May 19, 2008

LOS ANGELES—Professor Thomas W. Gaehtgens, director of the Getty Research Institute, has been invited to join one of the prestigious Advanced Grant evaluation panels of the European Research Council (ERC).  Dr. Gaehtgens will be part of panel “SH5b Cultures and Cultural Production."

The panelists will be charged with selecting top-tier researchers and scientists to lead innovative investigator-initiated research projects.  "We are very happy that Dr. Gaehtgens will be joining the Advanced Grant evaluation panel SH5b,” says Professor Fotis C. Kafatos, ERC President. 

Uniquely qualified to serve on the ERC’s Advanced Grant evaluation panel, Dr. Gaehtgens was the director of the German Center for the History of Art in Paris, an organization he founded in 1997, before joining the Getty Research Institute as its director in November 2007.  He also was chair of the Department of Art History at the Free University of Berlin where he served as a professor. Dr. Gaehtgens holds degrees in art history from the universities of Bonn, Freiburg, Vienna and Paris, received his Doctorate from the University of Bonn in 1966, and achieved his Habilitation in 1972, the highest academic qualification in Germany, from the University of Göttingen. 

“I am honored to be part of this prestigious panel,” says Dr. Gaehtgens. “It’s a wonderful opportunity to engage with the international community of scholars at the highest level and bring new ideas back to the Getty Research Institute.”

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