Sun, Sand, Surf, and Starlets

Erich S. Gruen, Wood Professor Emeritus

Two years ago I received a phone call out of the blue from the Associate Director of the Getty Research Institute. This was followed up shortly thereafter by one from the Associate Curator of Antiquities at the Getty Villa Museum in Malibu. The Villa had only recently been reopened after nine years of reconstruction. It would now house all of the antiquities owned by the Getty and would be the center of its activities dealing with the ancient world. In that connection they had decided to create a new post, rather pompously called the “Villa Professor.” That individual would be responsible for selecting a motif for the year and for running the program of seminars, colloquia, and conferences connected with that motif. They very generously invited me to take up that position for 2007/8.

Lest anyone think that this invitation was based on merit, I should note that the Associate Director of the GRI was a former student of mine when he was an undergraduate at Berkeley, and the Associate Curator of Antiquities had been both an undergraduate and a graduate student of mine. This is cronyism run rampant. As it happens, I had other plans for 2007/8, primarily to do some writing on a long-delayed project. What to do? I consulted with my principal group of advisers, i.e. my three children, scattered across the globe. The reply came back immediately and incredulously: “Are you kidding? You are hesitating when sun, sand, and surf beckon?” (I added the “starlets”). In the interests of family harmony, I decided (not too reluctantly) to accept the offer.

A northern Californian in la-la land? I managed to make the compromise without great difficulty. The Getty supplied a handsome office with an ocean view, and a house just minutes away, itself two blocks from the ocean. That eased the transition quite effortlessly. They permitted, even encouraged, me to select a theme related to my research, with a sufficiently broad title to embrace a range of scholarly topics. I chose “Cultural Identity and the Peoples of the Ancient Mediterranean.” Pretty broad, but relevant to my work. They also gave me free rein to invite any scholars I wished for the conferences and other gatherings. Money was no object. Hard to resist. I did my best to run the Getty into bankruptcy. But they still had ample reserves.

The result was an exhilarating but also exhausting year. Some scholarly session or another took place on average every six weeks. I had the privilege of choosing the format and selecting the participants for each - - but also the responsibility of reading the papers beforehand, presiding over the sessions, introducing speakers, commenting on the presentations, delivering talks of my own, and even herding people back from coffee breaks and lunches. I introduced the practice (not done before at the Getty) of having respondents for each session and having both papers and responses circulated in advance. This produced some very vigorous and productive discussions. But much work for me. My successor in this job who visited the Getty last year to get a sense of how I was organizing matters, recoiled in horror: “I am coming here to some research, not to work myself to death.” A smart man.

Hence, some pluses and minuses. I had little time for sand and surf, let alone starlets (I may have seen some, but would not have recognized them). Little time also for writing. But I brought in many of my friends and many more whom I knew only by reputation, and I profited enormously from the scholarly exchanges. The enjoyment of spending other people’s money cannot be minimized. As a consequence of my spendthrift ways (and perhaps slightly as consequence of the failing national economy), even the Getty is now cutting back sharply on expenditures. I got out just in time.