The J. Paul Getty Trust

It is one of the largest and wealthiest arts organizations in the world. As of 2020, the Getty Trust possessed an endowment value of $7.7 billion. ¹

Programs

The J. Paul Getty Trust oversees four Getty programs: the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Research Institute, the Getty Conservation Institute, and the Getty Foundation. ^{2 3}

J. Paul Getty Museum

The Getty Trust was first established for the purpose of founding the J. Paul Getty Museum. The Museum now exhibits and adds to J. Paul Getty’s art collection, which he began in the 1930s in his house in Los Angeles. ⁴ The J. Paul Getty Museum opened to the public in 1954. The art collection eventually outgrew the space available in that museum, leading Getty to open the Getty Villa Museum, a new museum in 1974 modeled after the Roman villa Papyri in Herculaneum. ^{4 5}

The Museum publishes books on art and art history. ⁶

In 1983, the trust began to create new programs for art restoration, research, and education to diversify its activities. ⁴

Getty Research Institute

The Getty Research Institute possesses an extensive library and archive and funds research in art history and other humanities-related fields. ⁴ In 2021, Getty published an article on the L.A. Arts Recovery Fund, an initiative they co-created with the California Community Foundation to provide over $36 million to 90 nonprofit arts organizations that were hurt by the COVID-19 pandemic. ^{7 8}

Getty Conservation Institute

The Getty Conservation Institute supports research and training in art, architecture, and archaeological site conservation. ⁴ Getty Conservation Institute promoted the Florida Public Archaeology Network (FPAN) for using software Getty helped develop to rediscover and protect lost African-American cemeteries. ⁹

Getty Foundation

The Getty Foundation is a grant program that supports projects dedicated to art education, conservation, and art history. ⁴ As of October 2019, the foundation had awarded over 8,000 grants in over 180 countries. ¹⁰

Funding

The J. Paul Getty Trust is a private foundation. In 2020, it had a revenue of $291,491,248, total expenses of $352,049,160, and total assets of $10,778,929,123. ¹¹

Leadership

The trust was founded by J. Paul Getty in 1953 to foster his art collection. After Getty died in 1976, he dedicated $700 million worth of stock in the Getty Oil Company to the Getty Museum. The Getty Trust, once the bequest was finalized in 1982, saw its total wealth grow to $1.2 billion. In 1984, the trust received a portion of the $10 billion proceeds made from the sale of the oil company to Texaco Inc. ⁴

James Cuno, an international museum leader and scholar, became the president and CEO of the Getty Trust in August 2011. Before joining Getty, Cuno was the president and director of the Art Institute of Chicago. ¹²

Ariadne Getty, a member of the Getty family, controls a private foundation of her own called the Ariadne Getty Foundation. It is a major donor to LGBT-interest organizations, such as a GLAAD, an organization for which Ariadne Getty sits on the board. ¹³