Katherine E. Fleming, recognized on this year’s Art Power Index, leads the J. Paul Getty Trust, one of the world’s wealthiest and most influential cultural organizations, at a time when the very notion of what museums are for is being redefined. As president and CEO, she oversees an ecosystem of institutions that includes the Getty Foundation, Getty Research Institute, Getty Conservation Institute and the Getty’s two museums, together stewarding an endowment of more than $9 billion and an unmatched collection of global cultural heritage. But under Fleming’s leadership, the Getty has also become something else: a living experiment in what it means to merge cultural stewardship with civic and environmental responsibility.
This past year, that mission was tested in dramatic fashion. When the Palisades wildfires threatened Los Angeles, the Getty’s legendary fire protection systems—featuring sealed air networks, concrete barriers and internal
At the same time, Fleming has been reimagining the Getty’s identity as a public experience, rethinking visitor engagement, accessibility and even wellness. From introducing new public spaces, trails and hospitality offerings to studying the health benefits of art itself, she’s broadening what it means for a museum to serve its community.
What do you see as the most transformative shift in the art world power dynamics over the past year, and how has it impacted your own work or strategy?
Increasingly, the art world is part of a much broader universe that might be termed “experience,” or “lifestyle.” People are drawn to art as much as ever, if not more so, but hope to experience it in the broader contexts of travel, leisure, hospitality, dining and—above all—spending time with others. We are very much leaning into this deepened thirst for interaction and experience by looking at all elements of what a visit—whether in-person or digital—to Getty means.
For example, we are upgrading our public spaces to make them more inviting, creating opportunities for lounging, rambling and exploring, and we are adding new retail and food and beverage options. We are thinking about the full visitor experience, seeking to engage and delight our visitors from the moment they arrive on our site. And we are creating new and growing partnerships around the world, so that our relationships are deepened and ongoing.
As the art market and industry continue to evolve, what role do you believe technology, globalization and changing collector demographics will play in reshaping traditional power structures?
Technology is rendering art ownership more immediate and possible for wider groups of people, whether via platforms that allow artists to engage their audience and potential clients directly, or through emerging schemes that allow for fractional art ownership. A plethora of technologies and sites means that more people have more access to more art. While many of the old power structures will remain in place, new ones will also come into existence. That is, some of the old power structures will disappear, but we shouldn’t think this means that power structures won’t exist! But these changes will happen alongside the democratization of art in other realms. Democratization will particularly benefit emergent and independent artists, who won’t any longer have to go through the established channels to reach their audiences—a phenomenon we have already seen across an array of industries and sectors.
Looking ahead, what unrealized opportunity or unmet need in the art ecosystem are you most excited to tackle in the coming year, and what will it take to make that vision a reality?
One unrealized opportunity is one that all sorts of institutions are starting to pay attention to: the fact that, increasingly, in a world that often feels like nothing but madness and confusion, a visit to see art is a literally healthy respite. Since Getty’s 2024 edition of PST Art, which focused on the intersection of art and science, we have been thinking a lot about ways to explicitly integrate wellness into our institution. Looking at art makes people feel better; we now have data from research studies that support this assertion. And we know that in general, people are more focused than ever on health span and wellness. It’s a huge opportunity to explicitly address this fantastic intersection. And at Getty, we are uniquely positioned to do so. After all, not many museums also have mountain trails, extensive sculpture gardens, an azalea maze, tumbling lawns and sweeping mountain and ocean vistas.
Last year, long before the wildfires, you told Observer that the J. Paul Getty Trust was considering “what it means to be wealthy, on top of a hill made of marble, in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in L.A.” How has your or your organization’s perspective changed with regard to that complex question?
Since the time I said that, we’ve had a team of wonderful people working intensively on our “visitor experience” project. We’re re-thinking everything visitors encounter from the moment they first pass under the 405 to enter our property. We’re making the hiking paths on our site more accessible and inviting, redoing our tram, putting out welcoming furniture in our public spaces, re-considering our approach to retail and we’ve even added a bar and lounge! We want to be a place where people come to see art, to be sure, but we also want to be an inviting spot to hang out, kick back, have some unexpected fun and roam. We want to feel a bit less “hands off!” and a bit more hands-on.
The Getty’s wildfire defenses have become almost mythic. What lessons has responding to the emergency taught you about the role of cultural institutions in climate resilience and disaster preparedness?
The wildfires really brought home to me, in super concrete terms, what it means to be a repository of global cultural heritage. The art that we own, we own on behalf of humanity. Museums are like a cultural version of Norway’s seed bank. It is vital that we take that responsibility very seriously, even as we try to make our collections as accessible as possible. Getty has a phenomenal culture of safety, and of course, we’ve run all kinds of exercises to consider what we can do even better next time—because there will, for sure, be a next time. But metaphorically, it has also made me think a lot about how important cultural institutions are for the resilience of humanity in the face of the multiple disasters that seem to surround us in the contemporary world. We play a vital role in connecting people to the past, to the future and to one another, and in helping calm them and give them resilience during chaos.
As CEO, what was the most difficult call you had to make during the crisis?
Our systems are so very systematized that there weren’t really many calls being made on the fly. The crisis team dealing with the fires in the moment has much more expertise than I do, and were so calm, well-oiled and professional, that it would have been counterproductive for me to try to give them all sorts of directions in the (literal) heat of the moment.
In short, they saved me from difficult calls by doing their jobs extremely, extremely well. The most important call I made was probably the decision to effectively move into the crisis center during the first long week of the fires. It meant that I could know what was going on in real-time and, more crucially, that at very least I could show presence and solidarity to the people who were doing the really heavy lifting. And that I was there for the very few calls that I did have to make, even if they didn’t want me to, like telling people to go home and get some rest after a long and grueling shift.
Has the experience prompted internal changes to crisis planning or communication protocols across the Getty Trust’s different entities? And has the Trust considered how climate risk might affect long-term conservation priorities or acquisitions strategy?
Southern California has always been prone to natural disasters—fires, floods, mudslides, earthquakes. Traffic and pollution! (Though I guess those ones aren’t natural…) Our sites were conceived, from inception, to be resilient in the face of these risks; though climate change has certainly intensified a few of them. Our conservation institute conducts extensive research on the potential impact of such risks on works of art and develops technologies to help mitigate them. Our museum is a leader in seismic mounts, among other things. And we are also looking to reduce our own carbon impact by slowing the cadence of exhibitions, re-using the packaging for loaned objects, pushing for science-backed new norms around temperature and humidification and by completely rebuilding our energy facility for maximum decarbonization of our sites.
You helped spearhead the $12 million L.A. Arts Community Fire Relief Fund to help artists and arts workers affected by the fires. What did you learn from that initiative about the vulnerabilities and strengths of L.A.’s creative ecosystem?
I’ll start by saying that all credit for Getty’s role in the fund goes to Joan Weinstein, who directs our Foundation and had mounted a similar effort during Covid-19. A major strength of L.A.’s creative ecosystem is its sense of massive solidarity and collegiality—that really shone through during and after the fires. Everyone was checking in on everyone else, trying to help one another even as catastrophe was unfolding. I’d experienced that solidarity in other contexts since my arrival in the summer of 2022, but it was super striking during the fires. But they also laid bare just how vulnerable many creative workers are—financially and infrastructurally. In a flash, artists lost the literal tools of their trade, the studio spaces in which they work and, in many instances, even their life’s work. We were happy to be able to do something to help, but remain acutely aware of the ongoing devastating impact. One thing we’ve been considering as a consequence is how we might support some global artists’ residencies.
How do you envision strengthening Getty’s resilience—not only in physical terms, but as a cultural and civic institution navigating the realities of a changing planet? And how might the Getty Trust get more involved in strengthening L.A.’s creative resilience?
I’m not being lazy, I promise! But for this one, I think the best way to answer is to only slightly reframe my answers to your first two questions. In a world of dizzying change, making sure that the Getty is a public resource as a place of beauty and respite is even more important than it’s ever been. We’re a repository and generator of knowledge about visual art and all the ways in which it is essential to human existence. Keeping that in the forefront of people’s minds is a critical task. And as for L.A.’s creative resilience, we are doubling down on work that supports it: from the Getty Prize to our thinking about how to play a role in the upcoming Olympics, we very much have L.A. and its creative genius on our minds.
