The Getty Board of Trustees gratefully acknowledges receipt of the open letter from many Getty employees, former employees, and others, expressing concern over the racial and ethnic constitution of Getty’s senior staff, its role in the perpetuation of overt and systemic racism, and the ways this inhibits Getty from fulfilling its mission.
We acknowledge the historic gravity of the moment following the brutal killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, among other Black Americans, and the overwhelming response of millions of Americans in peaceful protest against systemic racism. Racism has stained all of our institutions, including museums and Getty, and must be confronted and eliminated.
Getty Board of Trustees and senior leadership stand united behind the declaration: Black Lives Matter.
With the Trust’s senior leadership, we affirm that diversity, equity, and inclusion are essential to Getty’s excellence. We are committed to taking all necessary steps to recruit, hire, mentor, promote, and retain BIPOC staff. We are assured that senior leadership will continue to work with Getty’s DEI Council, Task Forces, and Ideas & Actions Team to advance Getty as a dynamic and responsible workplace community. We have directed senior leadership to ensure that these groups have the appropriate support and resources to fulfill their charge. We will be given a DEI report at every Board meeting, and will tie progress against goals to the annual performance evaluation of senior staff.
Ideas and recommendations submitted by Getty staff are being heard and considered seriously by senior leadership and the DEI Council. In turn, senior staff has committed to us that DEI work comprises strategic imperatives necessary to the fulfillment of Getty’s mission, and that detailed DEI work plans with goals, strategies, timelines, and resources will be shared with Getty staff on an ongoing basis, starting with the Board’s September meeting. We recognize that this opportunity for change requires both immediate action and long-term effort, and we are profoundly committed to it.
While we are proud of the recent work Getty has done to promote diversity—through the Getty Marrow Undergraduate Internships supporting more than 3,200 internships encouraging greater diversity in the professions related to museums and the visual arts; establishing the African American Art History Initiative; acquiring the Betye Saar archive, the Paul R. Williams archive, and with four other institutions the Johnson Publishing Company archive; and creating the LA Arts COVID-19 Relief Fund—we acknowledge that Getty has much work still to do.
Once again, we acknowledge the sincerity of the letter and the importance of its content. And we thank you.
—Getty Board of Trustees
Thank you for your response to the open letter from Getty Staff. It was agreeable and wonderfully stated. I only wish that after the statement, “Getty Board of Trustees and senior leadership stand united behind the declaration: Black Lives Matter.”, you would have included, “We stand united in declaring All Lives Matter.”
Thank you to the Open Letter Committee for your continued efforts to keep Getty relevant. Once we see changes made to the collection, I’ll be convinced of the Board’s sincerity to its commitment to diversity, equity, and diversity.
There is much to admire on Getty‘s list of accomplishments, but if the artworks themselves continue to promote racism and sexism, I don’t see how the museum itself will remain relevant.
What gets collected at the GRI and what the public sees on the walls of the museum pavilions are two entirely different things, and I hope the museum itself will consider becoming relevant to the people of Los Angeles. In fact, I don’t see how LAUSD students can be welcomed back to Getty without some huge changes taking place to the collection, which is the opposite of diverse and inclusive.
Dear Getty Board of Trustees,
Thank you for your timely response. We appreciate your recognition that Black Lives Matter and your acknowledgment that diversity, equity, and inclusion are integral to Getty’s mission.
While we understand your desire to wait until September’s Board meeting to share actionable goals, we also note that the September meeting is nearly two months away and therefore our expectations for what the Board will share with staff and with the public are quite high. We look forward to greater transparency about how senior staff may be held accountable, as well as to what benchmarks Getty will set for itself. We want detailed information: What are the benchmarks for senior staff in their reviews? What are the goals? What funds will be made available for DEI Council and Task Forces?
We repeat our request that DEI be the top priority of the Trust moving forward, that the Board set budgets, goals, and deadlines accordingly, and that this information be shared internally with staff and publicly as appropriate. We point, again, to the vast resources of the Getty Trust and to its oft-repeated assertion of leadership in the field. The Met shared its commitments to anti-racist actions at the beginning of the month. Why does Getty need until September?
We are also concerned you chose to continue touting established programs like the Marrow Undergraduate Internships and the African American Art History Initiative. As Getty workers, we know about these programs, and in many cases, work with them directly. We do not wish to diminish the achievements of staff working on these initiatives; however, Getty must realize that such public-facing projects do nothing to address the discrimination faced by staff. While former MUIs have shaped the cultural landscape of Los Angeles and beyond, we point again to the glaring whiteness of Getty leadership, curators, and others in high-profile positions. Why has Getty itself been unable to realize the vision of the MUI program of twenty-five years ago? We challenge the Board and senior leadership to be forward-thinking and, instead of asking us to celebrate its previous work, focus on the DEI actions that we will undertake now and in the future. Moreover, the principles of DEI should not only be reflected in collections, exhibitions, programs, and initiatives that explicitly deal with the art and cultural heritage of people of color—given the centrality of DEI to Getty’s mission, these principles must inform all that we do.
We look forward to working with you to build a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive Getty.
Sincerely,
Getty Open Letter Team
good letter.
Thank you for your response and for declaring that Black Lives Matter.
True inclusiveness means BIPOC making final decisions at the highest level of decision making, not just influencing those who make the decisions. There seems to be a big gap between having ‘senior leadership and Board positions be held by those who have demonstrated a commitment to equity and antiracism’ and having a truly equitable and racially diverse makeup at these senior levels.
With regard to the Getty statement, white people always have been satisfied with feel good gestures over every injustice. I can not imagine what would move the higher ups out of their safe and powerful positions. So no surprise. The Getty already has a bad rap among most educated L. A. art world people, both professional and lay. But Mr. Potts and Mr.Cuno are safe in their little ever shrinking niche, and will perpetuate the status quo. But they are quite irrelevant in their own city, even if they have international connections. This closing would have been such a great opportunity to reach out to the communities of L.A., rethink the collection, reorganize, create context, informative signage and improved tours.
Looks like the Getty is damned when they do and damned when they don’t. Good Luck!