Joan Weinstein is the new Director of the Getty Foundation
8 July 2019
Los Angeles – The J. Paul Getty Trust announced today the appointment of Dr. Joan Weinstein as the new director of the Getty Foundation after an international search. Weinstein is currently acting director of the Getty Foundation, where she has been deputy director since 2007 and has served in various roles since 1994.
“The Getty Foundation is committed to serving the fields of art history, conservation, and museums, and there are few people who understand the professional needs in these areas more than Joan Weinstein,” says Jim Cuno, president and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust. “Her deep knowledge of the visual arts and of strategic philanthropy has led to the creation of meaningful initiatives that have supported groundbreaking research and exhibitions, international scholarly exchange, training for museum professionals in sub-Saharan Africa, and so much more. Joan’s experience is invaluable, and I look forward to her taking the Foundation to a new level.”
Weinstein has served the Getty as acting director of the Foundation on two previous occasions, and has also served as associate director, senior program officer, and program officer over the course of her career. In her recent role as deputy director Weinstein oversaw strategic direction in grantmaking, led the development of new grant initiatives, and established metrics to assess funding impact.
Weinstein is perhaps best known as the creative force and co-director of the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980, an unprecedented collaboration of more than 60 cultural institutions across Southern California that came together in 2011 to celebrate the birth of the Los Angeles art scene. She played a similar role in 2017’s PST: LA/LA, which explored Latin American and Latinx art in dialogue with Los Angeles, and will do so again in the recently-announced PST: Art x Science x LA, which launches in 2024.
In addition, she has directed initiatives in East-Central Europe, Latin America, North Africa, and the Middle East. In her early years at the Getty, Weinstein applied her academic training in art history to the management of various international research grant competitions and oversaw the Foundation’s long-running Getty Marrow Undergraduate Internship program (formerly the Multicultural Undergraduate Internship). The program offers paid, full-time internships to college undergraduates from cultural backgrounds that have traditionally been underrepresented in the arts. Weinstein also led the Getty’s response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which resulted in a $2.9 million grant initiative called the Fund for New Orleans to help cultural institutions recover from the disaster.
“I am deeply honored to lead the Getty Foundation. The Foundation has a strong legacy of supporting the greater understanding and preservation of the visual arts in our home city and around the world, but our work is far from done,” says Weinstein. “I look forward to working even more closely with the Getty’s talented and dedicated board and staff, as well as with our remarkable grantees, to creatively address the pressing issues facing the arts and cultural heritage today.”
Weinstein received her BA in Humanities and Aesthetics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), studied at Phillips-Universität Marburg in Germany, and received her PhD in art history from UCLA. She began her career teaching art history at the University of Pittsburgh and is the author of several books and numerous articles on the history of modern art in Weimar Germany. She has been the recipient of fellowships from the German Academic Exchange Service, the J. Paul Getty Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Throughout her career she has been active in professional organizations in the fields of art history and philanthropy and has served on a number of non‐profit boards. She is currently a trustee of the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts.
Weinstein’s appointment is effective immediately. She succeeds Deborah Marrow, who retired in December 2018 after more than three decades of leading the Getty’s grantmaking program.
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The J. Paul Getty Trust is an international cultural and philanthropic institution devoted to the visual arts that includes the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Research Institute, the Getty Conservation Institute, and the Getty Foundation. The J. Paul Getty Trust and Getty programs serve a varied audience from two locations: the Getty Center in Los Angeles and the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades.
The Getty Foundation fulfills the philanthropic mission of the Getty Trust by supporting individuals and institutions committed to advancing the greater understanding and preservation of the visual arts in Los Angeles and throughout the world. Through strategic grant initiatives, the Foundation strengthens art history as a global discipline, promotes the interdisciplinary practice of conservation, increases access to museum and archival collections, and develops current and future leaders in the visual arts. It carries out its work in collaboration with the other Getty Programs to ensure that they individually and collectively achieve maximum effect. Additional information is available at www.getty.edu/foundation.