Getty Art + Ideas

Contemporary artist Tacita Dean works in many mediums to create a varied and compelling body of work, from collections of four-leaf clovers to chalk drawings to filmed portraits of artists. In 2018, a wide array of these works was on view during three simultaneous exhibitions in London: one at the National Portrait Gallery, one at the National Gallery, and one at the Royal Academy of Arts. Taking those exhibitions as a starting point, in this episode Dean discusses her working methods, her approach to her subjects, and the importance of language for artists and filmmakers.

Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang has spent decades using gunpowder as a medium for paintings and performances. Although the explosions are momentary and ephemeral, the records of these events are works of art collected by museums around the world. When Cai began to wonder about the longevity of this unusual material, he turned to the scientists at the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI). In this episode, the artist discusses his relationship with this unorthodox medium and is joined by GCI scientists Rachel Rivenc and Tom Learner to talk about the research collaboration he is undertaking with the institute.

The nude human figure, both male and female, has been central to European art for centuries. During the Renaissance of the 1400s and 1500s, artists across Europe used the nude to explore religion, nature, human relationships, and beauty itself. But artists’ approach to the nude were not monolithic, nor were these works received without considerable controversy. Although created long ago, these works continue to inform contemporary attitudes toward the nude human figure in art. The exhibition The Renaissance Nude, on view first at the Getty before moving to the Royal Academy in London, explores the development and deployment of the naturalistic nude, as well as the contexts in which these works were created and received. In this episode, curator Thomas Kren discusses this incredible exhibition.

The Salk Institute opened in La Jolla, California, in 1963, with striking buildings of concrete and earthy wood lining a travertine plaza and overlooking the Pacific Ocean. But within a few years, the buildings began to weather badly, causing unsightly effects that led to inadequate conservation efforts. In 2013, fifty years after the Institute opened, the Getty Conservation Institute began a multi-year process to understand the challenges posed by aging, repair the damage, and plan for the future of the site. In this episode, Susan Macdonald, head of Getty Conservation Institute Field Projects, and Thomas Albright, Professor and Director of the Salk Institute’s Vision Center Laboratory, discuss the conservation of the Salk Institute and the architecture’s impact on the science performed there.

Shortly after inventing the polio vaccine, scientist Jonas Salk set his sights on another groundbreaking undertaking: creating an institute where science and art could meet and inform each other. In architect Louis Kahn, Salk found a man who not only shared this vision, but who was capable of designing the space to support it. The Salk Institute’s monumental modernist buildings and plaza, located on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, are the result of this collaboration. In this episode, Jonathan Salk and Nathaniel Kahn, sons of Jonas Salk and Louis Kahn respectively, discuss their fathers’ relationship to each other and to the Salk Institute.

The exhibition India & the World: A History in Nine Stories has an ambitious goal: to use objects to chronicle cultural, economic, and artistic exchange and influence between India and the world. From four-thousand-year-old seals from the Indus Valley found thousands of miles from where they were created to contemporary works of art made out of money and concrete, the wide-ranging exhibition centers on India to address our shared human experiences. In this episode, Naman Ahuja, professor of the history of art at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India, describes the curatorial process for this multi-venue, multilingual exhibition and touches on some of the key objects on display.