Come on up, everyone

Quick word association: What comes to mind in connection with the following -- music festival, summer nights, outdoor venue and multiple stages?

Normally, people might think: “Lollapalooza” or “Warped Tour.” But folks at the Getty Center want the public to start associating “music” with “museum” and “curator” with “concerts.”

Last weekend the Getty kicked off a series of free, outdoor shows called Summer Sessions, held on four days over two weekends and ending Sunday. The concerts feature a contemporary mix of world music styles, from Mexican son jarocho to Indian trance jams. They are designed not merely as entertainment but as a lure to draw a more diverse group of patrons to the Getty’s gleaming citadel of the arts on a hill. Officials hope the ethnic events will help attract younger and more diverse crowds to the world-famous museum complex, which opened in December 1997.

They hope to counteract the image of the Getty grounds as inaccessible to the masses, a perception partly created by the center’s imperious position overlooking the San Diego Freeway, visible from much of the affluent Westside. The breathtaking site cannot be seen from the flatland barrios and neighborhoods of, say, East L.A. or the San Fernando Valley.

But the concerts are intended to show that museum doors are open to everybody.

“I love it when people come up and use the space,” says series producer Sabrina Motley. “The Getty is part of the city, and it’s great to see the city coming here to enjoy it.”

The drive to diversify is not new to the museum world. A policy of community outreach was officially promulgated a decade ago by the American Assn. of Museums in a landmark report, “Excellence and Equity: Education and the Public Dimension of Museums.” The 1992 document outlines 10 principles that, among other things, call on the industry to “reflect the diversity of our society by establishing and maintaining the broadest possible public dimension for the museum” and to “achieve diversity among trustees, staff, and volunteers to assure a breadth of perspective.”

Now museums measure their success partly by their efforts to reach those goals, says Janice Lyle, president of the California Assn. of Museums, which has 500 members, including the Getty.

The Getty’s musical programming “is completely consistent with what the majority of museums are doing today, trying to be as inclusive as possible,” says Lyle, director of the Palm Springs Desert Museum, which has reached out to a large Hispanic population in its region. “The Getty itself has been really committed to this, and they do some fabulous examples of this kind of programming.”

Traditionally, museum patrons have tended to be older and more affluent, officials say. Adult museum-goers were often taken to museums themselves as children by parents or teachers.

Since the effort to encourage museum visits must start at an early age, the Getty also has scheduled Garden Concerts for Kids, a bilingual series for children that is set to start in August. This is the second year for both the children’s concerts and the Summer Sessions, which opened Saturday with a night of music, dance and poetry featuring East L.A. fusion bands and a traditional group from Veracruz.

Again this year, the Summer Sessions are being programmed by four guest producers, chosen from what the Getty is calling “L.A.’s sonic visionaries.” They include a bandleader, a concert promoter, a radio DJ and a publicist. Three are Latinos and one, Motley, the coordinator, is African American. All are fairly well known within L.A.’s ethnic music circles. But like the artists they’re presenting, these musical curators work just below the radar of the mainstream music business. And that’s just the ticket for the Getty’s purposes.

The program has to be suited to the venue, which has a capacity of 5,000 people. And it must be lively, but without echoing through the canyons and disturbing the neighbors.

“It can’t be like a huge rock concert that’s going to tear down the travertine,” says Laurel Kishi, performing arts manager for the Getty, which imported the Roman limestone for its buildings. “It’s a very classical, beautiful setting, and you want performances that enhance that.”

The Getty learned its limits as a music venue the hard way.

In the past, some shows actually have been too successful. In 2001 the museum held its first free outdoor concert, an event called Unsigned Indies hosted by Nic Harcourt, the popular host of KCRW-FM’s “Morning Becomes Eclectic.” So many fans turned out that the crush of cars created a SigAlert on the 405 freeway.

“We’re not the Hollywood Bowl,” says Kishi. “We have a finite capacity.”

The traffic jam was a crisis, but it accomplished one thing: It helped counter the early impression that the Getty Center discouraged spontaneous visits because of its policy requiring parking reservations. Now, however, no reservations are required on weekends.

The museum’s event planners learned one other lesson from last year’s Summer Sessions -- less is more. Instead of jamming the evenings with too much entertainment, like “a three-ring circus,” the lineup has been pared down. People are encouraged to relax, stroll the grounds between acts, even wander into one of the exhibit halls. The shows, like the site itself, are meant to encourage reflection -- and repeat visits.

“We believe the Getty Center can be more things to more people,” museum spokeswoman Mary Platte says. “Once they get up here, they’ll find this is a nice place, as the sun sets over the ocean and the lights of L.A. are spread out at your feet.”

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Getty’s music curators

Veronica Gonzalez

What: “No Laws Except Nature: Modern Bhajans and Blissful Beats from DJ Cheb i Sabbah”

When: Saturday, 6-9 p.m.

The curator: Gonzalez, founder of the music promotion firm Elemental Media, studied ethnomusicology at UCLA, held executive positions at the record labels of David Byrne and Sergio George and has worked with such artists as Byrne, Susana Baca, Los Amigos Invisibles and Arturo Sandoval.

On the program: “This is an opportunity to see a rare combination of North and South Indian classical and modern sounds,” Gonzalez writes. Performers include santoor master Pandit Ulhas Bapat, with Uttam Chakraborty on tabla, and Cheb i Sabbah, with dhol drummer Mitch Hyareand the L.A.-based dance troupe Taal.

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Sabrina Lynn Motley

What: “The Trickster’s Inheritance: Ambient Incursions from DJ Spooky and The Soul of John Black”

When: Sunday, 5-8 p.m.

The curator: Motley, a doctoral candidate in cultural anthropology at UCLA, has produced several music events for the Getty and is the Tuesday host of KPFK-FM’s “Global Village.”

On the program: “DJ Spooky’s ‘illbient’ beats, the reverential yet innovative neo-roots sound of The Soul of John Black, the poetic convergence of Planet Poetry, and the hip-hop- inflected gaze of the young filmmakers from KAOS network all point the way,” Motley writes.