Wim de Wit to step down at Getty Research Institute

After 20 years at the Getty Research Institute, Wim de Wit, the head of the architecture and contemporary art offerings there and co-curator of the current Pacific Standard Time Presents initiative on modern architecture in Los Angeles, is leaving the institution.

De Wit is moving to Stanford University, where he’ll be an adjunct curator of architecture and design at the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts, GRI director Thomas Gaehtgens announced Tuesday.
In addition to the larger initiative, De Wit organized “Overdrive: L.A. Constructs the Future, 1940-1990,” the Getty’s own exhibition for PSTP, which opened in April and is running through July.

The GRI will start an international search to fill De Wit’s role, with Glenn Phillips acting as head of the department in the interim, according to Gaehtgens.

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Since joining the Getty in 1993, De Wit amassed one of the world’s finest architectural collections, with an emphasis on pre-World War II European modernism and postwar California architecture.

De Wit will continue to work with the Getty on the Aspen Design Conference exhibition and as an acquisitions advisor.

De Witt’s last day is July 31. His wife, Nancy Troy, has been an art professor at Stanford since 2010.

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