She runs the J. Paul Getty Trust, one of the most renowned cultural institutions in the world. For Brut. Katherine Fleming shares how she is fighting to make art accessible to all and how she sees the future with the advent of artificial intelligence.
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CreativityTranscript
00:00When the war first broke out in Ukraine,
00:03the Getty Trust participated in a scheme to bury art
00:08in Ukraine so that it would not be destroyed during war.
00:13And I guess some people thought, well, why are you doing that?
00:16Don't people matter more?
00:18But for the most part, people understood that art is a fundamentally,
00:25perhaps the most fundamentally human thing that there is.
00:29And protecting it in war is a form of protecting humanity.
00:35This is Catherine Elizabeth Fleming,
00:37president and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust,
00:40the world's wealthiest art institution.
00:43She sat down with Brute to talk about art preservation,
00:46culture, and the future of the arts.
00:48I am very proud to work at a public-facing institution
00:52that has no admission charge.
00:55There's not even a give us something if you'd like to charge.
01:00People think of art, particularly the kind of art that the Getty collects,
01:03which is European art to 1900, as like, well, that's kind of
01:06fusty, dusty, fuddy-duddy, or elite, or that's not really for me.
01:10So I think one of the really important gifts that places like the Getty
01:14can give to all sorts of people who come to visit
01:17is to make them realize that they have just as much claim to,
01:22access to, and ownership over the cultural heritage
01:26represented in that art as anybody else.
01:29It doesn't belong more to me or to people, quote, like me
01:32than it does to anybody else in the world.
01:35When people hear Getty, they automatically think museum.
01:38And the J. Paul Getty Trust does indeed have a museum.
01:42It, in fact, has two museums.
01:44But it engages with the promotion, preservation, research,
01:50and display of art across the board.
01:54What does it mean when you say art?
01:57It's something that exists for aesthetic pleasure
02:02or that doesn't have a clear utility in daily life, right?
02:07Like, it's not like making a tool.
02:09You know you want to build the tool to do X, Y, or Z with it.
02:13I think most of us, even if we don't realize it,
02:17can understand the value of cultural heritage.
02:20I mean, I remember one of the first moments
02:22when I became aware of the importance of cultural heritage
02:26as a broad concept to me
02:28was when the statues at Bamiyan were blown up by the Taliban.
02:32Don't know if anybody has an idea of what I'm referring to.
02:36Enormous Buddhist sculptures that were detonated
02:40because they were representational art of a sort
02:45that the regime then in power in Afghanistan didn't support.
02:50I was never going to go to Bamiyan.
02:52I am not a Buddhist.
02:54I had no connection whatsoever
02:56to that cultural heritage monument.
02:59But I remember sitting in my office
03:01reading on Google about their destruction
03:04and seeing the video of them being blown up
03:07and feeling just sick about it,
03:09in the same way that one would
03:11if you saw video from a war zone.
03:15And that says something really powerful
03:18about the capacity of art
03:21to breed a feeling of interconnectedness around the world.
03:27And I think all people, if they expose themselves a little bit
03:32to the cultures, the languages,
03:34and the cultural output of other places,
03:38can have access to that feeling as well.
03:41One of your focuses is to redefine what it means
03:44to be a public-facing cultural institution in the 21st century.
03:48Boom.
03:49What does that mean to you?
03:51You know, there's a lot of hand-wringing about audience
03:54and how to reach new audiences.
03:58We also live in a digital era.
04:02Everybody is looking at images all the time, constantly.
04:06We're doing it for hours and hours and hours every day.
04:09And museums are all about image,
04:13and how do you figure out ways to harness the fact
04:17that we live in a visual culture
04:19rather than being the victim of it, right?
04:22People could think,
04:24I'd rather just scroll through a bunch of images
04:26of your artwork on my phone
04:28than actually go up to the Getty.
04:31So we need to really, really be thinking
04:33about bringing in audiences
04:35who are going to find that to be a super eye-opening
04:38and new experience,
04:40the kind of physical encounter with art.
04:42One of the things we've been talking about at the Getty
04:45is whether or not in the family room,
04:48in a room that is designed specifically for children
04:52to be able to engage with our collections,
04:55what place there is for an AI component, right?
04:59And AI could make it possible for you
05:02to, say, take a selfie and then say,
05:06I would like this selfie done in the style of Van Gogh.
05:11And AI would make it possible for that selfie
05:15suddenly to morph into a Van Gogh-esque portrait of you.
05:19Is that cool? Is that scary?
05:22Is that creepy? Is it tacky?
05:24Is it offensive to Van Gogh?
05:27Does it not really have a connection to Van Gogh?
05:30I mean, I have thoughts on all of those questions.
05:33But AI is something that's going to make it possible
05:37for people to engage with art and artists in new ways.