Drapery—artfully folded fabric—has been used by European artists for centuries, from ancient Greek sculpture to contemporary photography. As I prepare for the studio course I’m leading this Wednesday on sketching drapery after the Old Masters, I’ve been thinking about...
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In 2003 the Getty Research Institute acquired hundreds of 17th-century French prints that had been in the collection of a European noble family. This family had systematically, over hundreds of years, amassed an incredibly important collection of Old Master...
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Italy is full of extraordinary, breathtaking round-the-corner experiences. You round a corner in Rome and find the Pantheon. In Pisa it could be the Torre Pendente di Pisa, better known as the Leaning Tower. When you arrive at the...
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“Gérôme forged narrative practices that would take the cinema decades to invent,” art historian Marc Gotlieb told a packed auditorium recently in a discussion of The Spectacular Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme, which closes this Sunday. Really? How could a...
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Picture this: You’re in the 18th century taking a Grand Tour across Europe, making all the “in” stops such as France and Italy. Before heading back home, you have one final task: buying souvenirs! You’ve taken fencing lessons in...
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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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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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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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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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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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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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