Global Art and Sustainability Fellows Program Debuts at The Getty

In response to these events, the Getty announced just last week that they are launching the Getty Global Art and Sustainability Fellows program. This multi-year initiative is geared towards emerging artists and researchers in the sphere of sustainability. By blending the two sectors, the program works towards the goal of expanding conservation and sustainability efforts within the arts. President and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust Katherine Fleming shared in a statement, “We continue to believe that the arts can play an unorthodox but compelling role in this conversation,” and clearly, there is an increasingly dire need for attainable solutions. 

The fellows will be chosen from a range of specialities– higher education, museums, galleries, libraries, cultural heritage management, and nonprofits, to name a few– and will be hosted by a number of partnering international institutions.

These hosts include: the Academy of Athens (Greece), Bibliothèque nationale de France, Guggenheim Bilbao (Spain), James Cook University (Australia), Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi (Brazil), the Image Permanence Institute at Rochester Institute of Technology (US), Singapore Art Museum and the National Gallery Singapore, University College London’s Institute for Sustainable Heritage, and the Photosynthesis networked artist residency program at Denniston Hill (US), LUMA Arles (France), Pivô (Brazil), Srihatta—Samdani Art Centre & Sculpture Park (Bangladesh), Tate St Ives (UK), and The Mothership (Morocco). The institutions will each host a maximum of three fellows, and each fellow will be placed for a minimum of two years. 

Getty's official announcement explains, "The program offers Fellows the opportunity to contribute to critical priorities around sustainable management of heritage resources, apply cutting-edge science to the cultural sector, and communicate the cultural dimensions of the climate and biodiversity crises to broader audiences.” In short, Getty Global Fellows will aid in the advancement of two major areas: preserving collections and sites at risk of being damaged by climate disasters, and raising awareness around climate resilience.

The safekeeping of cultural collections will include the use of technical modeling services, such as the Climate Vulnerability Index (CVI), to estimate the extent of climate impact on objects in museums and archives. UNESCO Chair on Climate Change Vulnerability of Natural and Cultural Heritage Scott Heron emphasized, “We urgently need more qualified professionals in heritage sustainability, so our first Getty Global Fellow will focus on expanding training to accelerate CVI implementation in high-needs areas around the world.” 

Similarly, through the creation of sustainability-focused artist residencies and public art, and other publicly accessible educational services, Getty hopes it will become easier to share pertinent information on climate action.