This weekend marked the start of the 2012 Olympics, a spectacle with 10,500 Olympic and 4,200 Paralympic athletes in competition across 26 sports, from handball to taekwondo to the good old-fashioned pentathlon. The Olympics we’re familiar with today are an… More»
In 2004, Jessica Maxwell participated in the Getty Foundation’s Multicultural Undergraduate Internship program with an internship at the Getty Research Institute. She had such a great experience that she applied again the following summer, interning at the arts nonprofit LACE… More»
No amount of preparation over the life of an exhibition–from conception to development through implementation and finally installation–prepares you for the moments of surprise and delight as objects arrive from lenders and are uncrated and placed in the galleries. The… More»
A 12-minute film on Herb Ritts was just released to complement the exhibition Herb Ritts: L.A. Style, newly extended through September 2. Here the film’s director reflects on getting to know the artist, who died in 2002, through extensive interviews… More»
Copies of pattern, model, and sample books for needlework are among the rarest of early modern printed books to survive intact. The reason is simple: virtually all such books were considered “working copies,” and leaves were torn out to be… More»
Ancient works of art illustrate that music had a strong presence in daily life of classical Greece and Rome. Vase paintings and sculptures in the antiquities collection offer an eye-opening view of the variety of musical instruments that were played, as… More»
We recently began to add high-resolution images of objects from the collection on our website, enabling you to zoom in and observe tiny details (look for the zoom button on object pages). We started with over 1,700 antiquities, manuscripts, drawings,… More»
Elite Greeks and Romans reclined to dine, and ordinary people copied them when they could. Although the practice seems strange to us, it must have been both comfortable and convenient, since reclining during meals spread throughout the Mediterranean and survived… More»
July 14 marks the 150th anniversary of Gustav Klimt’s birth, an event celebrated by exhibitions and events in Vienna and right here at the Getty, with Gustav Klimt: The Magic of Line. This summer, we are in the grips of… More»
This summer the Getty Foundation’s Multicultural Undergraduate Internship program is celebrating 20 years of supporting internships at arts organizations across L.A. County. Started in response to our city’s civil unrest in the early 90s, the program aims to increase diversity within… More»
Remarkably realistic for medieval illuminated beasts, which were often fabulous admixtures of fantasy and fur. The unicorn is clearly drawn from life, for example.