Getty: A Virtual Rich Everything
Dorothy Zinberg
In the city where fantasy and reality merge, the Getty Museum is redefining the role of
'educational institution'
LONG before the average pre-teenager could rattle off the meaning of virtual reality as she
experienced it in the "dungeons" of cyberspace, virtual reality was indelibly marked on Los
Angeles life.
Universal Studios and Disneyland, the home of fantasies-madereal, had long been the main
attractions of Tinseltown, providing the facts and fantasies of the moving image and
animation.
They were the only shows in town.
But the low-brow days are past.
With the unveiling of the Getty Museum, LA at last has a cultural lodestar, so the city's elders
and museum's planners fervently hope.
Viewed solely as a museum the Getty, 13 years in the making at a staggering cost of more
than $US1 billion ($1.5 billion), has received mixed reviews. However, if it were seen as a
virtual university rather than just a museum the criticism would be muted.
Unlike those dubious degree mills marketing themselves as virtual universities in cyberspace,
the museum is virtually a university.
With an endowment of $US4.5 billion, the Getty could readily provide the prototype for virtual
or real universities to maximise the potential of information technology, art conservation and
archaeology. It would act as the first global university for the arts.
In a tough financial climate universities are rarely built from new. Smaller colleges are closing
while larger, better-endowed ones are dependent on generous donors for new buildings. Rare
is the donor whose largesse can bestow 300ha for a campus.
The Getty offers a unique opportunity to consider the characteristics of the ideal university.
What sets the Getty on the path to university status is that it houses five other major
buildings and even more programs on its campus. All bear the name of their donor, the late J.
Paul Getty: the Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities, the Getty
Conservation Institute, the Getty Education Institute for the Arts, the Getty Information
Institute, and the Getty Grant Program.
One of the big challenges facing once ivory-towered universities is how to integrate into the
surrounding community so that the fruits of intellectual life -from the philosophical to the
tangible are made available to more people.
Whether it is working with citizens' groups to improve elementary school education or devising
a plan to use the university's technical expertise and electronic systems to rescue failing local
industries such as fishing or farming, universities are striving to increase their outreach while
maintaining their intellectual disinterest and autonomy.
The Getty has made strides in this direction and its institutes and programs have dozens of
projects under way. The Getty undergraduate internships for diversity in the arts and
humanities give priority to students in the LA area who want to become interns for 10 weeks
in their summer to explore a subject related to museums, scholarship, conservation and
education.
The program states: "The selected interns will reflect the diversity of Southern California and
will be exposed to issues relating to the arts in Los Angeles."
Now that the draconian slashes in the enrolment of minority groups in Californian universities
have begun, the Getty's commitment to minority involvement in the centre's activities is
heartily endorsed by the city. At the other end of the Getty's outreach programs are almost
150 archaeological projects worldwide.
In all they have supported 1500 projects in 135 countries during the past decade. Sensitivities
to local governments, ethnic groups, and indigenous scholars appear to be part of the projects'
planning.
Universities around the world could be linked electronically to these projects. From the
movies, mock-ups and vertigo-inducing cyberspace reconstructions of early civilisations that I
saw during more than four hours at the Getty, the involvement of people other than the
museum's own scholars appeared to be paramount in the planning and execution of the
anthropological and archaeological projects. Conversely, there are specialists from 22
countries in residence already.
The Internet is everywhere in evidence. Critics have argued that "everyone is doing this".
True. But at the Getty the sums available are so enormous -it has spent $US770 million in the
past 10 years on painting, sculptures and rare artefacts, and will continue to collect at this
level. It can light the way for the greatest potential use of the new technologies.
When cash-deprived faculties at "real" universities plead their case to the dean for funds to
develop their information technology potential, the Getty will be in a position to provide lowcost help on what worked and what did not.
They will be making a contribution to beleaguered faculties and administrators who cannot
afford to experiment but need to know the best way to move into cyberspace.
As for the museum itself, it is too difficult to reach. There is too little parking and public
transport is hardly the preferred mode of travel in LA.
To reach the heights of this Shangri La, it is necessary to take a gleaming white tram up
through sinuously landscaped terrain; much like the Great Wall of China might look if it were
cleaned up.
The spectacular views of LA and the Santa Monica mountains (on a smogless day) are worth
the trouble. But the setting is perfect for a virtual university.
In most parts of the world, universities sprang up for religious or pragmatic purposes. Only
when they had sufficient funds, thanks to princely and private donors or the largesse of the
State or the church, did they add a museum.
By reversing the order, the Getty Centre, quite unintentionally, has built the virtual university
of the future: the museum came first, coupled with the best technology that riches could buy.
During the few days I was in LA, the local papers were filled with the opening of the new
museum.
The subject was not the impressive collection of paintings or the 14 galleries of furniture and
decorative arts, but rather the destructive impact the parking was having on one of the
country's most expensive neighbourhoods.
Then I knew the Getty was virtually a university.