Since 2008, the antiquities conservation and curatorial departments at the J. Paul Getty Museum have been working with colleagues at the Antikensammlung in Berlin to study and conserve a group of South Italian (Apulian) vases dating to the 4th century B.C. from Berlin’s collection. The group consists of thirteen vases, reportedly discovered in fragments in [...]
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Tags: antiquities conservation, Berlin Antikensammlung, ceramics, collaboration, conservation science, Greek art, vase-painting, X-radiography
Do you picture archaeological sites as dry, dusty piles of stones? Meet Peirene, an ancient Greek ruin so tantalizing that archaeologists have literally died for it. Dry and dusty this place is not. The story of the alluring ruin is told in the book Peirene: A Corinthian Fountain in Three Millennia, recently published by the [...]
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Tags: ancient Greece, archaeological sites, archaeology, art books, books, Greek art, Peirene
This week, several of my colleagues and I had the pleasure of welcoming to the Getty Villa the Minister of Culture and Tourism for the Hellenic Republic, Pavlos Yeroulanos. The purpose of his visit was to join our President and CEO James Cuno in signing a landmark agreement that creates a long-term partnership between Greece [...]
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The recently acquired white-ground lekythos on display in Women and Children in Antiquity (Gallery 207) at the Getty Villa is a handsome addition to the Museum’s antiquities collection. With its narrow neck and cylindrical body, this popular type of vase was perfectly designed to hold oil. It was produced in Athens during much of the [...]
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Tags: antiquities conservation, conservation science, Getty Museum collection, Greek art, pottery, vase-painting
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Centuries ago, a marble sculpture known as the Agrigento Youth took a violent fall, losing his nose and parts of his arms and legs. The cause? Likely an earthquake. The statue, loaned to us by the Museo Archeologico Regionale in Agrigento as part of our partnership with the Sicilian Ministry of Culture and Sicilian Identity, [...]
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Tags: Agrigento Youth, antiquities conservation, conservation science, Greek art
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The Art of Ancient Greek Theater closed on January 3, but one loan object from the exhibition won’t be making its way back home for a while. An Attic black-figured amphora, or storage vessel, from the James Logie Memorial Collection at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, will remain at the Villa. The earthquake [...]
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Tags: Art of Ancient Greek Theater, earthquakes, Greek art, loans, vase-painting
Scholars from as far away as England and Holland and as near as Westwood recently gathered at the Getty Villa to decipher and discuss an enigmatic ancient Greek text inscribed on a now-fragmentary lead tablet. These so-called “Getty Hexameters” date to the fourth century B.C. and are of great interest to historians of ancient Greek [...]
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Tags: ancient art, ancient Greece, Getty Hexameters, Greek art, philology
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The Agrigento Youth, a Greek sculpture carved almost exactly 2,500 years ago, is wintering at the Getty Villa. It’s the second work from the Museo Archeologico Regionale in Agrigento, Sicily, to visit the Villa on loan, following the Gela Krater, last summer’s visitor. Both come to the Museum through the Getty’s long-term collaboration with the [...]
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Tags: Agrigento Youth, Archaic sculpture, collaborations, Greek art, kouroi, loans, marble sculpture, Sicily
For when one sees a story illustrated, whether of Troy or something else, he sees the actions of the worthy men that lived in those times, just as though they were present. —Richard de Fournival, Bestiare d’amours, ca. 1250 The past was always within reach for medieval artists, just as it had been for their [...]
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Tags: ancient Greece, French art, Greek art, Imagining the Past in France, medieval art, The Trojan War, Troy
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Art historian and archaeologist Nigel McGilchrist is taking us to the Aegean—and you can come along! On January 13, he’ll give a free illustrated talk at the Getty Villa on his nearly seven years exploring seventy of these beautiful islands, explaining how their unique geography engendered revolutions in ancient art, science, and politics. Here’s a [...]
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Tags: Aegean, archaeological sites, archaeology, Cycladic art, Greek art, lectures, Nigel McGilchrist
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