Getty Art + Ideas

“What it is that we do at Disneyland is tell stories. And the horticulture is a work of art helping to tell the story.” At Disneyland, elaborate, immaculate gardens spring to life literally overnight—four times a year. While plants might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think about a theme park, these gardens are a crucial part of the Disneyland experience because they tell the story of place through plants. For instance, in the Star Wars-themed zone Galaxy’s Edge, exotic succulents and flowers create an otherworldly atmosphere. Adam Schwerner, Disneyland’s director of horticulture and resort enhancement, uses lessons learned from artists to create a wonder-filled, magical environment at the park. In this episode, Schwerner and Getty grounds manager Luis Gómez, who previously worked at Disneyland, speak with guest host Brian Houck, Getty’s head of grounds and gardens, about how they came to work in horticulture, what it takes to design and maintain artful gardens, and what inspires them. For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/the-art-of-gardening-storytelling-with-plants-at-disneyland/ or http://www.getty.edu/podcasts

“I was there for the groundbreaking of the Getty Center. I was there for opening day of the Getty Center. I think for a lot of people, it said LA has arrived.” After nearly 15 years in the making, the Getty Center opened to much fanfare on December 16, 1997. Perched on a mountaintop with sweeping views of the surrounding city and coastline, the new campus quickly became an architectural and cultural landmark in Los Angeles. This year marks the Center’s 25th anniversary. In honor of this milestone, we asked our community to share their Getty memories. In this episode, Jim Cuno’s last as host and Getty president, he reflects on his time there. We also hear from staff, docents, and members of our community about the opening of the Getty Center and other favorite memories of the site. For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/podcast-reflecting-on-25-years-of-the-getty-center/ or http://www.getty.edu/podcasts

“There was a lotta negativity because there was just pictures of Black people. That was one of the critiques, that we just photographed Black people. Said, ‘Yeah. You photograph just white people.’ That was the argument.” In New York City in 1963, a group of Black photographers came together, naming themselves the Kamoinge Workshop. Translated from the Kikuyu language, kamoinge means a group of people acting together. The artists indeed worked closely together, focusing on reflecting Black life through photographs and increasing Black representation in professional organizations like the American Society of Magazine Photographers (now American Society of Media Photographers). The exhibition Working Together: The Photographers of the Kamoinge Workshop showcases members’ work from the 1960s and ’70s. In this episode, artist Adger Cowans and Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) curator Sarah Eckhardt discusses Kamoinge’s history and future as well as the exhibition Working Together. The exhibition is organized by the VFMA and is on view at the Getty Center through October 9, 2022. For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/podcast-black-photographers-represent-their-world/ or http://www.getty.edu/podcasts To learn more about the exhibition Working Together: The Photographers of the Kamoinge Workshop visit https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/kamoinge/index.html

"You know, everything is not just red, yellow, blue, and coming from a tube. It can be anything out there in the world. Grab it and use it." In 1956, artist Ed Ruscha left his home in Oklahoma and drove with his childhood friend to Los Angeles. Drawn to the city by its palm trees and apparent lack of an established art scene, Ruscha stayed to attend Chouinard Art Institute (now CalArts), where he aspired to be a sign painter. In the decades since, Ruscha has become a world-renowned artist, but much of his art continues to be informed by LA. In this episode, Ruscha discusses how he became an artist, his thoughts on his career today, and his decades-long project documenting Sunset Boulevard. For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/podcast-ed-ruschas-los-angeles/ or http://www.getty.edu/podcasts To learn more about Ruscha's photographs of Sunset Boulevard, visit https://12sunsets.getty.edu/map/narrative

“The camera sort of teaches you to see in a really different way and to experience your environment in a different way, and to pay attention to the act of looking.” Photographer Uta Barth’s photographs focus on the act of looking. She has long been interested in creating images in which there is no discernable subject, but rather the image or light itself is the subject. Barth’s conceptual photographs examine how we see and how we define foreground and background. Her series are often long-term engagements; she photographs the same place over many months, or even years, to understand how light changes a space over time. She recently completed a series at the Getty Center taken over the course of a year and comprising over 60,000 images. Barth has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation. In this episode, Barth discusses her approach to making images through several of her bodies of work including Ground, Figure, and her new Getty series. Her career will be the subject of a retrospective at the Getty Center in fall 2022. For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/podcast-uta-barths-atmospheric-photographs/ or http://www.getty.edu/podcasts To learn more about Uta Barth, visit https://utabarth.net/

“The underworld, the afterlife, is fairly dank, dark, shadowy; quite frankly, it’s a bit boring. Somewhat like waiting at a bus depot.” Homer’s Odyssey depicts an afterlife that is relatively dull, with heroic actions and glory reserved for the living. Nonetheless, people in Southern Italy in the fourth century BCE were captivated by the underworld and decorated large funerary vases with scenes of the afterlife—the domain of Hades and Persephone, where sinners like Sisyphus are tortured for eternity and heroes like Herakles and Orpheus performed daring feats. Little is known about precisely how these vases were used and seen in death rituals. A new book by Getty Publications, Underworld: Imagining the Afterlife in Ancient South Italian Vase Painting, brings together 40 such vases and explores new research on them. In this episode, Getty Museum curator of antiquities David Saunders discusses these enormous and often elaborate vases, explaining the myths they depict and what is known about the ways in which they were used. Saunders is editor of Underworld. For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/podcast-imagining-the-afterlife-through-ancient-vases/ or http://www.getty.edu/podcasts To buy the book Underworld: Imagining the Afterlife in Ancient South Italian Vase Painting, visit https://shop.getty.edu/products/underworld-imagining-the-afterlife-in-ancient-south-italian-vase-painting-978-1606067345 To learn more about the exhibition, visit https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/ancient_underworld/

“I had heard the tale and knew what to expect, but it was by far the most damaged painting I had seen. When it arrived, it came into the studio and the damage was almost all that you could see.” In 2017 Willem de Kooning’s painting Woman-Ochre returned to the University of Arizona Museum of Art (UAMA) more than 30 years after it had been stolen off the gallery walls. Because the theft and subsequent treatment of the work had caused significant damage, the UAMA enlisted the Getty Museum and Getty Conservation Institute to help repair the painting. When the work arrived at the Getty in 2019, the damage was so extreme that it was all paintings conservator Laura Rivers could see; prominent cracks and flaking paint obscured the artwork itself. Rivers worked alongside her colleague Douglas MacLennan, a conservation scientist who used advanced analytic methods like X-ray fluorescence and microfade testing to inform their conservation work. The results of their multi-year collaboration are finally on view in the exhibition Conserving de Kooning: Theft and Recovery. In this episode, Getty Museum conservator Laura Rivers and Getty Conservation Institute scientist Douglas MacLennan discuss their work conserving Woman-Ochre, which is on display at the Getty Center through August 28, 2022. For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/podcast-damaged-de-kooning-on-display-at-last/ or http://www.getty.edu/podcasts To hear more about the theft and conservation process for Woman-Ochre, visit http://blogs.getty.edu/iris/podcast-the-recovery-and-conservation-of-a-stolen-de-kooning/ To learn more about the exhibition, visit https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/de_kooning/index.html

"There’s been an assumption that any person who stepped foot on French territory in the metropole went free. In fact, enslaved Turks did not go free; they often spent their entire lifetime in servitude." Since the Middle Ages, France’s legal tradition as a “Free Soil” state meant that any enslaved person who stepped foot in Continental France would be freed. This led to the widespread misconception that there were no slaves in France after the 14th century. However, galley slavery was still a common and even glorified practice centuries later during the reign of Louis XIV. These people, called turcs or Turks, were often Muslim men who had been captured or purchased. Representations of galley slaves adorned paintings, artillery, medals, and other objects, and were used to express the king’s power. In this episode, art historian Meredith Martin and historian Gillian Weiss discuss their multidisciplinary study of 17th-century galley slavery and its depictions under Louis XIV. They are authors of the recent book The Sun King at Sea: Maritime Art and Galley Slavery in Louis XIV's France from Getty Publications. For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/podcast-galley-slavery-in-17th-century-france/ or http://www.getty.edu/podcasts To buy the book he Sun King at Sea: Maritime Art and Galley Slavery in Louis XIV's France, visit https://shop.getty.edu/products/the-sun-king-at-sea-maritime-art-and-galley-slavery-in-louis-xiv-s-france-978-1606067307

“This interconnection between Greek tradition and science and mathematics, and the Babylonian traditions in astronomy and all these other very technical and very advanced sciences, this was a moment which really created the basis for science, mathematics, and so on in the Western world, and indeed, throughout the world, in later centuries and millennia.” For more than a millennium, the Persian empire was the major political and economic force in western Asia. Beginning in the sixth century BCE, three dynasties of Persian rulers created the largest and most complex nation in the world. From the monumental reliefs of the Achaemenid ceremonial capital, Persepolis, to elaborate silver platters that tell the story of David and Goliath, the art and luxury objects of this period demonstrate the Persians’ political power and self-image. At the same time, much of our knowledge of ancient Iran comes from Greek and Roman writings and artworks because of the relationships and rivalries among these civilizations. The exhibition Persia: Ancient Iran and the Classical World showcases a wide range objects from the three cultures that shed new light on ancient Persia and tell the story of cultural exchange in this fascinating empire. In this episode, Getty Museum director Tim Potts and curators Jeffrey Spier and Sara Cole discuss their exhibition Persia: Ancient Iran and the Classical World and some of the key objects in the show. The exhibition is on view at the Getty Villa through August 8, 2022. For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/podcast-art-luxury-and-power-in-ancient-iran/ or http://www.getty.edu/podcasts To learn more about the exhibition Persia: Ancient Iran and the Classical World, visit https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/persia/ To buy the catalogue for Persia: Ancient Iran and the Classical World, visit https://shop.getty.edu/products/persia-ancient-iran-and-the-classical-world-978-1606066805

“When Cunningham passed away, I think in part her reputation was based on her personality, the fact that she had lived so long, the fact that she was full of witty quips, and she wouldn’t let anyone boss her around. But I think in some ways that eclipsed the work.” Born in Portland, Oregon, in 1883, photographer Imogen Cunningham joined a correspondence course for photography as a high schooler after seeing a magazine ad. Over the course of her 70-year career, Cunningham stirred controversy with a nude portrait of her husband, photographed flowers while minding her young children in her garden, captured striking portraits of famous actors and writers for Vanity Fair, and provided insight into the life of nonagenarians when she herself was in her 90s. Although photography was a male-dominated field, Cunningham made a name for herself while also supporting the work of other women artists. Her long, varied career is the subject of the new exhibition Imogen Cunningham: A Retrospective at the Getty Center. In this episode, Getty photographs curator Paul Martineau discusses Cunningham’s trajectory, focusing on key artworks made throughout her life. For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/podcast-photographer-imogen-cunningham-gets-her-due/ or http://www.getty.edu/podcasts To learn more about the exhibition Imogen Cunningham: A Retrospective, visit https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/cunningham/index.html To buy the catalogue for Imogen Cunningham: A Retrospective, visit https://shop.getty.edu/products/imogen-cunningham-a-retrospective-978-1606066751

"Berengario’s books show animated cadavers and skeletons set in a landscape, often so animated that they’re displaying their own dissecting bodies to the viewer.” For centuries, doctors and artists have relied on renderings of the human body for their training. Until the Renaissance, anatomy studies were primarily textual, but in the late 15th and early 16th centuries illustrated anatomy books began to be published in greater numbers. Macabre prints of flayed bodies painstakingly depicted muscles, veins, and nerves, and allowed for a far better understanding of the human form. In the 19th and 20th centuries, anatomy studies were also targeted to general audiences, and moralizing flap books with Christian themes, children’s toys with removable body parts, and wax models for museum exhibitions gained popularity. The Getty Research Institute exhibition Flesh and Bones: The Art of Anatomy explores this long history of illustrating the body. In this episode, scholar and independent curator Monique Kornell, GRI curator of prints and drawings Naoko Takahatake, and GRI research associate Thisbe Gensler survey this history. They move from the 16th century books by anatomist Andreas Vesalius to contemporary artworks by Robert Rauschenberg and Tavares Strachan, explaining the relevance of anatomy studies across time. For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/podcast-the-art-of-anatomy-from-the-16th-century-to-today/ or http://www.getty.edu/podcasts To learn more about the exhibition Flesh and Bones: The Art of Anatomy, visit https://www.getty.edu/research/exhibitions_events/exhibitions/anatomy/ To buy Flesh and Bones: The Art of Anatomy, visit https://shop.getty.edu/products/flesh-and-bones-the-art-of-anatomy-978-1606067697

"It’s why she started a museum, because people said, 'You’re crazy. You can’t do that. Nobody does that without a collection, without money. You can’t.' And if somebody said, ‘No, you can’t do something,’ that made her wanna do it a hundred times over." After years of facing both subtle and overt sexism as a curator at the Whitney Museum in New York, Marcia Tucker founded the New Museum of Contemporary Art in 1977 with a small volunteer staff and a budget of $15,000. Placing herself at the helm, Tucker became one of the first female museum directors in the country. The museum’s daring exhibitions—and its director’s radical approach to curating and power in the art world—soon became well known in New York and beyond. Alongside her curatorial work, Tucker was also a prolific writer. Her wide-ranging texts include deep analyses of artists’ practices, essays for her controversial exhibitions, and critiques of power and institutions. Out of Bounds: The Collected Writings of Marcia Tucker, a collection of Tucker’s writings recently published by the Getty Research Institute, draws attention to both her rhetorical skills and great influence on museology and curatorial practice. Lisa Phillips, director of the New Museum, and Johanna Burton, the Maurice Marciano Director of MOCA, Los Angeles, and former Keith Haring Director and Curator of Education and Public Engagement at the New Museum, edited the volume with Alicia Ritson. In this episode, Phillips and Burton discuss Tucker’s immense impact on their lives and on the art world, and explore some of the texts that appear in the book. For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/podcast-reflecting-on-feminist-curator-marcia-tuckers-boundary-breaking-career/ or http://www.getty.edu/podcasts To buy Out of Bounds: The Collected Writings of Marcia Tucker, visit https://shop.getty.edu/products/out-of-bounds-br-the-collected-writings-of-marcia-tucker-978-1606065969

"When I look at the law and also museum policy, it’s just so close to conceptual art making. You have a lot of material and you’re just trying to define how it lives in the world, except with the law, everybody agrees. With conceptual art, you have to convince people to believe in it." Gala Porras-Kim is an interdisciplinary artist whose work is both conceptually rigorous and visually compelling. Born in Bogotá and based in Los Angeles, Porras-Kim creates art that explores the relationship between historical objects and the institutions that collect and display them. From writing letters questioning how museums handle artifacts to creating sculptures that honor the spiritual lives of antiquities, Porras-Kim’s practice is part concept, part material manifestation. The artist’s current exhibition, Precipitation for an Arid Landscape, focuses on the Peabody Museum’s collection of thousands of artifacts originally found in a giant sinkhole: the Sacred Cenote at Chichén Itzá on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. The exhibition is one in a series of solo shows at the Amant Foundation in Brooklyn, Gasworks in London, and the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis. The work is based partly on research Porras-Kim carried out while she was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard and an artist in residence at the Getty Research Institute. In this episode, Porras-Kim muses about rummaging through museum archives, the rights of mummies, and potlucks in the Pink Palace. For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/podcast-gala-porras-kim-makes-art-of-interrogation/ or http://www.getty.edu/podcasts To learn more about Porras-Kim, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/meet-the-getty-research-institutes-newest-artist-in-residence/ To learn more about Precipitation for an Arid Landscape, visit https://www.amant.org/exhibitions/4-gala-porras-kim-precipitation-for-an-arid-landscape

"One of the hopes of this exhibition was really to try to enlist visitors’ bodily experience in their understanding of these works of art that can sometimes seem a little bit like they live entirely in our heads, a little bit intellectualized." Although Nicolas Poussin is widely regarded as the most influential painter of the 17th century—the father of French classicism—he is not as well-known as many of his contemporaries, such as Rembrandt, Rubens, and Caravaggio. This is due, in part, to Poussin’s austere painting style and erudite subject matter, which often came from Roman history or the Bible. As a result, his work can sometimes feel a bit cold or remote to today’s audiences. But earlier in his career, Poussin was inspired by dance. His paintings of wild revelry, filled with dancing satyrs and nymphs, emerged as his signature genre from that time. Poussin and the Dance, organized by the Getty Museum and the National Gallery in London, is the first exhibition to explore the theme of dance in Poussin’s work. By supplementing his delightful dancing pictures with new dance films by Los Angeles–based choreographers—this unique exhibition invites viewers into the world of Poussin in a fresh, relatable way. In this episode, Emily Beeny, curator in charge of European paintings at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and curator of Poussin and the Dance, joins Sarah Cooper, public programs specialist at the Getty, to delve into Poussin’s process and love of dance. The exhibition, which received generous support from the Leonetti/O’Connell Family Foundation and is sponsored by City National Bank, is on view at the Getty Center through May 8, 2022. For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/podcast-poussin-and-the-dance-shines-new-light-on-french-painter or http://www.getty.edu/podcasts To explore the exhibition Poussin and the Dance, visit https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/poussin_dance/ To watch the contemporary dance films from Poussin and the Dance, visit https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/poussin_dance/video.html To buy the book Poussin and the Dance, visit https://shop.getty.edu/products/poussin-and-the-dance-978-1606066836

"You look at the thinking behind the creation of the building, but then also at the material needs. And you merge the two to really build an in-depth understanding of the building, and a path forward to preserving it." From the sculptural curves of the Sydney Opera House to the sliding walls and windows of the Eames House, the hallmarks of modern buildings make them easy to spot. Modernist architecture—with its signature use of industrial materials and innovative, sleek designs—emerged in the early 1900s and dominated the post–World War II building boom. Unfortunately, many of the iconic buildings from this period are now in serious need of repair but lack clear conservation plans due to the use of untested building methods and materials. How do you fix concrete that’s been damaged by ocean water, or remove graffiti to preserve stainless steel? In response to such dilemmas, the Getty Foundation created the Keeping It Modern initiative, an international grant program focused on the conservation of significant 20th-century architecture. Launched in 2014, Keeping It Modern has to date supported a total of 77 projects in 40 countries. In this episode, Antoine Wilmering, senior program officer at the Getty Foundation, discusses the importance and ongoing impact of Keeping It Modern. For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/podcast-protecting-modernist-architecture-for-generations-to-come or http://www.getty.edu/podcasts To learn more about Keeping It Modern, visit https://www.getty.edu/foundation/initiatives/current/keeping_it_modern or https://www.getty.edu/foundation/initiatives/current/keeping_it_modern/report_library/index.html To read about the Patel Stadium conservation project, visit https://www.getty.edu/news/it-is-indeed-a-holy-place To buy the book Concrete: Case Studies in Conservation Practice, visit https://shop.getty.edu/products/concrete-case-studies-in-conservation-practice-978-1606065761https://www.getty.edu/foundation/initiatives/current/keeping_it_modern To buy the book Managing Energy Use in Modern Buildings: Case Studies in Conservation Practice, visit https://shop.getty.edu/products/managing-energy-use-in-modern-buildings-case-studies-in-conservation-practice-978-1606066973