Coming to the Getty was a chance to get grounded again in the substance of what we do, instead of being eight levels removed from a classroom or a laboratory or a recital stage. And the long-term commitment that any cultured community has to make to the arts. When you get past the food, clothing, and shelter stages, which are obviously critical, you can't have a full-blown, sophisticated, thoughtful, caring social community absent a humanistic tradition that includes the arts. That's the difference between a core society and a fully flowered social community. When the arts go, you lose the texture, as we are losing it now in our public schools because we're losing the arts.
Art adds perspective, setting, comparison, and insight.
I'd be hard pressed to think of a single more effective adhesive than that. You've spent much of your life in education, and you clearly envision education as fundamental to the Getty. Well, first it's this common denominator of reaching out to improve people's lives. I loved being at the California State University because it was the institution of opportunity, of socioeconomic mobility, of a second chance for people who didn't automatically have everything breaking for them from the day they were born. Which you probably related to personally . . .