PHOTGRAPHY : Going for a Gut Reaction : Outspoken African American artist Carrie Mae Weems could be expected to provide a hot response to historical images of blacks. The Getty only had to ask. Many times.

What’s this? Carrie Mae Weems, a living, breathing, outspoken African American artist, showing her work at that bastion of Eurocentric history, the J. Paul Getty Museum?

Well, yes--an exhibition called “Carrie Mae Weems Reacts to ‘Hidden Witness,’ ” composed of about 30 photo-and-text works, opens Tuesday at the Malibu museum in tandem with another show, “Hidden Witness: African Americans in Early Photography,” including images from the museum’s collection and the private holdings of Detroit collector Jackie Napolean Wilson.

Weems--who was educated at CalArts, UC San Diego and UC Berkeley and has spent much of her life in California but currently lives in Brooklyn--isn’t actually the first living artist to have her work displayed at the Getty, but there haven’t been many.

“We’ve shown some dinosaurs,” says Weston Naef, the museum’s curator of photographs, referring to such elder statesmen as Manuel Alvarez Bravo and Frederick Sommer. “But this is our first exhibition of a mid-career artist.”

That Weems is black, female and well-known for sharp critiques of black stereotypes makes the event even more of a breakthrough, but her pioneering status is only one unusual aspect of a groundbreaking exercise.

For one thing, “Hidden Witness” focuses on rare photographs of African Americans from the 1840s though the 1860s, a period that spans slavery and emancipation.

For another, the historical show shines a spotlight on Wilson, a black attorney who collects early images of African Americans as a private passion. “Hidden Witness” is his name for a black servant who appears in the background of an 1855 daguerreotype in the Getty’s collection. Serving as guest curator of the exhibition, Wilson has written commentaries about the vintage images.

What’s more, Weems’ reaction to “Hidden Witness” isn’t the Getty’s typical, carefully curated exercise of imagery that has stood the test of time. Coordinated by Gordon Baldwin, the museum’s associate curator of photography, and Diane Brigham, head of education and academic affairs, the exhibition consists of new photographic works accompanied by an audiotape of teen-agers reading poetic quotes about photography.

“I usually work with curators, but in this case I am working more closely with the museum’s education department,” Weems says. “This show is educational by nature, but without lecturing.”

Not that she is restraining her aesthetic vocabulary. “ ‘Hidden Witness’ will be very demure and quiet,” she says. “My show will be screaming and red. It will not only be visual, but textural and audio.”

For her installation Weems has appropriated images from the Getty’s collection and other sources but altered them with toners and various manipulative techniques, combined the pictures in new contexts and added texts that question depictions of black people.

Visitors must enter Weems’ installation through the gallery housing “Hidden Witness,” where they will encounter fragile old photographs grouped thematically--women with children, couples, family groups, children, occupations, formal portraits of individuals and scenes that record historic occasions.

Among many rarities are the earliest known photograph of a person smiling and a daguerreotype of Frederick Douglass protesting the Fugitive Slave Law at a meeting of abolitionists.

Captivating as these pictures may be, Weems aims to change how visitors see them.

“I want to implode Weston’s show, add a different level of experience and issues of race and gender. Everything will get turned upside-down,” she says.

“The real issue of photography of this period is that the sitter pays the photographer,” Weems says. “These are formal portraits of people who could afford to pay for portraits. What I tried to do is to look beyond the formal dimensions and add a narrative. I began to imagine the people in a viable context, as real people living at a specific time whose lives had specific meaning.”

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Little information was available about the subjects of the pictures, so Weems invented narratives.

“These are my own ponderings,” she says. “I’m saying, ‘This is my perspective. This is what I think. What do you believe?’ ”

Her confidence in the project evolved slowly, however. Two years ago, when Naef first contacted her about the possibility of a collaboration, her response was: “Why me?”

Several meetings later, Weems continued to struggle with the idea. “We talked and talked and talked, but I really wasn’t sure what I could do. I also had to think about what kind of relationship I could have with an institution that has positioned itself on a hill,” she says of the wealthy museum.

But Weems became intrigued with the Getty’s early documentary photographs that “provide a certain kind of truth” and eventually accepted Naef’s offer as a means of continuing her investigation of how photography contributes to social attitudes about race, class and gender through art, media and popular culture.

As for Naef, he can barely contain his excitement about the pair of exhibitions, which he views as a milestone for the museum and a highlight of his curatorial career. Images that might have been considered oddities in the Getty’s collection led him to search for related material and discover a treasure trove of photographs that have had little public exposure. Furthermore, he says, the shows indicate the museum’s interest in building its audience with the help of artists.

Educator Brigham agrees: “This is an opportunity for us to allow a different voice into the museum and make it more accessible to a wide array of visitors.”

The event also offers a hint of what’s to come in 1997 when the Getty’s new museum opens in Brentwood with more space for temporary exhibitions.

“In the future we will be focusing more and more on making the museum accessible to a wider public,” Brigham says. “We hope to offer multiple points of view, whether they are those of contemporary artists or others reacting to our collection and offering alternative ways of thinking about it.”

* “Hidden Witness: African Americans in Early Photography” and “Carrie Mae Weems Reacts to ‘Hidden Witness,’ ” through June 18 at J. Paul Getty Museum, 17985 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu, Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. (310) 458-2003.