In Memoriam: Kurt Forster (1935-2024)

Kurt Forster, founding director of the Getty Research Institute, formerly known as the Getty Center for the History of the Arts and Humanities, died in his home in New York City on January 6 at the age of 89.

Tapped to develop a research arm for the J. Paul Getty Trust in 1984, Forster left his lasting intellectual mark on the Research Institute. Reflecting on this step in his long and distinguished career as a professor, author, and curator, Forster considered the eight years he spent establishing it “one of the most exciting experiments in the recent history of American scholarship.”

During the same years that architect Richard Meier was designing the iconic Getty Center campus, Forster would give intellectual shape to a new research center based in an office in Santa Monica. With support from Trust Director Harold M. Williams, the institute was “dedicated to advanced research in the history of art, broadly defined as an integral part of human history and society.” Forster envisioned a unique environment for scholarly research and debate, free of traditional or disciplinary boundaries, that would connect art history to broader intellectual and humanist concerns.

Forster began by establishing a vibrant Scholars Program, with the first cohort of scholars and visiting researchers arriving in 1985, and developing it into an ongoing residency program that has welcomed more than 1,200 scholars since. Forster’s academic training in Germany (Freie Universitat Berlin) and Switzerland (University of Zurich) and academic posts at Yale, Stanford, M.I.T. and the Swiss Institute in Rome aided in cultivating an international reach. Mixing linguistic, cultural and intellectual traditions by bringing together US and European scholars, before the program expanded to more diverse cohorts, fostered a multidisciplinary examination of art and its many artifacts. As Forster colorfully noted, “The cloistered scholar and the crowded auditorium make for a productive tension.

Forster also undertook a radical expansion of library reference and archival holdings to develop resource collections that would stimulate the highest caliber of scholarship. From a modest curatorial library of 35,000 titles used by staff, an exuberant effort in the first five years expanded the Getty Library collection to more than 400,000 titles, a trajectory that has continued to develop a deep, publicly-accessible catalog for art history, understood in its broadest sense. Under Forster, the Archives of the History of Art collected primary documentation and special collection materials, ranging in scope from auction house inventories and dealers’ books to artists' sketchbooks and personal correspondence, making the research institute a unique archival repository as well as active research center and reference library. In acquiring works for the center, Forster insisted on bridging the classical canon and contemporary art movements, so “that modern and contemporary be considered as integral to the scope of our resource collections as is the art of the past.” Indeed, a publications department established in 1987 would reprint classic commentaries on art and architecture in the Texts & Documents series at the same time that the library expanded its holdings in Dadaism, Futurism, and other contemporary art movements.

Forster is widely remembered as both a captivating speaker and prolific author. His own scholarship ranged widely from the Italian Renaissance to contemporary architecture and the American avant-garde. As an active architectural critic, he also forged close ties to contemporary architects and artists, including Frank Gehry, Peter Eisenmann, Richard Meier, and Daniel Libeskind, among others, and his legacy remains in the Research Institute’s strengths in both early modern and contemporary research collections.

Kathleen Salomon, Getty’s Chief Librarian, recalled working with Forster during this formative period: “A brilliant and dynamic scholar and leader, Kurt Forster’s expressive turns of phrase and metaphors defined the unique atmosphere and promise of the early days at the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities. I was most fortunate to have received Kurt’s mentorship and encouragement during those formative years. Even after he departed, Kurt continued sharing with me his passion for libraries, their buildings, and their potential to activate innovative scholarship. I was honored when our shared interests came full circle in 2018 and he asked to participate on my panel at CAA on 21st century art library spaces. Of course, he drew a full house.”

Frances Terpak, Senior Curator, also remembered Kurt as “​​a dynamic and brilliant visionary who captured an audience with his ability to speak on almost any topic. When he spoke, he painted such fulsome descriptions of a topic that his ideas would hover above in 3D technicolor. He was most generous with his time and thoughts, and very supportive. Indeed, I feel privileged to have worked with him.”

After eight years of leading the expansion of core programs for the research institute, Forster stepped away from the ongoing centralization and relocation of Trust programs to pursue new endeavors in teaching, research, and leadership in the arts. In 1992, he took a role at the University of Zurich’s Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture, and later served as director of the Canadian Centre for Architecture (1999-2004) and the director of the Venice Architecture Biennale (2004), before returning to the Yale School of Architecture (2005-2021), where, fittingly, his career had begun. Fueled by Forster’s high expectations and indebted to his intellectual legacy, the Research Institute has grown to become one of the preeminent research centers for the art and culture of the past and present. In making the commitment to collect archives of artists and architects, alongside wide-ranging collections of letters, prints, photographs, and libraries, Forster “set the GRI on a path to support innovative scholarship and research,” said GRI Director Mary Miller. “Getty could not be what it is today without the leadership Forster brought. He was a giant.”