professional and personal paths. The arts are particularly special to me, since
students can readily connect art with their lived experiences on a tangible, often visceral, level.
You are also an artist, how do you think that influences your work as an educator and vice-versa?
My work as an artist and educator informs and shapes one another. For instance, my art is research based and pedagogical in
nature, and is often shaped by my prior work as a history instructor and cultural theorist. Conversely, the way I teach is informed
by my creative practice; when I teach, I often use visual media and artmaking as a central way of conveying what can be complex
and abstract concepts. When teaching history, for example, I use visual media such as memes, art, and comics, not only as
objects of historical importance, but as carriers of meaning and vehicles for the articulation of knowledge and critical thought.
Replica swords, comic books, DVD cases, toys, board games, children’s books, video games—what do all these objects
have in common? They all recast the Middle Ages in imaginative ways, and all will be on display in the North Pavilion
this summer as part of The Fantasy of the Middle Ages. The exhibition explores how the aesthetics of the Middle Ages
—castles, chivalrous knights, dragons, gleaming armor, princesses, dramatic sleeves, ornamented books–have been re-
envisioned over the last seven centuries. The exhibition (and related publication) traces this visual legacy from the
pages of medieval illuminated manuscripts through prints and book illustrations of the 19th and 20th centuries, into
photography, and finally into television and cinema, but I also wanted a place to showcase the myriad ways that the
Middle Ages still live in popular culture. Enter the stunning variety of objects from the collections of Getty staff, who
submitted dozens of examples of the ways that the “medieval” has been updated, modified, and adapted in the
modern imagination.
Thanks to the combined efforts of teams from across the Museum–especially the modern magicians in Design,
Exhibitions, and Registrar–the atrium between N105 and N106 will be the temporary home to a multimedia display that
extends the themes of the exhibition from fine art into the world of popular culture, adding a valuable dimension for
visitors and creating an inclusive look at the modern Middle Ages. I hope that including items that will be familiar to
visitors alongside the historical art in the exhibition will contextualize and deepen the experience for our visitors. The
“ephemera,” as we’ve come to call it, will invite audiences to see the Middle Ages in a way that is still very much
present in contemporary culture and show how deeply interconnected museum spaces of “fine art” are to the media
and stories of our daily lives. Working on this project has given me the opportunity to nerd out with my favorite
fandoms (The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones) and learn more about ones with which I wasn’t as
familiar (Dungeons and Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, medieval-inspired manga)--I’m excited that visitors and Getty
staff alike will be able to bring their own knowledge of the modern Middle Ages and see a little bit of themselves in the
exhibition. Stay tuned for more, and keep an eye out for the opening of The Fantasy of the Middle Ages on June 21st!
Saint George and the Dragon, about 1450–1455, Master of Guillebert de Mets.
Bob Marley album cover. Staff ephemera for The Fantasy of the Middle Ages The J. Paul Getty Museum,Ms. 2 (84.ML.67), fol. 18v
Activities
In November, Chaya Arabia (Design) was awarded the Social
Advocate Award by the National Emerging Museum
Professional Network (NEMPN) for her MFA thesis work
Design to Disrupt: Framing Exhibition Designers as
Catalysts for Change, which argues for exhibition designers
to be active agents in disrupting the reproduction of white
supremacy culture in the process of creating exhibitions. The
Social Advocates category highlights the individuals,
collectives, and organizations that are advocating for a better
museum field for EMPs and all museum workers.
Middle: Dana Point, negative April 15, 2006; print April 25, 2010,
Scott. B. Davis. The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2010.51
Publications
Reinvention, Reception, and Reproduction” held at Forest
Lawn Museum in November.
Field Notes
1.- CREATING A FUTURE FOR THE CALIFORNIA
AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSEUM
Cameron Shaw, former Getty Marrow
Undergraduate Intern and CAAM’s new director,
leads a newly built all-Black, all-female team to
achieve a five-year partnership creating exhibitions
for Art+Practice in Leimert Park, South LA.