Getty Art + Ideas

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 this artwork, visit:  https://www.getty.edu/research/special_collections/notable/ruscha.html.

Over the next few weeks, look for new recordings every Tuesday.

JAMES CUNO: Hi, I’m Jim Cuno, president of the J. Paul Getty Trust. As we all adapt to working and living under these new and unusual circumstances, 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. We’ll be releasing new recordings on Tuesdays over the next few weeks. I hope you’ll find these stories about our daily lives—from laundry on the line to a dog at a scholar’s feet—thought provoking, illuminating, and entertaining.

ZANNA GILBERT: I'm Zanna Gilbert from the curatorial department at the Getty Research Institute. And one of the first artworks that crossed my mind when we entered into lockdown was Ed Ruscha’s Streets of Los Angeles project.

In 1966 Ed Ruscha had driven along the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood with motorized camera mounted on the back of his pickup truck. The camera was capturing photos of the buildings on each side of the street, like a kind of analog Google streetview. He used the images to create his artist book every building on the Sunset Strip. This was a 27-foot long accordion folded record of the iconic Hollywood Street. Having devised this method for documenting sunset reshaping his collaborators continue to document various LA streets, and they revisited the streets periodically over the next six decades and they continue doing this until today. They built an archive that now totals over half a million images and constitutes just an incredible record of how LA has changed over time.

On one of the first days of lockdown, one of the rainy days at the beginning, I drove the entire length of Sunset Boulevard with my family. This was research that I've been wanting to do for a while, but would never have done under normal traffic conditions. We began at the beach in Malibu and then drove through Brentwood towards the street signs of a deserted Sunset Strip. And then through little Armenia, Thai Town, and then ending where it turns into Cesar Chavez Boulevard.

Moving along the streets, eerily empty and almost devoid of people, I felt I was almost inhabiting flow Ruscha’s images. He'd always planned his shoots in the early hours of the morning so there'd be less traffic. Both because he didn't want people in them. And because the slow speed of the pickup truck, then wouldn't hold up the impatient, LA drivers.

Meditating on these images now, which echoes a looming post-apocalyptic feel of many of these paintings seems especially apt. The streets that were first empty by the pandemic are now, filled up again with protest marches and the righteous rage after the murder of George Floyd by the police.

Since the 1960s, Ruscha has been one of the artists that offers new ways of seeing Los Angeles, and the evidence we have from all the years of Ruscha’s streets photos, tells us so many stories about the city, about globalization gentrification and inequality and real estate speculation. I see Ruscha’s vast archive and history of LA as an important opportunity to reflect on the future and think about what our alternatives are now.

CUNO: To learn more about Ed Ruscha’s Streets of Los Angeles photographs, a project he began in 1966, click the link in this episode’s description.

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 present day, the legacy of this Flemish Baroque artist is hard to overstate.

In this episode, Getty curator Anne Woollett discusses the life of Rubens through 17th-century biographies by three authors: Giovanni Baglione, Joachim von Sandrart, and Roger de Piles.

For images, transcripts, and more, visit getty.edu/podcasts.

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 short recordings feature stories related to our daily lives.

This week, Getty drawings curator Stephanie Schrader considers the upside-down world of An Enchanted Cellar with Animals, made by Cornelis Saftleven around 1655 to 1670. To learn more about this artwork, visit:  https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/160/

Over the next few weeks, look for new recordings every Tuesday.

Transcript:

JAMES CUNO: Hi, I’m Jim Cuno, president of the J. Paul Getty Trust. As we all adapt to working and living under these new and unusual circumstances, 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. We’ll be releasing new recordings on Tuesdays over the next few weeks. I hope you’ll find these stories about our daily lives—from laundry on the line to a dog at a scholar’s feet—thought provoking, illuminating, and entertaining.

STEPHANIE SCHRADER: Hi my name is Stephanie Schrader and I’m

Normally, I look after the Dutch and Flemish drawings in our

This particular drawing shows a cellar full of animals doing

But one aspect of this drawing that really stands out to me

In my moments of frustration, though, I am grateful for this

CUNO: To view the drawing An Enchanted Cellar with Animals, made by Cornelis Saftleven around

As we all adapt to working and living under these new and unusual circumstances caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, 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 brief recordings feature stories related to our daily lives—from laundry on the line to a dog at a scholar’s feet. Over the next few weeks, look for new recordings every Tuesday.

This week features manuscripts curator Beth Morrison discussing Simon Bening’s portrait of the author of the Livre des faits de Jacques de Lalaing, made about 1530.

To learn more about this artwork, visit:  https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/287388/

Transcript:

JAMES CUNO: Hi, I’m Jim Cuno, president of the J. Paul Getty

BETH MORRISON: Hi, my name is Beth Morrison and I’m head of manuscripts at the Getty Museum. As for everyone else, it’s been a little bit of a transition to working at home and my life seems dominated by endless zoom meetings. But one of the things I really look forward to is the unexpected appearance of people’s pets. They sort of nose in from the side, or jump up on people’s laps, and it reminds me very much of an illumination that I’m working on right now.

I’m writing an article about a manuscript that is devoted to the life of a medieval knight names Jacques de Lalaing. And the frontispiece is by an artist named Simon Bening, who was one of the greatest artists of the sixteenth century. And he chooses an author portrait at the beginning of the manuscript which is a picture of the author hard at work at his text, and he’s got a desk, he’s got light at his back so he can see more clearly, he’s writing with his quill pen and he’s got books nearby him in case he needs to check something. And one of the great, charming details is that his pet dog has wandered in to curl up in the sun and take a nap. It’s a fluffy brown and white dog, quite distinctive, and very cute.

And it reminds me so much of my own working methodology nowadays. I put my desk at a good place in my house so the sun is at my back so I can see clearly. And my dog comes in, plops down, and decides to take a nap whenever she can because she thinks shelter at home is the greatest thing ever invented; she gets to spend all day with me.

So as I’ve been studying this illumination more and more,

It seems to me that pets are such an important part of our

CUNO: To view this author portrait by Simon Bening made

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio is one of the most admired painters of the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Known for his powerful, dramatically lit compositions, Caravaggio depicted violence and the human form with a degree of realism unprecedented at the time. He was among the most famous painters in Rome—but not only because of his skill as an artist. Caravaggio was also notorious for his wild life and shocking temper. After being sentenced to death for murder, he fled Rome and died in exile at age 38 . Three biographies written in the decades after his death constitute nearly all that is known about the enigmatic artist.

In this episode, Getty curator and expert on Italian painting Davide Gasparatto discusses Caravaggio and the role these early biographies, by Giulio Mancini, Giovanni Baglione, and Giovanni Pietro Bellori, played in defining Caravaggio’s legacy.

For images, transcripts, and more, visit getty.edu/podcasts.

As we all

This week

To view this artwork, visit:  https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/45404/

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Transcript

JAMES CUNO: Hi, I’m Jim Cuno, president of the J.

MAZIE HARRIS: My name is Mazie Harris. I’m one of the

It looks like the photographer walked between two buildings

Photographers have such an incredible ability to make the

CUNO: To view this photograph by Walker Evans, titled Washington Street, New York City /

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic was swift and confusing, with breaking news and information about the virus changing seemingly by the hour. Around the world, art museums, as community gathering sites, have had to face difficult decisions. In this two-part series, six museum directors discuss the pandemic and its repercussions for their institutions. These candid, insightful conversations address wide-ranging topics, from the resources that museum directors are drawing on to philosophical exchanges about the role of museums in society.

This episode features Matthew Teitelbaum of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Ann Philbin of the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and Timothy Potts of the J. Paul Getty Museum.

For images, transcripts, and more, visit getty.edu/podcasts.

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic was swift and confusing, with breaking news and information about the virus changing seemingly by the hour. Around the world, art museums, as community gathering sites, have had to face difficult decisions. In this two-part series, six US museum directors discuss the pandemic and its repercussions for their institutions. These candid, insightful conversations address wide-ranging topics, from the logistical challenges of when to close and how to reopen to philosophical exchanges about the role of museums in society.

This episode features Max Hollein of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Kaywin Feldman of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and James Rondeau of the Art Institute of Chicago.

For images, transcripts, and more, visit getty.edu/podcasts.

How do you reimagine a century-old reference series for the digital age? In 1919, a French archaeologist started the Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum, or CVA, with the ambitious goal of cataloging every ancient painted vase in the world. Nearly 400 volumes, compiling some 100,000 vases, have been published to date by museums, making the CVA one of the most important resources for researchers working on ancient Greek art and culture. Getty’s most recent addition to the CVA is the first born-digital, open-access volume of this essential series.

In this episode, Despoina Tsiafakis, the author of Getty’s new CVA volume and the director of research at the Athena Research and Innovation Center in Greece, speaks with Getty curator David Saunders and Getty digital publications manager Greg Albers about the history of the CVA and the process of bringing the series to a new digital platform.

For images, transcripts, and more, visit getty.edu/podcasts.

Cultural heritage sites around the world are under threat not only from catastrophic events like war and natural disasters but also from daily use and lack of resources. In 2010, archaeologist Larry Coben founded the Sustainable Preservation Initiative (SPI) to address the challenge of preserving sites in areas of great poverty. He pioneered an approach that provides training and support to communities living near cultural heritage sites, empowering them to turn preservation into economic opportunity. SPI now works in Peru, Guatemala, Jordan, Turkey, Tanzania, and Bulgaria.

In this episode, Coben discusses his unusual path from lawyer and energy executive to archaeologist, sharing the work that inspired his innovative approach to cultural heritage preservation.

For images, transcripts, and more, visit getty.edu/podcasts.