Reflections: Mazie Harris on Walker Evans

Getty Art + Ideas
Getty Art + Ideas
Reflections: Mazie Harris on Walker Evans
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As we all adapt to working and living under these new and unusual circumstances caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve asked curators from the Getty Museum and Getty Research Institute to share short reflections on works of art they’re thinking about right now. These brief recordings feature stories related to our daily lives—from laundry on the line to a dog at a scholar’s feet. Over the next few weeks, look for new recordings every Tuesday.

This week features photography curator Mazie Harris discussing Walker Evans’s Washington Street, New York City / Wash Day (ca. 1930).

To view this artwork, visit:  https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/45404/

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Transcript

JAMES CUNO: Hi, I’m Jim Cuno, president of the J. Paul Getty Trust. As we all adapt to working and living under these new and unusual circumstances, we’ve asked curators from the Getty Museum and Getty Research Institute to share short reflections on works of art they’re thinking about right now. We’ll be releasing new recordings on Tuesdays over the next few weeks. I hope you’ll find these stories about our daily lives—from laundry on the line to a dog at a scholar’s feet—thought provoking, illuminating, and entertaining.

MAZIE HARRIS: My name is Mazie Harris. I’m one of the photography curators here at the Getty, and working at home these days I feel like all I do is laundry and dishes non-stop. So I find myself appreciating all the more this photograph by Walker Evans.

It looks like the photographer walked between two buildings and glanced up to see these crisscrossed lines of laundry hanging out to dry. There’s such delight in this sort of, it’s just like an everyday occurrence. And, I don’t know, looking at laundry dry seems like it would be just devastatingly boring and yet Evans makes it look like a lively musical score. The fabrics bellow in the wind, the sweet string of socks swaying against each other in the bottom left corner. It evokes full lives and loving labor. It’s all here illuminated and abstracted against a blank sky.

Photographers have such an incredible ability to make the mundane visually interesting. Photographs remind us to look, look, look, to look carefully. To be observant. And I’m grateful to be reminded of that as I pull yet another load of laundry from the washer or endlessly plunk dishes into the drainer by the sink. This photograph reminds me to try to find beauty in even the most banal places.

CUNO: To view this photograph by Walker Evans, titled Washington Street, New York City / Wash Day and made around 1930, click the link in this episode’s description or look for it on getty.edu/art/collection/.

Museum Directors on COVID-19 and Its Impact on Museums, Part 2

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Getty Art + Ideas
Museum Directors on COVID-19 and Its Impact on Museums, Part 2
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The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic was swift and confusing, with breaking news and information about the virus changing seemingly by the hour. Around the world, art museums, as community gathering sites, have had to face difficult decisions. In this two-part series, six museum directors discuss the pandemic and its repercussions for their institutions. These candid, insightful conversations address wide-ranging topics, from the resources that museum directors are drawing on to philosophical exchanges about the role of museums in society.

This episode features Matthew Teitelbaum of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Ann Philbin of the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and Timothy Potts of the J. Paul Getty Museum.

For images, transcripts, and more, visit getty.edu/podcasts.

Museum Directors on COVID-19 and Its Impact on Museums, Part 1

Getty Art + Ideas
Getty Art + Ideas
Museum Directors on COVID-19 and Its Impact on Museums, Part 1
/

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic was swift and confusing, with breaking news and information about the virus changing seemingly by the hour. Around the world, art museums, as community gathering sites, have had to face difficult decisions. In this two-part series, six US museum directors discuss the pandemic and its repercussions for their institutions. These candid, insightful conversations address wide-ranging topics, from the logistical challenges of when to close and how to reopen to philosophical exchanges about the role of museums in society.

This episode features Max Hollein of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Kaywin Feldman of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and James Rondeau of the Art Institute of Chicago.

For images, transcripts, and more, visit getty.edu/podcasts.

Moving a Hundred-Year-Old Series Online: Getty’s Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum

Getty Art + Ideas
Getty Art + Ideas
Moving a Hundred-Year-Old Series Online: Getty’s Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum
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How do you reimagine a century-old reference series for the digital age? In 1919, a French archaeologist started the Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum, or CVA, with the ambitious goal of cataloging every ancient painted vase in the world. Nearly 400 volumes, compiling some 100,000 vases, have been published to date by museums, making the CVA one of the most important resources for researchers working on ancient Greek art and culture. Getty’s most recent addition to the CVA is the first born-digital, open-access volume of this essential series.

In this episode, Despoina Tsiafakis, the author of Getty’s new CVA volume and the director of research at the Athena Research and Innovation Center in Greece, speaks with Getty curator David Saunders and Getty digital publications manager Greg Albers about the history of the CVA and the process of bringing the series to a new digital platform.

For images, transcripts, and more, visit getty.edu/podcasts.

Sustainably Preserving Cultural Heritage with Larry Coben

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Getty Art + Ideas
Sustainably Preserving Cultural Heritage with Larry Coben
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Cultural heritage sites around the world are under threat not only from catastrophic events like war and natural disasters but also from daily use and lack of resources. In 2010, archaeologist Larry Coben founded the Sustainable Preservation Initiative (SPI) to address the challenge of preserving sites in areas of great poverty. He pioneered an approach that provides training and support to communities living near cultural heritage sites, empowering them to turn preservation into economic opportunity. SPI now works in Peru, Guatemala, Jordan, Turkey, Tanzania, and Bulgaria.

In this episode, Coben discusses his unusual path from lawyer and energy executive to archaeologist, sharing the work that inspired his innovative approach to cultural heritage preservation.

For images, transcripts, and more, visit getty.edu/podcasts.

African American Art History at the Getty Research Institute

Getty Art + Ideas
Getty Art + Ideas
African American Art History at the Getty Research Institute
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One of the many outcomes of the civil rights movement of the 1960s was the start of serious academic study of art of the African diaspora, including by African American artists. The Getty Research Institute has launched an initiative committed to collecting materials related to this field, beginning with plans to acquire the Betye Saar archive in fall 2018. And in summer 2019 Getty worked alongside the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and the MacArthur, Ford, and Mellon foundations to acquire the archives of the Johnson Publishing Company, including more than 4.8 million images from Ebony and Jet magazines.

In this episode, LeRonn Brooks, associate curator at the Getty Research Institute, and Kellie Jones, Columbia University professor and senior consultant on the Getty’s initiative, discuss the evolution of the study of art by African Americans and other artists of the African diaspora, the urgency of preserving critical archival materials, and their plans for the future of the initiative.

For images, transcripts, and more, visit getty.edu/podcasts.

A Half-Century of Prints with Sidney Felsen of Gemini GEL

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Getty Art + Ideas
A Half-Century of Prints with Sidney Felsen of Gemini GEL
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In 1966, at the age of forty-one, Sidney Felsen moved from the world of accounting to that of art, founding the artists’ workshop and fine-art print publisher Gemini GEL in Los Angeles. With Gemini GEL, Sidney quickly got to work with some of the biggest artists of the twentieth century: Man Ray, Josef Albers, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg, to name a few. And Gemini GEL continues its work with new generations of artists, including Julie Mehretu, Tacita Dean, and David Hammons.

In this episode, Felsen talks about how Gemini GEL got started and grew into the organization it is today, sharing stories about the artists he’s worked with along the way.

For images, transcripts, and more, visit getty.edu/podcasts.

Understanding the Medieval World through Books

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Getty Art + Ideas
Understanding the Medieval World through Books
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What was the world like from 500 to 1500 CE? This period, often called medieval or the Middle Ages in European history, saw the rise and fall of empires and the expansion of cross-cultural exchange. Getty curator Bryan C. Keene argues that illuminated manuscripts and decorated texts from Africa, Asia, Australasia, the Americas, and Europe are windows through which we can view the interconnected history of humanity. In this episode, he discusses his recent book Toward a Global Middle Ages: Encountering the World through Illuminated Manuscripts, highlighting the challenges and opportunities of the emerging discipline known as the Global Middle Ages.

For images, transcripts, and more, visit getty.edu/podcasts.

The Philanthropy Philosophy of Getty Foundation Director Joan Weinstein

Getty Art + Ideas
Getty Art + Ideas
The Philanthropy Philosophy of Getty Foundation Director Joan Weinstein
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Since its inception, Getty has recognized philanthropy in the arts as vital to its mission, with the Foundation as one of its four main programs, alongside the Museum, Research Institute, and Conservation Institute. From its early grants to other LA institutions to its robust, strategic, international grantmaking program today, the work of the Getty Foundation has grown and evolved since it began in 1985.

In this episode, Foundation director Joan Weinstein discusses how the philosophy behind the Foundation’s grants has shifted alongside changes in the field, how it impacts art and art history around the globe, and what she anticipates for its future.

For images, transcripts, and more, visit getty.edu/podcasts.

A Global Story with Getty Museum Director Tim Potts

Getty Art + Ideas
Getty Art + Ideas
A Global Story with Getty Museum Director Tim Potts
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From his childhood in Australia spent reading about the ancient world to his current role as director of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Tim Potts has always thought globally. Potts’s broad experiences as a PhD student at Oxford, banker at Lehman Brothers, and director at the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia, Fitzwilliam in England, and Kimbell in Texas have shaped his approach to the Getty’s collections and programs.

In this episode, Potts discusses how he came to the museum and how the institution is using its largely European art collection to engage in discussions of international exchange from the ancient world through today.

For images, transcripts, and more, visit getty.edu/podcasts.