Greeting you as you enter the exhibition In Focus: Still Life are two beautiful photographs that incorporate dead animals in their compositions. Lorikeet with Green Cloth by Marian Drew includes a parrot on a plate, while Sharon Core’s portrait...
Read More
Robert Weingarten’s work spans the possibilities of photography—from traditional black-and-white prints to digital mashups composed entirely in Photoshop. In advance of his lecture at the Getty Center this Thursday, September 16, I spoke to him about his approaches to...
Read More
It’s been 27 years since art historian Linda Nochlin published her essay “The Imaginary Orient,” a critique of sexist and racist depictions of “brown and black folk” by Western artists such as Jean-Léon Gérôme. Back then, “I was put...
Read More
What do you do at the Getty? I manage the Getty Vocabulary Program. You probably want to know what that is! We compile databases of terminology that allow people to catalog art and to retrieve information about it. I’ve...
Read More
“Focus is power,” said theater director Peter Sellars to a packed crowd at the American Association of Museums annual meeting earlier this year. Artworks can make you recognize things you instinctively knew but weren’t able to articulate. They bring...
Read More
Visitors are captivated by The Spectacular Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme. I met a couple from Miami who were so intrigued by a review of the exhibition in The Art Newspaper that they decided to fly to L.A. to see...
Read More
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...
Read More
This is the second in our series of Q&As on arts careers. We return from conservation in the field to discuss the behind-the-scenes work of a preparator. What do you do at the Getty? I’m a preparator—I set up...
Read More
How do you make a movie about Edward Hopper? The artist—famous for his haunting and enigmatic paintings such as Nighthawks and New York Movie—was conspicuously taciturn, speaking little about his work, giving few interviews, and keeping to a small...
Read More
Three o’clock is a good time to be at the Getty Villa. Depending on the time of year, the afternoon light might be streaming through the haze over the Inner Peristyle, a cool fog might be blowing in over...
Read More
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....
Read More
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...
Read More
