We were about to go see gallery teacher Audrey Chan’s favorite artwork in the whole museum. “What are the some of the rules we need to follow in the galleries?” she asked the 15 parents and children who crowded...
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The premise of The Aztec Pantheon and the Art of Empire is a unique one: that just as classical antiquity colored Spanish perceptions of Mesoamerica, the experience of Aztec civilization piqued curiosity about Renaissance Europe’s own ancient heritage. As...
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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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How do you hold a “secret exhibition”? In 1957, Los Angeles artist George Herms did just that, setting up his assemblage sculptures among the foundation blocks of a row of demolished buildings in Hermosa Beach. The show wasn’t publicized,...
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Leonardo da Vinci worked for 25 years on a complete guide to the human form that would have transformed the study of anatomy in Europe. But the project was never finished and the notes were all but lost for...
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Spin control—it’s been around for centuries. Louis XIV, king of France from 1660 to 1715, was a master at it, using art—especially the work of his court painter, Charles Le Brun—to create and perpetuate a glorified image of his...
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For six months, I lived up the hill from Sunset and Coronado in Silverlake. I’d go to Mariela’s for burritos—always a little too watery, always with salsa not quite spicy enough, but cheap, and the size of a brick....
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The American Association of Museums annual conference is in Los Angeles this week. In between sessions and schmoozing, AAM is hoping that conference attendees will have some fun playing games! To that end, AAM invited Kellian Adams, museum maven...
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On a recent Saturday night, nearly 20 visitors tried to make sense of a huge, mysterious painting in the Getty Center’s Flemish gallery. Mysterious, because our leader, Lilit Sadoyan, had covered up the painting’s accompanying wall text. We were...
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The Augsburg Display Cabinet—the Getty Museum’s 17th-century “cabinet of curiosities” on display starting tomorrow in our New Galleries for Medieval and Renaissance Sculpture and Decorative Arts—is both a work of art and an early prototype of museums. With dozens...
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Education is at the heart of a museum’s mission. You want to know what you’re looking at, and we want to tell you—through object labels, audio tours, videos, brochures, Web sites, and public programs. But is this really education?...
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It’s one thing to see a writer read her own work, but when someone else gets their hands on it, the fluid dynamic between story and storyteller is revealed. How much is the reader outside of the story, telling...
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