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Windows Around Us
Today I walked around the Getty Center, looking to my left and to my right, tilting my head up and down. I looked for reflections, light play on the travertine, interesting shadows and geometric...
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The Cyrus Cylinder as Design Object
What explains the Cyrus Cylinder’s unusual shape? Dr. John Curtis of the British Museum reveals the answer The Cyrus Cylinder, Achaemenid, after 539 B.C. Terracotta, 22.9 x 10 cm. Image courtesy of and...
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“We Are All the Same”: A Conversation with Josef Koudelka
The Czech-born photographer on freedom, landscape, empathy—and why good photographs are so rare Josef Koudelka in the Getty Center galleries, November 2014 Josef Koudelka has been focusing an...
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Journey to Marquette
Our senior curator of manuscripts visits a town in France with strong ties to an illuminated Bible made there seven centuries ago I recently had the opportunity to visit Marquette-lez-Lille, a charming...
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AUDIO: Harald Szeemann’s Museum of Obsessions
A new episode of the Art + Ideas podcast To say that Swiss-born artist, art historian, and curator Harald Szeemann was an obsessive collector might be putting it mildly. Szeemann’s personal archive and...
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AUDIO: Talking About Paintings – Giovanni Bellini
A new episode of the Art + Ideas podcast Venetian Renaissance painter Giovanni Bellini is widely considered one of the greatest Italian artists of all time. His landscapes are imbued with allegory and...
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AUDIO: Talking About Paintings – Caravaggio
A new episode of the Art + Ideas podcast The early Baroque artist Caravaggio painted bold compositions with dramatic lighting that emphasized the physical and emotional humanity of his subjects. In...
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Playing with Plato
Plato. The founder of Western philosophy. An authority in the canon so essential to the way Westerners think about thinking that it is difficult to imagine philosophy today without the foundation he...
View ArticleAUDIO: Beyond the Nile – Egypt and the Classical World
A new episode of the Art + Ideas podcast A towering sarcophagus for a man with a Grecian name, an ancient medical scroll that details Mycenaean cures in Egyptian hieroglyphics, and a Roman mosaic...
View ArticleThe Soundtrack of the Renaissance Court
Music was an integral part of the courtly experience. It both complemented and enhanced the visual spectacle of luxury fashions, illuminated manuscripts, tableware of fine polished metals, large and...
View ArticleGolden Tickets to the Underworld
(Initiate): I am parched with thirst and perishing! (Spring): Then come drink of me, the Ever-Flowing Spring, on the right—a bright cypress is there. Who are you? Where are you from? (Initiate): I am...
View ArticleIn Sally Mann’s Battlefields, Civil War Sites Are Seen Through a New Lens
At a moment when debates about Civil War monuments have grown increasingly heated, artist Sally Mann’s Battlefields series asks us to consider how the history of this era weighs on us today. Through a...
View ArticlePODCAST: New Insights into Jacopo da Pontormo’s Style with Curator Davide...
A new episode of the Art + Ideas Podcast Florence in the late 1520s was a place of turmoil, as powerful families vied for political and economic control of the city. Throughout the unrest, painter...
View ArticleA “Fish Chandelier”
One of the most popular objects in the Getty Museum’s collection of decorative arts is a chandelier made in Paris during the early 1800s by Gérard Jean Galle, an artist who produced luxury items out of...
View ArticleNotre-Dame’s Centuries of Survival, Captured in Art
The world came to a collective halt on April 15, 2019, when news broke that a fire was taking over Notre-Dame, an 850-year-old cathedral in the heart of Paris. Despite its age, the cathedral had...
View ArticleHow Photographs of Poverty in the Americas Ignited an International Battle...
In late July 1961, O Cruzeiro magazine—Brazil’s answer to the American magazine Life—sent photographer Henri Ballot to document poverty in New York City. Ballot’s assignment had been issued in direct...
View ArticleKäthe Kollwitz: Agent of Change
German printmaker, sculptor, teacher, and social activist Käthe Kollwitz was no stranger to change. Born in 1867, she witnessed seismic political, societal, and economic shifts under three regimes: the...
View ArticleHighlights from Unseen: 35 Years of Collecting Photographs
In 1969, after serving as a medic in the Vietnam War, Anthony Hernandez began roaming the inner-city neighborhoods of his native Los Angeles with a 35-millimeter Nikon in hand, looking to capture...
View ArticlePODCAST: Collecting Käthe Kollwitz with Dr. Richard Simms
A new episode of the Art + Ideas podcast Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945) was a prolific printmaker whose work explored painful themes such as hunger, poverty, and death. To achieve her powerful results, she...
View ArticleRare Michelangelo Drawings on View at the Getty Center
Michelangelo is widely acknowledged as one of the most creative and influential artists in the history of western art. His most famous works—from the marble David in Florence to the fresco paintings in...
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