Mindfulness in the Museum: Lessons from a Meditation Guide

Getty Art + Ideas
Getty Art + Ideas
Mindfulness in the Museum: Lessons from a Meditation Guide
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“Mindfulness, for me, enables me to experience an art museum as if I’m listening to music. To just listen, attend to how all these objects make me feel.”

How can mindfulness change our experience of art? Experienced meditation teacher and guide Tracy Cochran sees museums as perfect places to practice the lessons of mindfulness. From focusing on how an artwork impacts the feelings in her body to using the meditation techniques of “beginner’s mind” or “don’t know mind” to understand a work of art in a new way, Cochran sees many opportunities for applying mindfulness in the museum. 

In this episode, hosted by Getty Museum educator Lilit Sadoyan, Cochran shares her understanding of mindfulness and its role in art spaces as well as some techniques for practicing mindfulness in museums. Cochran teaches mindfulness meditation and mindful writing in the greater New York area at institutions such as the Rubin Museum of Art, New York Insight Meditation Center, and numerous schools, libraries, and corporations. She is also the editorial director of Parabola magazine.

For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/mindfulness-in-the-museum-lessons-from-a-meditation-guide/ or http://www.getty.edu/podcasts

To learn more about Tracy Cochran, visit https://tracycochran.org/

The Art of Gardening: California Native Plants

Getty Art + Ideas
Getty Art + Ideas
The Art of Gardening: California Native Plants
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“Whenever I take people in there, I say—and it’s not a very large room—I say, ‘You’re now in the presence of millions and millions and millions of living beings. Fortunately, most of them are very small, and most of them are very dormant.’”

In the late 1920s, Susanna Bixby Bryant founded a garden devoted to preserving the diverse native plants of California. Well ahead of her time and against the advice of experts, she crafted a garden showcasing plants from across the state. Today, the California Botanic Garden, formerly known as the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden[KK1] , is an 86-acre park in Claremont that highlights the climate zones and plant families of California. The garden is home to rare plants, a seed bank, and an herbarium (a research collection of plant specimens), which allow it to play a key role in preserving California native species as they face increased pressure due to climate change and habitat loss.

In this episode, host Brian Houck walks through the California Botanic Garden with Lucinda McDade, its executive director. They discuss the garden’s history, their favorite native plants, and some tips for growing them in your own garden.

For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/the-art-of-gardening-california-native-plants/ or http://www.getty.edu/podcasts

To learn more about the California Botanic Garden, visit https://www.calbg.org/