Canadian archaeologist Alexander “Sandy” MacGillivray studies disasters for a living. He’s an expert on one of the worst cataclysms in history, the eruption of the volcano on Thera (present-day Santorini, Greece) around 1500 B.C. Thera blackened the world’s skies,...
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Palms Elementary was our partner this year for Art Together, a pilot program that invited students to explore the Museum in depth over multiple visits. We invited Mrs. Millenbaugh’s fourth-grade class at Palms to come the Museum three times....
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We continue our look at intriguing but lesser-known works from the Getty’s collection with two more off-the-beaten-path tips from Museum educators. In a previous post we looked at three relief sculptures; now we turn to two lovingly detailed paintings...
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I talked to Louis Marchesano, curator of prints and drawings at the Getty Research Institute, about the exhibition Printing the Grand Manner: Charles Le Brun and Monumental Prints in the Age of Louis XIV, now on view at the...
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You might have a hard time answering that question as you first stroll through the galleries of the exhibition The Spectacular Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme. But as you exit the hall featuring Gérôme’s later works, the answer lies before...
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Digging for fire at the Getty Research Institute’s recent symposium Vivísimo Muerto: Debates on Surrealism in Latin America, I recalled Guillaume Apollinaire’s thoughts on what I believe to be the essence of Surrealism: “When man wanted to make a...
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This is the first in a series on the Iris about interesting and unusual arts careers. We begin with Rand Eppich of the Getty Conservation Institute, who has combined his skills in architecture, photography, technology, and teaching into a...
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Mexican cooking as we know and love it in the U.S.—moles, carne asada, burritos, cafe con leche, loads of melty cheese—would have been unrecognizable to the Aztecs. They didn’t have cows, pigs, sugar, cheese, butter, cinnamon, or wheat. They...
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The films we screen at the Getty go hand in hand with the art on view. Curating film series related to exhibitions is exciting, but it can also be challenging. How, for example, do you plan a movie event...
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I sat down last Wednesday night with some trepidation to watch the premiere of Bravo’s new reality show Work of Art: The Next Great Artist. For most artists and arts professionals, the show was a harrowing prospect—how can the...
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The World Cup kicks off today in South Africa, and the international mania for soccer—sometimes known as “the beautiful game’’—put me in mind of one of the many interesting treasures held in the collections of the Getty Research Institute....
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When British author Geoff Dyer came to speak at Zócalo Public Square at the Getty Museum, he was prepared to be a bore. “It’s going to be the classic definition,” he said, “the bore, the person who lectures you...
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