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.
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