The J. Paul Getty Trust, known as the Getty, has a new president. Katherine Fleming, the provost of New York University, will succeed Jim Cuno, who’s retiring after heading the world’s richest arts organization for eleven years. I think she’s a great choice and am excited to see what she’ll do.
The Getty is not only a museum but an art-research institution, library, art-conservation center, and grant-maker, all working at a beautiful campus in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles. I don’t know Fleming but know all of her predecessors, starting with Harold Williams, who took an inchoate foundation funded by the oil riches of J. Paul Getty and made it a world powerhouse in high culture. The less said about the disastrous Barry Munitz, his successor, the better, but why not mention that before he left to spend more time with his family he was said to have played loosey-goosey with his expense account and was known to be a churl?
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