Dear Getty Community,

This week has brought heartbreaking news for all of us as we learned that we have now lost two members of our community to COVID-19. Adan Ramos was a young and much admired Security Officer, joining the Getty in 2007. Carlos Rodriguez was marking his 19th year as a Security Officer this month. Our sincere and heartfelt condolences go to their families and coworkers. Their loss is tragic, bringing to the fore how this disease has inequitably struck our Latino community. Just five months ago we could never imagine this might happen.

These past months have been challenging for everyone. We have watched friends, family members and colleagues fall ill. Others are caring for older family members, or having to delay seeing their relatives, to prevent COVID spread. Some of us have managed returning children to makeshift home classrooms. Others have cancelled long-planned vacations, substituting dream trips for staycations and shorter excursions. And of course, our daily lives and routines have been completely upended, and for an indefinite period. Despite all of these losses, some so heartbreaking, you haven’t lost your spirit and deep passion and concern for the Getty community.

On top of all this, we recently decided our sites will not reopen to the public before January. This was an informed decision by our COVID-19 Task Force in consideration of the Public Health Department’s guidelines. We had hoped to open in August, and I know dozens of people worked very hard to get us prepared to do so. We will be ready when the time comes, to keep everyone who does work on our sites safe.

Over these past weeks of summer, I have been moved by your heartfelt interest in making Getty a better place, a more diverse, equitable and inclusive place, which is essential for our future. I have learned so much from all of you.

Last week, I attended the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Summit, where more than 150 of you who are volunteering on the DEI Council and on the many program and department DEI Task Forces shared your collective work. I was moved by how much work you have accomplished in so short a time, and how dedicated you are to making Getty better. On behalf of the entire senior leadership, I thank you. I am optimistic that going forward, Getty will be a more inclusive and welcoming place, thanks to your dedicated efforts.

The Getty leadership team, two dozen of us, have been meeting every Monday for the past six weeks and spent at least an hour, sometimes more, with the excellent JONES team, discussing topics such as white culture and privilege, and how it manifests in our lives and work.  We also have heard your many suggestions about how we can improve the Getty going forward, and we have incorporated them into a comprehensive DEI Plan. That plan has been before the DEI Council for feedback before we share it with Trustees, and then with all of you, in mid-September. I look forward to hearing your additional feedback in live Zoom sessions after you’ve all had a chance to take a look. And we will work closely with the Council on implementation. Making true lasting change will require a truly collaborative effort, especially as we remain separated from one another.

I am inspired and heartened by your dedication, and that of our entire Getty community, and by your care for each other. I know you will always remember Adan and Carlos and hold them close, in your caring way. Collectively, we are the Getty—strong, resilient, passionate, thoughtful and respectful of one another. And I thank you for your dedication and commitment to the work at hand and ahead. 

Please stay safe. We are stronger together.

Jim

James Cuno
President & CEO
J. Paul Getty Trust
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 400
Los Angeles, CA 90049
T (310) 440 7600  |  getty.edu