Something a little bit different this month — we’ve collated a series of online events for you to consider that are being held online from the Getty Museum.
How the Stars Have Shaped Humanity
Monday, October 14, 2024, at 9 am
The Getty Villa and Online
Free | Advance ticket required
To watch online, register via Zoom.
Drawing from her widely celebrated book, The Human Cosmos, science writer Jo Marchant explores how our intimate relationship with the stars throughout history has shaped our religious beliefs, power structures, scientific advances, art, and even our biology. Marchant tells the epic story of humanity’s long relationship with the heavens—from cave paintings and stone circles to smartphones and space travel—and reveals the crucial role our changing view of the cosmos has played in making us who we are today. She encourages us to rediscover the universe we inhabit and experience the awe-inspiring power of the stars.
Prismatic Effect: A Conversation with Charles Ross
Monday, October 28, 2024, at 8 am
Free | Advance ticket required
To watch online, register via Zoom.
For the second “Rotunda Commission,” a series of art installations inspired by the Getty Museum’s collection, architecture, and site, American artist Charles Ross created a site-specific work centered on natural light, time, and planetary motion. Spectrum 14 is a calibrated array of prisms that casts luminous color across the Museum’s rotunda and evolves with the seasonal arc of the sun. In this conversation with curator Glenn Phillips, Ross talks about his storied career—from early collaborations with Judson Dance Theater, to engagements with the minimal and land art movements, to his decades-long work with light and prisms.
Complements the PST ART exhibition Lumen: The Art and Science of Light at the Getty Center from September 10–December 8, 2024.
Diving into Risk Assessment with Stefan Michalski
Friday, November 8, 2024, from 4 am - 7 am
To watch online, register via Zoom
Heritage professionals often hear that their collections are “at risk,” but what does this truly mean? How do those charged with protecting collections in museums and other institutions identify the most significant risks? What about smaller ones; what happens if we overlook those? Who is responsible for measuring these risks, especially when the process can seem so technical and uncertain? Would defining and addressing risks help institutions be more sustainable?
Curators, registrars, conservators, conservation scientists, facilities managers, educators, and directors are invited to spend a morning exploring these critical questions in a lecture and interactive Q&A session with conservation scientist and preventive conservation expert Stefan Michalski.
Michalski will guide attendees through the process of embracing quantified risk assessment, highlighting its key components—an essential foundation for developing sustainable preservation strategies.
Following his lecture, Michalski will spend time in a Q&A with the audience. Questions can also be sent in advance to mce@getty.edu.
This session offers a valuable opportunity to gain practical insights into risk assessment, and professionals from across disciplines are encouraged to participate. Diverse perspectives are crucial to this interdisciplinary conversation.
Backstage: An Unfurling of the JPC | Beauty & Fashion
Friday, November 8, 2024, from 5 am - 6 am
To watch online, register via Zoom.
Throughout its 75-year history, the Johnson Publishing Company (JPC) showcased the gamut of makeup, hair, skincare, fashion design, and style in Black culture. Elaborate photographic spreads captured the allure and grace of actresses such as Lena Horne and Dorothy Dandridge, runway shows featured models Pat Cleveland, Richard Roundtree, and Naomi Sims, and the images captivated audiences with the latest American and European fashion trends. This conversation with Getty archivist Skyla S. Hearn, archivist Camille Lawrence, and historian Dr. Rikki Byrd explores the JPC's coverage of beauty and fashion in magazines like Ebony and JET and the company's overall contribution to the beauty and fashion industries.
Skyla S. Hearn is an archivist, photographer, and writer dedicated to supporting communities marginally reflected in broader historical contexts; centering community archival practices; and committed to amplifying documentation created from first-person perspectives of unsung individuals and groups. Hearn contributes to the ongoing preservation of Black cultural heritage and is a proud Chicagoan.
Dr. Rikki Byrd is a writer, educator, and curator. She is the founder of Black Fashion Archive and the co-founder of the Fashion and Race Syllabus. Byrd is currently assistant professor of visual culture studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She spends her time between Austin and Chicago.
Camille Lawrence is the Founder of the Black Beauty Archive, whose mission is to preserve the rich history of Black Beauty Culture. Lawrence's background as an art historian and beauty practitioner informs her approach to archival work, which focuses on the innovations of artistic expression across the African Diaspora.
The Johnson Publishing Company Archive is owned by Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) and J. Paul Getty Trust. In 2019, a consortium made up of the Ford Foundation, J. Paul Getty Trust, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Smithsonian Institution acquired the JPC Archive. In 2022, ownership was transferred to NMAAHC and the J. Paul Getty Trust, with a commitment to support archival processing and digitization including physical and digital infrastructure over a seven-year period.
The conversation will be available on the Getty Research Institute YouTube channel following the event.
Art, Science, and Wonder in the Medieval World
Monday, November 11, 2024, from 6 am - 10:30 am
To watch online, register via Zoom.
To complement the exhibition Lumen: The Art and Science of Light, curators and scholars present two panel discussions on the intersections of art and science in the medieval world. Designed as a series of engaging discussions, the first presentation explores topics such as astronomy and optics, and examines how medieval people thought about the science of light in both Latin and Arabic speaking regions. The second discussion invites scholars of neuroscience, philosophy, and art to discuss the way the eye and the brain react to light and how medieval people harnessed these effects to create immersive spaces of wonder.
Panel 1: Light, Time, and Magic in the Middle Ages
Ladan Akbarnia, curator, South Asian and Islamic art, San Diego Museum of Art
Margaret Gaida, postdoctoral researcher, California Institute of Technology
Megan McNamee, lecturer in pre-modern art, 500–1500, Edinburgh College of Art, The University of Edinburgh
Barry C. Smith, professor of philosophy and director, Institute of Philosophy at the University of London’s School of Advanced Study
Panel 2: The Perception and Neuroscience of Light
Nancy Thompson, professor of art and art history; Department Chair of Art and Art History, St. Olaf College
Barry C. Smith, professor of philosophy and director, Institute of Philosophy at the University of London’s School of Advanced Study
G. Gabrielle Starr, president, Pomona College
Abbey Stockstill, associate professor of Islamic art and architecture, Meadows School of the Arts, Southern Methodist University
Survivor Objects and Captive Sites: Art and Cultural Heritage in Genocide
GETTY CENTER
Monday, December 16, 2024, from 11 am - 12 pm
This event will be livestreamed on YouTube.
As scholars of genocide have shown, the genocidal process extends beyond the physical extinction of the targeted community to include the erasure, appropriation, or transfer of the community’s cultural assets. During the Armenian Genocide and its aftermath, sites associated with Armenian culture, particularly religious sites, were destroyed, repurposed, appropriated, sold, or transferred. Some became cultural heritage sites sundered from their connection to any remaining Armenian communities, while certain sacred objects were looted or relocated to museums far from the Armenian homeland. These sites and objects eventually acquire a "second life as heritage" and as works of art. This lecture considers the implications of genocide with the processes of making sites into patrimony and objects into museum pieces. It reflects on extinction and transformation into art and what this portends for art history and museums in the 21st century.
Heghnar Watenpaugh is professor of art history at the University of California, Davis. She researches the visual cultures of the Middle East, including issues of architectural preservation, museums, and cultural heritage.
Sponsored by the Getty Research Institute Council, the annual Thomas and Barbara Gaehtgens Lecture series is dedicated to highlighting leading research in the field of global art history. Learn more about the series.