Katherine Elizabeth Fleming

Katherine Elizabeth Fleming is President and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Alexander S. Onassis Professor of Hellenic Culture and Civilization in the Department of History at New York University (NYU) as well as Provost Emerita of the university. She was Provost of NYU from 2016 to 2022. She has been President and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust since August 1, 2022, an appointment with which she became "effectively...the most powerful woman in the US museum world." A profile in the French newsweekly Le Point dubbed her "the most powerful woman in the world of art," while Émilie Lanez of the French newspaper L'Express has called her "the most powerful woman in American culture." She was included in the Observer's 2023 Business of Art Power List. Since arriving at the Getty, she has shown an interest in new models for the ownership of art, a theme on which she has spoken publicly, and has moved to further Getty's commitments to the Southern California art community. The Getty's innovative joint acquisition (with the National Portrait Gallery of London) of "Portrait of Mai (Omai)" by Sir Joshua Reynolds, which took place in Fleming's first year at the helm of the Getty, was announced as "Acquisition of the Year" for 2023 by Apollo Magazine.

Career
Fleming holds a certificate in Theology from King's College London (1985). She earned a BA from Barnard College of Columbia University (1988), an MA from the University of Chicago (1989), and a PhD (1995) from the University of California, Berkeley.

She specializes in the modern history of Greece and the broader Mediterranean.

Fleming was the second director (after Tony R. Judt) of the Remarque Institute. Fleming was associate director of the institute from 2002 until Judt's death in 2010.

Fleming is associate member of the faculty of the department of history of the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where she ran a longstanding workshop on the history of the Mediterranean with the French historian of Italy, Gilles Pécout. Fleming was in residence at the École Normale from 2007 to 2011, although she retained her positions at NYU.

Fleming is the co-founder and co-director (with Sofia Papaioannou) of "Istorima," a large-scale oral history/public humanities project funded by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.

Fleming has sat on numerous editorial boards, among them that of the American Historical Review. Fleming was President of the board of the University of Piraeus in Piraeus, Greece from 2012 to 2016. She is an appointee to the Administrative Board of the Chancellerie des Universités de Paris; sits on the Executive Board of the John S. Latsis Public Benefit Foundation in Greece; serves on the Board of Trustees of Barnard College of Columbia University; is a Director at Time Partners, an independent private markets advisory firm based in London; and is a Director at the NASDAQ-traded AudioEye (AEYE), among other engagements.

Honors
In 2015, the government of Greece recognized her contributions to Greek culture by granting her Greek citizenship.

In 2017, the University of Macedonia (Thessaloniki) awarded her an honorary doctorate in recognition of outstanding scholarship and contributions to the study of Greek history.

In 2018, Ionian University (Corfu) awarded her an honorary doctorate in recognition of outstanding contributions to Greece and the study of Greece.

In 2019, Fleming was named to the French Légion d'Honneur.

In 2021, Fleming was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In 2022, the government of Greece decorated her as a Commander in the Order of Beneficence, in recognition of her contributions to Greek culture and her contributions to Arts & Letters.

In 2024, Neapolis University Paphos Cyprus awarded her an honorary doctorate in recognition of outstanding contributions to the study and preservation of the Hellenic and Greek worlds.

Books
Fleming's first book, The Muslim Bonaparte: Diplomacy & Orientalism in Ali Pasha's Greece (Princeton, 1999), is a standard of doctoral reading lists in cultural history and in the history of southeastern Europe, and has been translated into Albanian, Greek, Italian, and Turkish. In Greece, the Greek edition was widely reviewed and received coverage in the popular press.

Fleming's second book, Greece: A Jewish History (Princeton, 2008), has received numerous awards: a National Jewish Book Award; the Runciman Award; the Prix Alberto Benveniste; and an honorable mention, Keeley Book Prize of the Modern Greek Studies Association and received considerable popular press in Greece. It has been translated into Greek and French. In the English-speaking academy the book has been widely and largely positively reviewed, though some reviewers have objected to its "anti-Zionist" and "diasporist" approach, which minimizes and to an extent rejects the centrality of Israel and of Zionism.

Fleming is co-editor, with Adnan Husain, of A Faithful Sea: The Religious Cultures of the Mediterranean 1200–1700 (Oxford OneWorld, 2007).

Other publications
Fleming has authored numerous articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia entries, of which the most cited is "Orientalism, the Balkans, and Balkan Historiography", published in the American Historical Review in 2000. In 2009, the journal Nationalities Papers printed an apology and retraction after it published an article that made extensive use of Fleming's work without citation or reference (Alice Curticapean, "Are you Hungarian or Romanian?" in Nationalities Papers, Volume 35, No. 3, pp. 411–427; retraction printed Volume 37, No. 4).

Fleming is a prolific book reviewer, and has published over one hundred reviews in both academic and popular publications.

Family
Fleming is the daughter of the American literary critic John V. Fleming and of the British-born Joan E. Fleming, a prominent priest in the Episcopal diocese of New Jersey and Rector Emerita of Christ Church parish, New Brunswick.

She has two brothers, Richard Arthur Fleming, a travel writer; and Luke Owles Fleming, a linguistic anthropologist.

She is the mother of three daughters.

Fleming holds British, Greek, and US nationality.