Update—We’ve posted video excerpts from Patrick McGovern’s talk. See below for his discussion of Midas Touch, here for Chateau Jiahu, and here for Theobroma. What ancient brews were served at the funeral feast of King Midas, or his father...
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What is “¡Sí Cuba! SoCal,” you ask? Well, it all started in New York this spring with a multi-venue festival celebrating Cuban culture, called ¡Sí Cuba!. Then, coincidentally, several cultural institutions across Southern California, including we here at the...
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What brings a group of architects, conservators, engineers, geologists, scientists, and archaeologists from twenty countries and six continents to Rome? Rocks—or more accurately, stone. They have all come to participate in the 17th International Course on Stone Conservation, which...
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Art Kaplan is on a mission. At my request, he’s looking for a particular yellow pigment to show me—and there are hundreds of yellows to choose from, in drawers labeled Yellow Ochre, Lemon Ochre, Golden Yellow, French Yellow, and...
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Paris in the mid-18th century was a time of invention in the culinary arts. Food was an integral part of the fashion and culture of this bustling city. Haute cuisine has its foundations in this time and place. So...
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Mighty sieges and human follies. The bravado of warriors and the rages and schemes of gods. The Iliad, one of the best-told epics of all time, will be heard aloud again when some 150 volunteer readers recite the ancient...
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The third issue of the Getty Research Journal has just been published. Each year, the Journal presents new research on the Getty’s broad holdings and highlights the diverse interests of our staff and scholars. The journal’s goal is to...
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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...
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Update: video of this lecture is available here. Amid the moon-like landscape of the Sinai, the Holy Monastery of Saint Catherine has stood unfailing for 17 centuries, unaltered by invasion or conquest. Imagine a place rooted in the ancient...
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I have the good fortune to spend my days on a hillside with a view, in buildings filled with artistic treasures and surrounded by gardens. Still, I often amaze myself at how infrequently I take advantage of what’s around...
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Whether he planted his tripod in India, China, Japan, Korea, or Burma, the Italian-born photographer Felice Beato always portrayed a country’s culture through a distinctly Western lens. The Museum’s current exhibition of his work, Felice Beato: A Photographer on...
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It is the week of return—of the vernal equinox, and of the shooting stars—the blue blue-violet alliums in Robert Irwin’s Central Garden at the Getty Center. We’ve been waiting. In late-ish February, green shoots began rocketing from the rich...
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