Getty continues its online-accessible series of exhibits and art exploration. Explore the range of online events, podcasts, and articles below.
When contemporary art took over the Getty Center
In 1998 independent curator Lisa Lyons invited select LA artists to create new works inspired by Getty Center holdings. Her goal was to build an exhibition around the vibrant resonances between historic and contemporary objects. The result, Departures: 11 Artists at the Getty (2000), included commissions by John Baldessari, Uta Barth, Rubén Ortiz Torres, Alison Saar, and other celebrated figures.
The gift of jewelry was an ancient love language
The ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans loved love. They worshipped a multiplicity of gods and goddesses who represented all facets of love, and they used literary works, pottery, wall paintings, mosaics, and jewelry to express their feelings. Brooches, cameos with carved gemstones, and golden rings with a romantic inscription or drawing on the inside were particularly popular gifts among the wealthy as declarations of love.
The Getty Research Institute acquires work by Black Women of Print
To mark the first anniversary of Black Women of Print—a space for Black women printmakers to promote their work and support professional development—seven artist members collaborated on an inaugural print portfolio, a copy of which is now in the GRI’s collection. Through shared graphic vocabularies, compositions, and subject matter, the artists evoke the foundational legacies of seven Black artistic foremothers: Emma Amos, Margaret T. G. Burroughs, Elizabeth Catlett, Wanda Ewing, Belkis Ayón Manso, Alison Saar, and Betye Saar.
Heike Stephan’s experimental art making in 1980s East Germany
In 1983 performance and textile artist Heike Stephan staged impressive sculptures of light and air on a hill near Erfurt, a city in central Germany. A Getty Research Institute project, On the Eve of Revolution: The East German Artist in the 1980s, is uncovering the history behind pieces like Stephan's, surprisingly risky endeavors made in the last years of the authoritarian East German regime.
Rap Music of the Middle Ages
During the pandemic, a London musician got really into medieval music. Then mixed it with rap. Then went viral. Meet Beedle the Bardcore, creator of irreverent medieval remakes of pop and rap songs. In honor of the exhibition The Fantasy of the Middle Ages, Beedle reveals how they pull off this trick of medieval time travel.
Hear Beedle the Bardcore's medieval-rap bops
The Renaissance Comes to the Getty Center
When the Getty Museum opened Illuminating the Renaissance: The Triumph of Flemish Manuscript Painting in Europe in summer 2003, it was the first manuscripts show ever mounted in the vast space of the Exhibitions Pavilion. Visitors walking into the softly lit galleries were met with more than 130 dazzling objects loaned by nearly every national library in western Europe and from the collections of several castles in England. Find out how this groundbreaking exhibition exceeded all expectations and highlighted the Museum's strength and expertise in manuscripts.
Step inside the sumptuous show
A Conversation with Judy Baca
In this talk, renowned Los Angeles artist Judy Baca reflected on some of the public mural projects she has led, and discussed their evolving preparatory processes and preservation challenges with Getty curator Julian Brooks
This program complements the exhibitions Judy Baca: Hitting the Wall, and The Lost Murals of Renaissance Rome, now on view at the Getty Center through September 4, 2022.
Conserving a Stolen de Kooning
More than 30 years after it was cut from its frame, ripped from its backing, rolled up, and stolen from the University of Arizona Museum of Art, Willem de Kooning’s painting Woman-Ochre (1954-1955) is now on view in Conserving de Kooning: Theft and Recovery through August 28, 2022. In 2017 Getty conservators began mending the torn and damaged canvas and painstakingly restoring the composition.
Find out more about Woman-Ochre’s storied history, and meet the scientists and conservators who worked to repair the painting.
Watch the video >
Father Crosses the Ocean
In her own words, LA artist Kyungmi Shin takes us on a tour of her painted photowork, which pairs art history with family memory, exploring her family’s identity and cross-cultural impacts between the East and West.
Persepolis Reimagined
This award-winning immersive web experience invites you to explore a 3-D reconstruction of the ceremonial capital of the ancient Persian Empire at its height.
Walk in the footsteps of ancient dignitaries through the most accurate recreation of Persepolis to date, learn about the many art objects and rituals that characterized the city, and compare present-day views of surviving architecture.
Explore Persepolis >
What Did the Middle Ages Sound Like?
Movies with medieval themes use music to enhance their transporting visions of this bygone era. Some might add the resounding echo of monastic chants, others the twinkling magic found in the Harry Potter soundtrack. Other artists mix modern music with medieval instrumental themes to convey a sense of excitement and relevance that speaks to 21st-century audiences.
Our manuscripts curators put together a playlist of medieval tunes, from Monty Python to selections from the Lord of the Rings movies,Game of Thrones,The Mandalorian, and more.
Listen to the full playlist >