April 2022 – Art + Ideas

Getty Art + Ideas

The Art of Anatomy from the 16th Century to Today

00:00 / 42:37

“Berengario’s books show animated cadavers and skeletons set in a landscape, often so animated that they’re displaying their own dissecting bodies to the viewer.”

For centuries, doctors and artists have relied on renderings of the human body for their training. Until the Renaissance, anatomy studies were primarily textual, but in the late 15^th and early 16^th centuries illustrated anatomy books began to be published in greater numbers. Macabre prints of flayed bodies painstakingly depicted muscles, veins, and nerves, and allowed for a far better understanding of the human form. In the 19^th and 20^th centuries, anatomy studies were also targeted to general audiences, and moralizing flap books with Christian themes, children’s toys with removable body parts, and wax models for museum exhibitions gained popularity. The Getty Research Institute exhibition Flesh and Bones: The Art of Anatomy explores this long history of illustrating the body.

In this episode, scholar and independent curator Monique Kornell, GRI curator of prints and drawings Naoko Takahatake, and GRI research associate Thisbe Gensler survey this history. They move from the 16^th century books by anatomist Andreas Vesalius to contemporary artworks by Robert Rauschenberg and Tavares Strachan, explaining the relevance of anatomy studies across time.

For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/podcast-the-art-of-anatomy-from-the-16th-century-to-today/ or http://www.getty.edu/podcasts

To learn more about the exhibition Flesh and Bones: The Art of Anatomy, visit https://www.getty.edu/research/exhibitions_events/exhibitions/anatomy/

To buy Flesh and Bones: The Art of Anatomy, visit https://shop.getty.edu/products/flesh-and-bones-the-art-of-anatomy-978-1606067697

Getty Art + Ideas

Reflecting on Feminist Curator Marcia Tucker’s Boundary-Breaking Career

00:00 / 47:45

“It’s why she started a museum, because people said, ‘You’re crazy. You can’t do that. Nobody does that without a collection, without money. You can’t.’ And if somebody said, ‘No, you can’t do something,’ that made her wanna do it a hundred times over.”

After years of facing both subtle and overt sexism as a curator at the Whitney Museum in New York, Marcia Tucker founded the New Museum of Contemporary Art in 1977 with a small volunteer staff and a budget of $15,000. Placing herself at the helm, Tucker became one of the first female museum directors in the country. The museum’s daring exhibitions—and its director’s radical approach to curating and power in the art world—soon became well known in New York and beyond.

Alongside her curatorial work, Tucker was also a prolific writer. Her wide-ranging texts include deep analyses of artists’ practices, essays for her controversial exhibitions, and critiques of power and institutions. Out of Bounds: The Collected Writings of Marcia Tucker, a collection of Tucker’s writings recently published by the Getty Research Institute, draws attention to both her rhetorical skills and great influence on museology and curatorial practice. Lisa Phillips, director of the New Museum, and Johanna Burton, the Maurice Marciano Director of MOCA, Los Angeles, and former Keith Haring Director and Curator of Education and Public Engagement at the New Museum, edited the volume with Alicia Ritson.

In this episode, Phillips and Burton discuss Tucker’s immense impact on their lives and on the art world, and explore some of the texts that appear in the book.

For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/podcast-reflecting-on-feminist-curator-marcia-tuckers-boundary-breaking-career/ or http://www.getty.edu/podcasts

To buy Out of Bounds: The Collected Writings of Marcia Tucker, visit https://shop.getty.edu/products/out-of-bounds-br-the-collected-writings-of-marcia-tucker-978-1606065969