Getty Makes Move Into Community Art : Dialogue: The center is trying to expand its image by sponsoring ‘A Public Exchange,’ a symposium/exhibition being held at several venues.

The name Getty invariably conjures up images of marble-floored hallways and Greek statues, not downtown streets and graffiti artists.

But, with its latest public event, “The Aesthetics of Community-Based Art Making: A Public Exchange,” the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities is trying to expand its image, if not change it.

“It’s a real experiment for us because we are accustomed to being something much more akin to a university-like environment. But we feel there’s a real place in creating a space between the world of academia and the university and the intelligence that lies within the community,” explained Thomas Reese, acting director of the Getty Center.

The symposium/exhibition is sponsored by the Getty Center--one of eight programs under the J. Paul Getty Trust--and the California Institute of the Arts. A portion of the discussions are for invited specialists in related fields who are being brought in from all over the country, but most of the series is free and open to everyone. The subtitle, “A Public Exchange,” reveals that the event is one more of questions than answers, not designed to shape dialogue, but simply create it.

Before participants can even discuss community-based art, they have to delve into difficult issues, starting with, “What is community?” and, of course, “What is art?”

While the Getty isn’t forgetting its traditional Westside audience, it’s targeting new ethnic and geographic populations by advertising in bilingual publications and working through local art organizations, said Karen Stokes, one of the Getty Center’s project associates. There are shades of Bill Clinton here: an audience that looks like Los Angeles.

“We’re trying to construct programs that provide something of interest for all of those audiences, because part of (the event) is bringing those audiences together and bringing their vision, their experiences, their perceptions together in the same room,” she said.

“This is not just going to see an exhibit. The way these events are structured is, people are going to interact on one level or another,” she said. “People are going to run into each other, and they’re going to have to talk, and they’re going to have to interact.”

While the symposium and exhibition may seem like responses to the civil unrest last spring, they were really inspired by a similar event on mass culture last year. “Shifting Boundaries/Contested Spaces” was a highly successful series for the Getty, but it was held in Santa Monica and didn’t attract the ethnically diverse crowd Reese hopes this one will.

“The Aesthetics of Community-Based Art Making” public events, ranging from visual art to drama and dance, are being held tonight at 7:30 at the Jodo Shu Betsuin Buddhist Temple in Little Tokyo; Friday at 7:30 p.m. in the rotunda of City Hall; and Saturday at 6 p.m. in the Bradbury Building, 304 S. Broadway.

The venues were chosen to reflect the different aspects of community--politics, commerce and religion.

The program also included a poetry reading at Occidental College on Wednesday, and the final sessions of the symposium at CalArts are open to the public on Saturday, as is a bus tour of alternative art spaces in South-Central, South and East Los Angeles Sunday.

Stokes said this is the beginning of a two-year community outreach project, during which the Getty Center wants to make a real contribution to small, local art organizations.

“We’re trying to balance the question of creating individual relationships with organizations--i.e., taking funds and infusing some of those funds into individual organizations--or creating something that’s more lasting, like structural change, by bringing these institutions together (and) assisting them in exploring how they can build stronger networks with each other.”

Ruben Martinez, poet, performance artist and co-host of KCET’s “Life and Times,” is giving a “performative lecture” tonight in Little Tokyo as part of the event.

His presentation, he said, will explore community-based creations that aren’t always considered art, including the work of street vendors and graffiti artists, as well as the new fashions and languages people bring to the city.

“It’s something to be celebrated, something to be noted,” he said. “Some people fear it as the death of the ‘American culture.’ I see it as a birth.”

Graffiti is not the art typically associated with the Getty Trust. As Martinez put it, “Let’s face it, the Getty is representative of the crowd that goes to high art museums and sits in the box at the opera.”

Martinez suggested it’ll take a long-term commitment from the Getty to make any significant contribution and overcome mistrust on the part of many community-based organizations, and it may take 10 to 20 years before results are visible.

“That’s the type of commitment that community-based work entails, whether it’s community-based policing or community-based art making,” he said. “I just hope the Getty’s up to it.”

* All events of “The Aesthetics of Community-Based Art Making” are free, except the bus tour, which costs $10. Reservations are required. Information: (310) 458-9811. Reservations: (310) 451-6526, or for the symposium at CalArts on Saturday, (805) 255-1050, Ext. 2120. Bus tour tickets are available through Theatix, (213) 466-1767.