It’s been a while

Wow. It’s been a long time since any one of us actually looked at this and considered writing something.I only have 2 days left at this internship, and when I think about it, it makes me pretty sad. In many ways, I’m ready to stop working, start RA training and get ready for the semester to start, but I think I will also look back on these last 10 weeks as an amazing learning experience. It’s hard to think that these 10 weeks have just whizzed by, but time does fly when you’re busy and having fun.When I look back on this entire thing, I can’t help but be incredibly grateful for everything that Mary and Kirk did for us. They were incredibly supportive, and we got to meet some really cool and really interesting people from different walks of life. I’ve written a lot of thank you notes in my life, but this summer I basically wrote thank you notes to people who simply sat and talked with me about their lives over lunch. It’s like Rody said, we met a lot of powerful and successful women this past summer, and being in their presence has inspired me.I do have to address something I have realized though, something that I think the Getty is making an effort to address:As lovely and wonderful as all the people we met on our various field trips and excursions with Mary were, they were all white. Meeting all these people this summer has really driven home the point that the Getty was trying to make at the trip to the villa (not that I disagreed with it there)- that there simply aren’t enough people of colour in the visual arts and arts administration. To some people, lack of diversity is not a big deal, and I don’t want to say that the art world (at least in LA) is this way because it’s racist or anything like that. But the truth is that I’ve seen that people of colour don’t really enter this field (or if they do, they’re mostly working at ethnicity based museums). I’m sure it’s much better now than it was, say, 20 years ago, but if the disparity is still so glaring, there is definitely still a problem.I’m really glad that the Getty has this summer program and gives students of colour the opportunity to gain work experience in a field that seems unfriendly and pretentious to the average person. Art is universal in that most people appreciate it in some form or another, and I’m really glad that this program helps those of us who want to make a living out of appreciating it.

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