Getty Art + Ideas

“For most of his life, Paul Williams lived in two worlds: one as an architect and one as an African American man in his community.” When African American architect Paul Revere Williams was born in Los Angeles in 1894, the city—like its Black population—was small but growing rapidly. This expansion provided many opportunities for architects to design homes, offices, stores, and even communities. Wi...

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 Davide Gasparotto reminisces on his days as a student through Vilelm Hammershøi's Interior with an Easel, Bredgade 25. To learn more about this work, visit: https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object...

"The idea of a kind of intact tomb, at a certain moment where the archaeologist breaks through the door and lifts up a lamp to reveal the glint of gold everywhere. That’s become the defining moment for archaeology." What do we know about the people who explored and studied Egypt’s ancient civilizations? The notebooks of well-known figures such as Howard Carter, who unearthed King Tut’s tomb in 191...

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, Erin Fussell longs to “cut a rug” again as she looks at photographs from the 1978 “Dyke of Your Dreams” dance at the Women’s Building. To learn more about this event, visit: http://hdl.handle.net/10020/2017m4...

“The reliefs show people being impaled on spikes and the enemy being decapitated and sometimes flayed alive. I mean it’s absolutely brutal, and it was intended to intimidate.” With a powerful empire centered on the Tigris River—today in northern Iraq—the Assyrians were one of the great and formative cultures of the ancient world. They used their military might to conquer and control an extensive t...

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, Amanda Berman considers how studying a set of eighteenth-century French porcelain sculptures reveals hidden racism and what that might mean for us today. To learn more about this artwork, visit:  https://www....

“The fifteen years of civil war did not produce as much damage as the few seconds did on August 4th.” On the evening of August 4, 2020, Beirut—the capital of Lebanon and one of the oldest cities in the world—experienced a devastating explosion, when more than two and a half tons of ammonium nitrate detonated at its port on the Mediterranean Sea. The explosion was felt across the region, killing ne...

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 Anna Sapenuk finds parallels in Herakles and Iolaos’s fight against the Hydra and our global battle against the coronavirus. To learn more about this artwork, visit:  https://www.getty.edu/art/collec...

"I think we can all empathize with someone who’s like a son, or in this case, an adopted son, trying to kind of make his own mark and escape the shadow of his father, and leave something on the world of his own." In the year 79 CE, Pliny the Elder set out to investigate a large cloud of ash rising in the sky above the Bay of Naples. It was the eruption of Vesuvius, and Pliny did not survive. A tra...

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, Carolyn Peter considers how gardening is like early photography—and how both involve a little bit of wonder. To learn more about this artwork, visit:  www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/64876/ . Over the ne...

"You have all these incredibly powerful people across Italy, all writing to Michelangelo and saying, 'Please, please, pretty please, can I have one of your drawings?' And, you know, Michelangelo never obliged them." Michelangelo is among the most influential and impressive artists of the Italian High Renaissance. His lifelike sculptures and powerful paintings are some of the most recognizable work...

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, Aleia McDaniel discusses her long-held love for cursive and how it relates to an illuminated manuscript from 1180. To learn more about this artwork, visit:  https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/103710...

When Brigitte Benkemoun bought a leather diary case from eBay, she did not expect to find a small address book tucked into the back. And she certainly didn’t expect that book to contain the names of some of the most renowned figures of 20th century Paris—names like André Breton, Brassaï, Jean Cocteau, and Jacques Lacan. She began researching these contacts until she uncovered the identity of the a...

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, Johnny Tran relates deeply to the joy of a family gathered around the dinner table and considers the importance of beautiful public housing to Black Angelenos in the 1940s. He discusses a photograph of archit...

Art institutions around the world responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by closing their doors and rethinking planned exhibitions, programming, and partnerships. Now, a few months into the crisis, museums are beginning to reopen, but they are also reevaluating what the next few years might bring and how they might continue to work collaboratively. The pandemic hit just as the Getty was beginning to p...

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 Larisa Grollemond thinks about how calendars link us to the middle ages. To learn more about this artwork, visit: https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/3500/ . Over the next few weeks, look for...

Art institutions around the world responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by closing their doors and rethinking planned exhibitions, programming, and partnerships. Now, a few months into the crisis, museums are beginning to reopen, but they are also reevaluating what the next few years might bring and how they might continue to work collaboratively. The pandemic hit just as Getty was beginning to partn...

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 recordings feature stories related to our daily lives. This week, curator Idurre Alonso imagines a trip to the lush Brazilian landscape through an illustration in a 1648 book. To learn more about this artwork, visit: http://hdl.handle.net/10020/...

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 recordings feature stories related to our daily lives. This week, curator Kenneth Lapatin dives into a new world through a Roman carved gem that features Aeneas fleeing Troy. To learn more about this artwork, visit:   https://www.getty.edu/art/c...

In the year 1000 CE, complex trade networks were taking shape, stimulating unprecedented cultural interactions. The Vikings reached the shores of North America, trade routes connected China with Europe and Africa, and in the Americas, cities like Chichén Itzá underwent explosive growth that attracted people and goods from afar. These are just a few of the world-changing phenomena of this transform...

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 recordings feature stories related to our daily lives. This week, curator Bryan Keene sees a common motif from illuminated manuscripts in a paper chain craft that he makes with his children. To learn more about this artwork, visit: https://www.g...

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 recordings feature stories related to our daily lives. This week, curator David Saunders reflects on how a painted vase from the 6th century BCE that shows Ajax and Achilles playing board games helps him make sense of his work-from-home life. To...

Architect Marwa al-Sabouni was born and raised in Homs, Syria. When the Syrian civil war began, she decided to remain in her home with her husband and two young children. An architect at the beginning of her career, al-Sabouni was determined to pursue her PhD in architecture, even as the war raged and her apartment building was caught in the crossfire between the Syrian army and opposition groups....

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 recordings feature stories related to our daily lives. This week, Getty Research Institute Senior Research Specialist Zanna Gilbert reflects on the empty streets of Ed Ruscha’s Streets of Los Angeles project, begun in 1966. To learn more about t...

Peter Paul Rubens was among the most influential artists in 17th-century Europe. Despite a childhood marred by a scandal that landed his father in prison, Rubens rose to become not only a prominent court painter in the Spanish Netherlands but also a lauded diplomat who worked across Western Europe. With countless biographies written about the artist and exhibitions of his work continuing into the...