Getty Art + Ideas

Little was known about the subject of Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s “Bust of Costanza Bonarelli“ until author and art historian Sarah McPhee started digging in the Roman archives. Through groundbreaking research, McPhee reveals the identity of Costanza, and details her life as a young dowried woman, Bernini’s muse and lover, and wife and widow of Matteo Bonarelli, sculptor, collector, and Bernini’s studio assistant. McPhee is professor of art and architecture history at Emory University and author of “Bernini’s Beloved: A Portrait of Costanza Piccolomini.”

Last spring Jim Cuno travelled to India to meet with partners on a number of Getty-funded initiatives. He also spoke at the Jaipur Literature Festival, the world’s largest free literary event that draws over 250,000 attendees to hear author talks and musical performances. This episode is one of three “Postcards from India” Jim made during his trip.

“Once upon a time, Europe wasn’t the center of anything,” Peter Frankopan contends, placing Central Asia and its prolific Silk Roads at the center of world development. Frankopan tells us how the Silk Roads were more than just ancient trade routes—they were a network of arteries that connected continents and people by spreading economic, scientific, religious, and cultural goods and ideas. Frankopan is Senior Research Fellow at Worcester College, Oxford; Director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research; and author of “The Silk Roads: A New History of the World.”

“Once upon a time, Europe wasn’t the center of anything,” Peter Frankopan contends, placing Central Asia and its prolific Silk Roads at the center of world development. Frankopan tells us how the Silk Roads were more than just ancient trade routes—they were a network of arteries that connected continents and people by spreading economic, scientific, religious, and cultural goods and ideas. Frankopan is Senior Research Fellow at Worcester College, Oxford; Director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research; and author of “The Silk Roads: A New History of the World.”

Edmund de Waal, potter and author, chats about the life, legacy, and lore of porcelain. He takes us to porcelain's very beginnings in China, recounts its journey to Europe, layover in Tennessee, and expansion to the rest of the world. Edmund parallels this history with his own philosophy related in his most recent book, "The White Road: Journey into an Obsession"—a philosophy that speaks to the physical and spiritual journey of an artist, learning to reject more than one accepts and appreciating the various shades of white that appear as a story unfolds.

When art historian T. J. Clark visited the Getty Museum in 2000, he came upon a gallery that featured two paintings by seventeenth century French painter Nicolas Poussin (the National Gallery, London’s "Landscape with a Man Killed by a Snake" and the Getty’s "Landscape with a Calm") and found himself returning over and over again. In 2008, Clark documented his reflections of the two landscapes, their opposing depictions of life and death, and exploration into the depths of visual complexity in his book, "The Sight of Death: An Experiment in Art Writing." Clark visits the Getty’s Poussin painting in the Getty’s galleries and discusses how his perspective of the painting has changed over the past decade.

It’s where John Cage staged his first Happening, Fridays were often dedicated to art classes, and all faculty, staff, and students participated in the college’s operations from farming to construction. Located in the mountains near Asheville, NC, Black Mountain College was an experimental school founded upon the idea of “learning by doing.” We stop by the Hammer Museum’s exhibition, "Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College, 1933–1957," to talk to Helen Molesworth, curator of the exhibition and chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.