Deborah Marrow

Deborah Marrow, who as the longest-serving executive at the J. Paul Getty Trust, and the only woman to serve as its president, started far-reaching programs to promote scholarship and diversity in the arts, died on Oct. 1 2019 in Santa Monica, Calif. She was 70. Her husband, Michael McGuire, confirmed the death but did not specify a cause. From 1989 until her retirement in 2018, Ms. Marrow led the grant-making arm of the trust, now known as the Getty Foundation. In that role, she shared the Getty’s enormous wealth with cultural institutions around the world, issuing $410 million to art scholars, museums, universities and more by drawing on an endowment now approaching $7 billion. Ms. Marrow was twice chosen to serve as interim president of the Getty Trust, which oversees the J. Paul Getty Museum, a research arm and a conservation program, as well as the foundation. Ms. Marrow served for 16 years on the board of trustees of her alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania Deborah Marrow was born on Oct. 18, 1948, in Manhattan to Seymour and Adele Marrow. Her father owned a clothing manufacturing company, and her mother was a homemaker with an interest in the visual arts. Raised in Scarsdale, N.Y., Deborah grew up going to museums in New York City. At the University of Pennsylvania, where she met her future husband, she majored in history and graduated in 1970. She went on to Johns Hopkins University to receive a master’s degree in art history, with a focus on Baroque painting. She returned to Penn for her Ph.D., writing her dissertation on the patronage of Maria de’ Medici, France’s Florentine queen. Her husband’s job at a consulting engineering firm took the couple to Los Angeles in 1977. There, Ms. Marrow joined the city’s bustling feminist art community. In addition to her husband, she is survived by her daughter, Anna, and her son, David.