On the opening page of the Abbey Bible, the first image we encounter is this roundel containing a scene of the Nativity of Christ. According to Christian tradition, late in her pregnancy Mary traveled with Joseph to Bethlehem for...
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Paintings by Duccio are astoundingly rare—there are fewer than 15 in existence, the Maestà in Siena being the most magisterial. Much in demand even in his own day, Duccio had to rely on assistants and students to help create...
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Many know Lyonel Feininger as an accomplished painter, printmaker, and caricaturist whose work is forever linked to the Bauhaus movement. He was Walter Gropius’s first faculty appointment to the Weimar art school in 1919, and he helped shape an...
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The luxuriant locks sported by this medieval figure might seem to say more “Marilyn Monroe” than “Saint John.” Both he and the movie star sport hairstyles from the glamorous ‘40s—in the saint’s case, the 1340s. In the Middle Ages,...
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Recently, we needed a little magic to get a sculpture in working order. Stephan von Huene’s Tap Dancer—which springs to life every half hour in the first room of our Crosscurrents exhibit—hadn’t danced since 2003, when it was on...
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Twin brothers and artists Ryan and Trevor Oakes have similar interests, which isn’t really unusual for twins. However, the brothers have taken their mutual fascination with vision, light, space, and depth to a whole new level, and have built...
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In 1964, while a student in UCLA’s graduate program in painting and sculpture, artist Judy Chicago enrolled in auto-body school—the only woman in a class of 250 men. They were all there to learn how to custom-paint cars with...
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The Getty Museum's most recent addition to the paintings collection.
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A few months ago, I attended a conversation at the Annenberg Space for Photography on Herb Ritts. Next April, the Getty Museum will present a major exhibition on Ritts, a photographer known for his iconic images of celebrities and...
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Impersonal concrete sprawl. A surfer’s paradise. A dark battleground of grisly crimes. Los Angeles is a regular character in the movies, on TV, in books, and in art, but its identities are as numerous as its roles. The recent...
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In George Stubbs’s Brood Mares and Foals, which arrived at the Museum in October as a temporary anonymous loan, horses are sympathetically portrayed within the bucolic landscape of the English countryside. The overriding mood is idyllic, as a small...
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Researchers interested in studying post-World War II architecture in Southern California will be excited to learn that a new archive is now fully catalogued and available for study: the Ray Kappe papers. The collection, part of the Getty Research...
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