In 2019, the J. Paul Getty Trust appointed Dr. Joan Weinstein as the new director of the Getty Foundation. The foundation fulfills the mission of the trust — which also happens to be the world’s wealthiest arts institution — by supporting individuals and institutions advancing the understanding and preservation of the visual arts.
Prior to her appointment, Weinstein served in various roles within the foundation, including acting director, senior program officer, and deputy director. She directed initiatives in East-Central Europe, Latin America, North Africa and the Middle East, and spearheaded Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945–1980, a collaboration of more than 60 Southern California cultural institutions that convened in 2011 to celebrate the city’s art scene.
Weinstein received her BA in humanities and aesthetics and her Ph.D. in art history from UCLA, and studied at Phillips-Universität Marburg in Germany.
I had the opportunity to chat with Weinstein about her career trajectory, why she’s optimistic about philanthropy, and why society needs the humanities more than ever. Here are some excerpts from that conversation, which have been edited for length and clarity.
What made you decide you wanted to work in the nonprofit sector?
I think like many people, I stumbled into philanthropy. I was an academic who took a nine-month position at the Getty 28 years ago and discovered it was what I was meant to do with my life. I could have written more books on German art that a very limited number of specialists would have appreciated, or I could impact the cultural sector that I cared about deeply, through philanthropy. The choice was easy.
Who are your biggest influences?
My biggest influence was my mentor in philanthropy, Deborah Marrow, who was director of the Getty Foundation for almost 30 years. I learned some important lessons from her early. I remember when we were meeting with prospective grantees, and I learned humility about the inherent power imbalance between grantmaker and grant seeker. I watched her say “no” to someone and have them go away feeling heard and even helped, because her advice strengthened their project. It was a very powerful demonstration of how you can do philanthropy well.
The other big influence on my life was my dissertation advisor, a German scholar and Marxist art historian named Karl Werckmeister. One of the greatest things he imparted to me was how people have a tendency to want to paper over contradictions, when that was precisely the place to probe more deeply on any issue. And I think that’s served me well in grantmaking.
I’d say the experience that probably impacted me the most was doing my doctoral research in the former East Germany. I was struck by how many women led major institutions and the adequate child care that was available to them so that they could assume those roles.
What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
In some ways, I’m not sure I ever received good advice [laughs]. I think many times, particularly as a woman, the advice was always “don’t push too hard,” and I’m not sure that was the best advice. What was more important were the examples that were set for me, particularly by my family, and that was to be engaged socially and politically and to be of service.
What makes you optimistic about the future of philanthropy? Pessimistic?
First of all, I’d highlight some things outside the field of philanthropy. The Getty is an international funder, so I’m often looking at things from a global perspective. For example, we have a program that connects young scholars and cultural heritage workers across national and regional borders, and the goal is to bring in voices that haven’t always been included in the cultural sector dominated by North America and Western Europe.
In recent years, it’s become an effort to connect scholars as a way to combat rising nationalism and authoritarianism that we see in so many parts of the world. And the young people I meet, particularly in the Global South, make me optimistic. They believe that humanistic knowledge and the preservation of cultural heritage are central to a more democratic and equitable society, and that fills me with hope.
In the field of philanthropy itself, I see a much more equitable approach, particularly in the cultural sector. I’m thinking of the work that foundations have done collaboratively in the LA Arts Recovery Fund and recognizing that arts organizations have been chronically under-resourced. I don’t think that would have happened even five years ago.
One of the things that makes me pessimistic is the way that the humanities are under assault in public life. Foreign language programs have disappeared at U.S. universities. Area studies are shrinking. Universities have doubled down on STEM and they’ve starved the humanities, and I think we do so at our peril. In fact, the next installment of Pacific Standard Time will look at the intersection of arts and science as a way to say, “We need both sides of this.”
The arts and humanities help us develop new ways of understanding the world and understanding one another. It’s no coincidence that autocratic governments attack the symbols of culture, and we’re seeing that now in the war in Ukraine, this attempt to destroy a society by eradicating its history.
What was the last great book you read?
It’s a book I just read for a second time, and it’s “Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets,” by Svetlana Alexievich. It’s about life in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of what you could call an unbridled brand of capitalism.
She traveled all over the former Soviet Union and gathered first-person voices of a broad range of people. The book helped me understand post-Soviet Russia and the shattered promises of the Gorbachev and Yeltsin eras in a way I never had before. She captured this sense of longing for the Soviet days and what they saw as a period of shared sacrifice and ideals. But there is also a longing for Russia’s glory days, and bringing up ancient grievances, and we see a lot of that going on right now. Rereading it has helped me make more sense of the current moment.
Any parting thoughts?
One thing I always recommend to people who are looking for grants is to contact program officers. They love to talk to people and will give you so much good advice. There seems to be a perception that foundations are these unapproachable monoliths, but in my experience, the program officers are always generous with their time.
The other parting thought is more about the cultural sector, and it’s another area where I’m optimistic. Museums in the U.S. and Europe are reinventing themselves in really interesting ways, whether it’s in what they collect and how they interpret the work, but also in how they engage with communities. I think this engagement piece will be an interesting area for funders as the space evolves. Museums need to move away from this notion of being elite institutions, because they will become dinosaurs and fade away if they don’t change.