The Getty Research Institute, in Los Angeles, has announced its new Department of Architecture and Design. Led by Wim de Wit, with Christopher James Alexander acting as associate curator, the department was established because the Getty wanted "a better mechanism to engage the architectural community," says de Wit, not just in California—the institute has a deep archive related to Southern California architecture—but nationally and internationally. De Wit adds that the Getty recently acquired the archives of the International Design Conference in Aspen, which met annually from 1949 to 2004, but that it will be some time before everything, including audio and video materials, will be catalogued and made available to researchers.
