Getty's New Interpretations grants reshape museum communication

Rethinking the label

The Getty Foundation has announced New Interpretations, a multi-year funding programme designed to reshape how institutions communicate with their audiences. An initial tranche of $2.7 million will support eleven museums across North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. The grants prioritise projects that dismantle conventional wall texts and object labels in favour of visitor-centred research, collaborative practices and technological innovation. Heather E. MacDonald, senior programme officer at the foundation, noted that the selection criteria favoured institutions demonstrating a sustained commitment to understanding audience needs before designing interpretive strategies.

A distributed network

The recipient list spans established public galleries and specialist research bodies. Alongside the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Denver Art Museum, the programme includes the Fowler Museum at UCLA, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Queens Museum, the Manchester Museum, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, the First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City, the Association for Art Museum Interpretation, and the Leeum Museum of Art working alongside Hong Kong's M+. Rather than distributing funds uniformly, the foundation intends for each institution to develop distinct methodologies. MacDonald described the expected outcome as a series of case studies that other organisations can adapt, hoping the findings will scale beyond individual venues.

Regional experiments

Several grantees are already advancing concrete interventions. The Walker Art Center continues its multilingual outreach programme launched in 2024, producing visitor guides and wall texts in Spanish, Hmong and Somali. The project relies on direct consultation with Twin Cities communities to ensure the language used reflects local demographics rather than institutional assumptions. Meanwhile, the First Americans Museum has appointed a fellow to conduct visitor surveys targeting Native American audiences. The resulting report will examine how Indigenous authority should shape exhibition design, directly informing a forthcoming show marking the bicentennial of the Indian Removal Act in 2030. That exhibition will weave historical records with contemporary perspectives.

The Denver Art Museum has taken a different angle by commissioning an independent research firm to map artificial intelligence's influence on gallery attendance and behaviour. This study builds on a recent essay published by the museum's interpretive team, which argued that cultural institutions must guard authenticity while adopting new tools. The inquiry follows a practical misstep earlier this year when the venue displayed a ChatGPT-generated illustration of a Buddhist statue and faced immediate criticism from visitors. On-site panels and surveys will now track whether algorithmic content alters how people engage with physical artefacts.

Gathering points

Cross-institutional dialogue remains central to the scheme. The Leeum Museum of Art and M+ will host an international conference in December 2026, bringing together curators and educators to compare interpretation models across Asia. The event aims to translate experimental grant outcomes into shared professional standards. MacDonald emphasised that visitor-focused methods remain an evolving discipline within heritage management. She expects the funded projects to balance creative risk with methodological rigour, ensuring that audience insights drive tangible changes in gallery practice rather than serving as temporary publicity exercises. Quarterly progress reports will be filed with the foundation starting next spring, outlining how each venue adjusts its interpretive frameworks based on incoming visitor data.