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F R O M T H E P R E S I D E N T ’ S O F F I C E

Dear Getty Colleagues,

September is “back-to-school” season and the return of school group visits to the Getty. Last school year, a total of 135,518 students visited the Getty Center and Villa with their classes. 79,459 of these students were led by a docent, a 45 percent increase over docent-led student tours last fiscal year. In addition, the Getty provided transportation to 76,680 of these students who are from Title One schools (U.S. Department of Education program that provides support for school districts in low income areas). We are also proud to welcome this year’s scholars who are participating in the GRI’s scholar program which focuses on the theme Connecting Seas. The scholars will use the GRI’s collections to explore how other cultures were perceived, represented, and transmitted when ocean travel was the primary means by which people and knowledge circulated.

WHAT’S NEW

The remaining Pacific Standard Time Presents architecture exhibitions supported by the Getty Foundation close this month, but the initiative’s impact will continue. Two exhibitions are travelling to other venues, several catalogues have been published, and online resources created with Getty grants continue to provide access to important research materials.

This month, the Getty Conservation Institute hosts an experts meeting at the Getty Center—supported by Museum Photographs council members Dan Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser—on integrating imaging and analytical technologies for conservation, with the goal of improving the contribution of scientific and technical studies to the conservation and understanding of works of art.

The Getty Research Institute (GRI) hosted a two-month residency for Dr. Shu-jiun Chen of the Academia Sinica in Taipei. A core member of the GRI’s International Terminology Working Group, the academy is working on its first digital art history project, the Chen Cheng-Po Digital Archive, and is more than halfway finished translating into Chinese the GRI’s Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT)®.

The Docent Program at the J. Paul Getty Museum continues to increase its capacity to provide gallery tours for students and the general public. In August, eighty-seven docents culminated their training, which requires several months of studying audience-specific engagement strategies, collections content, and presentation methods. An additional thirty-seven docent hopefuls were recruited in August in order to supplement the 307 existing docents.

The Community Service Team invites you to participate in: September 10 at 12 p.m.: monthly meeting; Operation Gratitude Scarf and Hat Drive: September 9–November 25; September 28: National Public Lands Day.

This month two more partners in the Foundation’s Online Scholarly Catalogue Initiative launch new digital collection catalogues. Seattle Art Museum releases a publication on its Chinese painting and calligraphy collection, paying particular attention to how scrolls were read and used; and LACMA offers a catalogue of highlights from its Southeast Asian collection with a focus on placing artworks in their original archaeological, cultural, and ritual contexts. The second in a series of three courses to train personnel responsible for the care of photographic collections in the Middle East—organized by the GCI and its partners—culminates in September with a final meeting of participants in Istanbul, Turkey. The course, which began with a November 2012 workshop in Abu Dhabi, is part of the GCI’s Middle East Photograph Preservation Initiative.

The GRI recently acquired a unique artists’ book of 143 works on paper from leading Los Angeles graffiti and tattoo artists. LA Liber Amicorum, takes its name from a four-hundred-year-old manuscript in the GRI’s special collections and was executed as an artistic response to calligraphy, writing manuals, and other rare books at the GRI.

Congratulations to the Museum’s Design department whose work on Overdrive: L.A. Constructs the Future received the prestigious 2013 Charles Redd Center for Western Studies Award for exhibitions excellence. The award will be presented at the Western Museums Association’s 2013 Annual Meeting on October 9.

The Graduate Intern program operated by the Foundation begins on September 9. This year thirty-three interns will participate in positions in all four Getty programs and Trust departments. It will be the largest intern class since the Foundation began overseeing the program.

Representatives from the Kunstbibliothek Berlin visited the GRI for two days in July to discuss managing a large art research library. GRI staff learned about the Kunstbibliothek’s plans for a new library devoted to non-Western art that will be housed in the new Humboldt Forum in the city center.