Getty Foundation Director Joan Weinstein on the L.A. Art Scene, and the Must-See Shows of the Fall

Above: Nikesha Breeze, Stages of Tectonic Blackness: Blackdom, 2021

Joan Weinstein is the hub of one of the art world’s biggest wheels. As the director of the Getty Foundation, where she has worked for 30 years, she helped create Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945–1980, the acclaimed 2011 mega-exhibition that enlisted museums all over Southern California and set a new standard for collaborative ventures. PST had a second run in 2018 with a Latinx theme, and this month its third and largest edition, PST Art: Art & Science Collide, kicks off.

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Weinstein has savvily deployed the resources at her disposal, which stem from the Getty Trust, with an endowment hovering around $8 billion; it also funds the J. Paul Getty Museum and the affiliated conservation and research institutes. Going forward, PST Art will occur every five years—meaning that Weinstein will only be getting busier. Robb Report spoke to her about the ambitious undertaking, the history behind the theme, and why an Eastern Standard Time equivalent may not be in the cards.

The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

This thing is getting big, right?
It keeps growing. We’re doing a takeover of the region. I think we funded about 35 exhibitions the first year. This time, it’s 60. So far for this edition, we’ve made about $23 million in grants.

Remind us how this all got going.
Andrew Perchuk, who is deputy director of the Getty Research Institute, and I were the two instigators of the first one. The institute was in the process of doing group oral histories of the period from 1945 to 1980. We realized that the families of L.A. gallerists and artists were discarding the papers dating to that time, thinking that they didn’t have any real value.

We discovered that they told a very different story of the history of modern art in this country. And then we thought, oh, maybe we’ll do one or two exhibitions on this topic. It quickly grew.

There are so many institutions involved—is that a challenge?
I don’t think there’s any other place that could collaborate the way Los Angeles institutions do. At the first PST, the director of one of the major New York museums said, “How could Los Angeles do this before we could?” Somebody else said, “Well, New York’s just too competitive.” It was at that moment we thought, we’ve done something special.

How do the museums play nice?
In the first Pacific Standard Time, there was a curator at a major institution who was talking with someone at a smaller place—they both were looking to borrow the same artwork. The curator at the big institution said, “I already secured that loan from the collector. But it is so much more important for your exhibition. I could get another work. I’m going to help you get that loan.”

Do you think the smaller museums get a boost in other ways?
We do. During the first PST, we did intercept surveys at all of the museums. Huge numbers of people who considered themselves museum goers had never been to the institution where they were at that moment, something like two-thirds.

Why art and science as a theme for this edition?
Since the early 20th century, Southern California has been so intertwined with science and technology. It was the place where scientists came to look to the heavens, at the Mount Wilson Observatory, and where Edwin Hubble showed that the universe is constantly expanding.

Is it especially resonant now that science is under attack in some quarters?
When we came up with this theme five years ago, little did we know it was going to be quite this topical in 2024. I think that one  of the great things about art exhibitions is that they open up new ways to talk about issues that are not quite as polarized.

Climate change, for instance, is so abstract to people, and it creeps up on us slowly. But artworks can actually help engage you in a much more visceral, emotional way on these issues.

Can it be a coincidence that the Los Angeles art scene has exploded since the first PST?
The greatest satisfaction has just been to see the small role that we’ve played in really making L.A. a destination in the art world. We hope we were part of that stimulus.

Must-see PST 

If you don’t have time for several dozen shows, here are Weinstein’s top three.

Particles and Waves: Southern California Abstraction and Science, 1945–1990 

Palm Springs Art Museum
September 14 to February 23

“It features some of the art that we saw in the first Pacific Standard Time,” Weinstein explains, “but looked at in a different context—how advanced scientific research inspired abstract artists,” including Mary Corse and Fred Eversley (Untitled (Black), 1978, above).

Brackish Water Los Angeles 

CSU Dominguez Hills University Art Gallery
August 12 to December 14

Catherine Opie and Alfredo Jaar (Untitled (Water) E, 1990, above) are among the artists looking at “disrupted natural water systems” on a campus Weinstein describes as “situated where the tidal zone and the wetlands once came together but no longer do because of changes in the climate. ”

For Dear Life: Art, Medicine, and Disability 

Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
September 19 to February 2

Featuring work by Lynn Hershman Leeson (X-Ray Woman in Bathing Cap, 1966, above), Yvonne Rainer, and Ida Applebroog, the show looks “at the way modern medicine has approached the human body,” Weinstein says, “and whether we need to take a different approach to thinking about it.”

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