Getty Art + Ideas

"From what we know, the earliest form of true writing was that invented in Mesopotamia in the late fourth millennium BC. Closely followed by Egypt, not long after. It’s probably only a matter of a couple of hundred years, if that. But Mesopotamia seems to have it by a nose." Mesopotamia, the fertile land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, was home to some of the world’s first cities. Beginni...

"They were rather shocked that we were interested specifically in restoring art by women. And I remember one specific curator said, 'Well, if you would just open your base to men as well, we would have a lot of worthy things for you to restore.'" Where are the women artists in museums? The non-profit organization Advancing Women Artists was inspired by this simple, powerful question. Though artist...

“Schlosser could be described as the least-known famous art historian.” In the 16th and 17th centuries, Central European nobles gathered and displayed art and natural wonders side by side in spaces known as art and curiosity cabinets, or kunst- und Wunderkammer. Viewers were awed by the spectacle of traditional fine artworks alongside objects like ostrich eggs in elaborate stands, complex mechanic...

"There is, and appropriately so, a tension between Sarnath as an archaeological monument, a historical monument, but also a highly sacred one." After reaching enlightenment, the Buddha began attracting followers—and founding a religion—by preaching. He delivered his first sermon at Sarnath, near the banks of the Ganges in Northeast India, in the 6th century BCE. By the 3rd century BCE, it had beco...

“The idea is that you put the scroll in the machine and it does a pirouette. And as it turns around, the x-rays see what’s inside the scroll from every possible angle, 360 degrees, all the way around. And we can invert that and recover a complete representation of what’s inside, in three dimensions.” In 1750 well diggers discovered a villa near the ancient town of Herculaneum that had been buried...

We’ve asked members of the Getty community to share short, personal reflections on works of art they’re thinking about right now. These recordings feature stories related to our daily lives. This week, Maite Alvarez, who works on exhibitions at the museum, recalls how she discovered a Baroque sculpture's true maker—Luisa Roldán. To learn more about this sculpture, visit: www.getty.edu/art/collecti...

"One of the things I’ve heard most frequently in attending and working with and participating with ACHAC at different events, is to hear young people, and even adults, say, 'I had no idea. I did not know that back at this particular historical juncture, my ancestors were put on display in the city, in these parts, for entertainment.'" During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, France taught it...

We’ve asked members of the Getty community to share short, personal reflections on works of art they’re thinking about right now. These recordings feature stories related to our daily lives. This week, Museum editor Lyra Kilston muses on Richard Neutra's innovative and newly relevant school designs, as seen through photographs by Julius Shulman. To learn more about these images, visit: https://pri...

"It became Hoefnagel’s task to think of illuminations that were every bit as extraordinary as this amazing writing." The exquisite Renaissance manuscript Mira Calligraphiae Monumenta, or Monument of Miraculous Calligraphy, is the result of a unique partnership between two different artists working thirty years apart. From 1561 to 1562 the master calligrapher Georg Bocskay created a book in which h...

We’ve asked members of the Getty community to share short, personal reflections on works of art they’re thinking about right now. These recordings feature stories related to our daily lives. This week, curatorial research assistant Alex Jones is reminded of his grandmother by a photograph of a Black woman at a 1965 civil rights protest. To view this work visit:  https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/reflec...

With an artistic career that began with political cartoons in his college newspaper, Romare Bearden moved between mediums and styles throughout his life, although his artistic breakthroughs did not come without hard work. Over the course of a long career that spanned a tumultuous period in the fight for representation and civil rights for African Americans in the United States, Bearden became a de...

We’ve asked members of the Getty community to share short, personal reflections on works of art they’re thinking about right now. These recordings feature stories related to our daily lives. This week, educator Laura Gavilán Lewis considers what it means to be separated from her loved ones as she looks at a portrait of Zénaïde and Charlotte Bonaparte. To learn more about this work, visit: https://...

Hemos pedido al personal del Getty que compartan con nosotros sus reflexiones personales sobre las obras de arte, en tanto que nos podrían contar historias acerca de nuestra vida diaria. Esta semana, Laura Gavilán Lewis del departamento de educación habla de su experiencia de separación de sus seres queridos a través de un retrato de Zénaïde y Charlotte Bonaparte. Para aprender más de esta pintura...

"I still cannot believe why the people all around the world—the public people, I mean, the governments or UNESCO, the UN, the others involved in the culture or in humanity—why they do nothing to preserve Palmyra, to stop the attack of the militants of Daesh." By the 3rd century CE, the ancient city of Palmyra, also known as Tadmur in Arabic, was a global crossroads, where caravans from Mesopotamia...

We’ve asked members of the Getty community to share short, personal reflections on works of art they’re thinking about right now. These recordings feature stories related to our daily lives. This week, metadata specialist Kelly Davis longs for a hike in the Sierras as she views an 1871 photograph by Timothy O'Sullivan. To learn more about this work, visit: https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/obje...

"He was a great artistic personality, crucial for the development, in some way, of what we think as the modern science. But he was not alone." Leonardo da Vinci died more than 500 years ago, but he is still revered as a genius polymath who painted beguiling compositions like the Mona Lisa, avidly studied the natural sciences, and created designs and inventions in thousands of journal pages. Even d...

We’ve asked members of the Getty community to share short, personal reflections on works of art they’re thinking about right now. These recordings feature stories related to our daily lives. This week, curator Casey Lee reminisces on learning to crochet and sew as she considers a 17th century drawing by Gerard ter Borch of a young girl making lace. To learn more about this work, visit:  www.getty....

“We’re proud that Los Angeles, which is a city that’s sometimes derided as a city that doesn’t care about its history or doesn’t care about historic preservation, we think we’re finally exploding that myth once and for all.” In 1962 Los Angeles passed one of the first and most forward-thinking historic preservation ordinances in the United States, which called for a complete survey of the city to...

We’ve asked members of the Getty community to share short, personal reflections on works of art they’re thinking about right now. These recordings feature stories related to our daily lives. This week, educator Elmira Adamian wonders about a couple in an ancient fresco as she shelters at home with her family. To learn more about this work, visit: https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/6535/....

"After you have the institutionalization of the discourse of nationalism, a Chinese bronze that is buried in the ground belongs to the ancient Chinese nation. So now anyone who removes this artifact is a thief." From the 1790s to the 1930s, archaeologists from Europe and North America removed tens of thousands of art objects, manuscripts, and antiquities from China and dispersed them among museums...

We’ve asked members of the Getty community to share short, personal reflections on works of art they’re thinking about right now. These recordings feature stories related to our daily lives. This week, educator Kelly Jane Smith-Fatten learns about Michelangelo by drawing from his drawings. To learn more about this work, visit: https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/298166/ . Over the next fe...

"The Arensbergs’ staging of the art in their collection, it’s both playful, but like chess, it is really serious business." The 1913 Armory Show of avant-garde European art sparked a life-changing fascination with collecting in Louise and Walter Arensberg. The couple quickly became influential participants in New York’s bohemian art scene. In 1921 the Arensbergs moved to Los Angeles, where they sp...

We’ve asked members of the Getty community to share short reflections on works of art they’re thinking about right now. These recordings feature stories related to our daily lives. This week, educator Alice Doo remembers her own California childhood and reflects on the relationship among art, change, and American history through a Dorothea Lange photograph. To learn more about this work, visit: ht...

“It’s really quite astonishing how often, in looking at some of the works of these Japanese American photographers, how simple the subject is, and yet how graceful its rendition is.” At the turn of the 20th century, the Japanese population in Los Angeles was growing rapidly. At the same time, photography was becoming more affordable, accessible, and popular. Scores of Japanese Americans were avid...

We’ve asked members of the Getty community to share short reflections on works of art they’re thinking about right now. These recordings feature stories related to our daily lives. This week, curator Nicole Budrovich reflects on debate and discourse through an ancient plate. To learn more about this work, visit: www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/10598/ . Over the next few weeks, look for new re...