Getty Art + Ideas

We’ve asked members of the Getty community to share short, personal reflections on works of art they’re thinking about right now. These recordings feature stories related to our daily lives.

This week, educator Elmira Adamian wonders about a couple in an ancient fresco as she shelters at home with her family. To learn more about this work, visit: https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/6535/.

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

Transcript

JAMES CUNO: Hi, I'm Jim Cuno, President of the J. Paul Getty trust. In a new podcast feature, we're asking members of the Getty community to share short reflections on works of art to thinking about right now. We'll be releasing new recordings every other Tuesday. I hope you'll find these stories about our daily lives, from laundry on the line to a dog, scholars feet, thought provoking illuminating and entertaining.

ELMIRA DAMIAN: Hi, my name is Elmira Damian.  I'm a gallery educator at the Getty Villa.

Recently, I've been looking closely at one of the frescoed wall panels that decorated a room of a first century ancient Roman Villa at Boscoreale. This large fresco depict delicate architectural designs on a black and yellow background. In the center, there is a small picture of a room with two figures, a seated man facing a beautiful woman. At first glance it looks like the couple is engaged in an intimate and tranquil conversation, but the smallness of a room on a big wall surface implies tension in a confined space.

This scene reminds me of my situation during the pandemic in lockdown at home. Being at the house all the time, and sharing workspace with my family was a little uncomfortable at first. We were not used to having so much time together, other than a couple of hours after work. Many of my friends commented that spending so much time at home was a bit stressful for their relationships. But others have remarked on positive outcomes like going closer to their family because of that.

In my family we try to make the best out of this new norm at home, my husband and I came up with creative ideas and home renovation project. We've had long conversations and debates. We’ve cooked, baked, and watched movies. And with horror, we’ve reminisced on the nightmare traffic of the 405, when we both had to drive to work.

When I come back to the fresco image again. I wonder about the couple's relationship and their conversation. Their identities are unknown, but some scholars think that the pair could be Socrates and Diotima. Socrates was a Greek philosopher credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, and Diotima is said to have taught Socrates the philosophy of love.

No matter who they are, in this small, intimate setting these two characters seem to be engaged in an exciting dialogue. I think that this fresco could be a great conversation starter itself. I just wish I was back in the galleries and I could ask people what they think about it.

CUNO: To view this Roman wall panel from a villa in Boscoreale, Italy, created around the years 1 to 50 CE, click the link in this episode's description or look forward on getty.edu/art/collection.

"After you have the institutionalization of the discourse of nationalism, a Chinese bronze that is buried in the ground belongs to the ancient Chinese nation. So now anyone who removes this artifact is a thief."

From the 1790s to the 1930s, archaeologists from Europe and North America removed tens of thousands of art objects, manuscripts, and antiquities from China and dispersed them among museums and university collections outside Asia. This removal of artifacts took place with the permission and cooperation of local officials, but growing nationalism following the 1911 Revolution led Chinese scholars to view this activity as theft. According to historian Justin Jacobs, however, retroactively labeling it as “plunder” is overly simplistic.

In this episode, Jacobs unravels the shifting cultural, economic, and diplomatic meanings and values assigned to Chinese artifacts by examining the archaeological expeditions of Aurel Stein, Paul Pelliot, and Langdon Warner in northwestern China, especially around the city of Dunhuang. He pays special attention to the possible motivations of the Chinese bureaucrats and laborers who assisted them. These complicated stories are explored in Jacobs’s new book, The Compensations of Plunder: How China Lost Its Treasures.

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

We’ve asked members of the Getty community to share short, personal reflections on works of art they’re thinking about right now. These recordings feature stories related to our daily lives.

This week, educator Kelly Jane Smith-Fatten learns about Michelangelo by drawing from his drawings. To learn more about this work, visit: https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/298166/.

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

Transcript

JAMES CUNO: Hi, I’m Jim Cuno, president of the J. Paul Getty Trust. In a new podcast feature, we’re asking members of the Getty community to share short reflections on works of art they’re thinking about right now. We’ll be releasing new recordings every other Tuesday. 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.

KELLY JANE SMITH-FATTEN:

Hi, I’m Kelly Jane Smith-Fatten and I’m a gallery educator.

The past few months, I have been thinking about Study of a Mourning Woman by Michelangelo Buonorroti. It’s a drawing of a woman draped in heavy cloth, made using a quill pen and dark brown ink. The woman’s head is covered in the cloth as well, and she tilts her head slightly down, towards her arms which are folded over her chest, with one hand coming up to her face and covers part of it. It’s as though she’s cradling herself in her arms.

This work has taken on special meaning to me. It was on view in the Michelangelo exhibition that had opened at the Getty just before the pandemic hit. I was fortunate enough to visit that exhibition a few times before the stay at home orders, and it was just magical. I was inspired. I planned to keep learning and spend more time in the galleries, but of course, the museum closed abruptly in March.

At home, I wanted to see if drawing from the image of Mourning Woman on my computer screen could continue the exploration and magic of what it was like to experience the drawing in person. Drawing from drawings is a way to look really closely and learn about what the artist did on paper. Anyone can do this. It doesn’t matter what your drawing comes out looking like, it’s the act that allows you to discover more about the object.

We gallery educators always encourage this in the galleries, but I wasn’t sure what it would be like online. So I pulled up the artwork and began drawing, zooming in really close to see the details of Michelangelo’s line work: where he chose to draw lines closer together or further apart, or where he left the paper clear of ink to create a sense of light.

Eventually, this experiment led to drawing classes I led over Zoom with volunteer docents, focused on Study of a Mourning Woman. They wondered who might the woman be, what she was feeling internally, and how her gestures and the drapery of the fabric expressed that feeling. Their questions and interpretations showed me that there are so many possibilities within this one drawing.

It has become a kind of friend, as can happen with art sometimes. I connect the posture and emotion of the Mourning Woman with how I’ve felt now and then during this exceptional time.

But drawing from this object, I am reminded of Michelangelo’s words to his student: “Draw Antonio, draw Antonio, draw and don’t waste time.” To me, these words are a hopeful reminder that art matters, what we do now matters.

CUNO: To view Michelangelo Buonarotti’s Study of a Mourning Woman, made about 1500–1505, click the link in this episode’s description or look for it on getty.edu/art/collection.

"The Arensbergs’ staging of the art in their collection, it’s both playful, but like chess, it is really serious business."

The 1913 Armory Show of avant-garde European art sparked a life-changing fascination with collecting in Louise and Walter Arensberg. The couple quickly became influential participants in New York’s bohemian art scene. In 1921 the Arensbergs moved to Los Angeles, where they spent the next few decades building a vast and idiosyncratic art collection in their Mediterranean Revival home in the Hollywood Hills. Works by Duchamp, Picasso, and Brancusi lived alongside pre-Columbian sculptures, eclectic antique furnishings, and thousands of rare books by and about the philosopher Sir Francis Bacon. The riotous display of art in their home excited and overwhelmed visitors—everyone from members of the public to important artists of the day.

The Arensbergs’ LA story, including their art-filled house, is the focus of the book Hollywood Arensberg: Avant-Garde Collecting in Midcentury LA,published by Getty Publications. In this episode, coauthors Mark Nelson, partner at McCall Associates and designer of this book; William H. Sherman, director of the Warburg Institute, London; and Ellen Hoobler, associate curator at the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, discuss the Arensbergs and their obsessive approach to collecting and displaying art.

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

We’ve asked members of the Getty community 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, educator Alice Doo remembers her own California childhood and reflects on the relationship among art, change, and American history through a Dorothea Lange photograph. To learn more about this work, visit: https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/128393/.

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

Transcript

JAMES CUNO: Hi, I’m Jim Cuno, president of the J. Paul Getty Trust. In a new podcast feature, we’re asking members of the Getty community to share short reflections on works of art they’re thinking about right now. We’ll be releasing new recordings every other Tuesday. 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.

ALICE DOO: My name is Alice Doo and I work in our Museum education department. These past few months have been a period of reflection and of learning and unlearning. Learning about my own privilege and my biases and unlearning the racism that is embedded in the American history that I’ve been taught, the culture I am told to value, and the government system that I am expected to trust.

The outpouring of art and photographs on social media responding to police violence, institutional injustice, and protests made me think about how history is being documented. I’m reconsidering the impact art can have capturing pivotal moments and informing our understanding of the world.

I’ve recently revisited a powerful and striking photograph of a painful moment in our nation’s history. It’s called Pledge of Allegiance, Raphael Weill Elementary School, San Francisco by photographer Dorothea Lange. It’s part of Lange’s series documenting Japanese American citizens on the West Coast and their forced relocation and internment, or imprisonment, during World War II.

In this photograph, my eyes are centered on this young girl in her buttoned coat, holding her paper bag lunch in her left hand and resting her right hand over her heart. She is reciting the pledge of allegiance as she stands alongside her classmates. Her eyes look forward, maybe at the American flag or the teacher leading this morning classroom ritual of patriotism.

Dorothea Lange opposed the forced relocation and internment, but she accepted the commission of the US government to document it. Her photographs were then hidden from view for decades because they highlighted the injustices taking place.

I find a personal connection with this young girl as an Asian American woman born and raised in California. I had the same bob haircut as a kid and I grew up reciting this same pledge in Elementary school. I share the experience of all the children in this photograph who were taught to stand at attention and pledge their allegiance to flag and country without understanding that if you are Black, Indigenous, or a person of color, “liberty and justice for all” has for most of history not fully represented or protected you.

Today, I’m encouraged by the images and art inspiring social change that I see being created, especially by those who have been largely underrepresented, excluded and oppressed throughout US history. With social media and other online platforms, artists of color now have more avenues to amplify their own perspectives and visual narratives of what’s happening in our world.

CUNO: To view Dorothea Lange’s photograph Pledge of Allegiance, Raphael Weill Elementary School, San Francisco, taken on April 20, 1942, click the link in this episode’s description or look for it on getty.edu/art/collection.

“It’s really quite astonishing how often, in looking at some of the works of these Japanese American photographers, how simple the subject is, and yet how graceful its rendition is.”

At the turn of the 20th century, the Japanese population in Los Angeles was growing rapidly. At the same time, photography was becoming more affordable, accessible, and popular. Scores of Japanese Americans were avid photographers in this period, and by 1926 the community was active enough in LA to form a club, the Japanese Camera Pictorialists of California, centered in the Little Tokyo neighborhood. However, as the US entered WWII and the military displaced and incarcerated Japanese Americans from the West Coast, their community splintered. These photographers were forced to leave behind their cameras, negatives, and photographs, many of which were destroyed. As a result, much of the history of this group was lost or forgotten for decades, until the early 1980s, when art historian Dennis Reed began working with Japanese American families to preserve and display these artworks.

Getty recently acquired 79 photographs by Japanese Americans from the Dennis Reed collection as well as 75 additional photographs from the families of these artists. In this episode, Virginia Heckert, curator in Getty’s Department of Photographs, discusses these works and the history of this artistic circle.

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

We’ve asked members of the Getty community 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, curator Nicole Budrovich reflects on debate and discourse through an ancient plate. To learn more about this work, visit: www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/10598/.

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

Transcript

JAMES CUNO: Hi, I’m Jim Cuno, president of the J. Paul Getty Trust. In a new podcast feature, we’re asking members of the Getty community to share short reflections on works of art they’re thinking about right now. We’ll be releasing new recordings every other Tuesday. 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.

“For most of his life, Paul Williams lived in two worlds: one as an architect and one as an African American man in his community.”

When African American architect Paul Revere Williams was born in Los Angeles in 1894, the city—like its Black population—was small but growing rapidly. This expansion provided many opportunities for architects to design homes, offices, stores, and even communities. Williams thrived in this landscape, working on everything from elaborate homes for Hollywood stars like Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, to churches for African American congregations such as the First A.M.E. and Second Baptist churches, to integrated public housing projects. Yet despite his success and growing fame, Williams also faced racism and segregation, which at times made him unwelcome in the very spaces he was designing.

The archive of this prolific architect, comprising tens of thousands of sketches, blueprints, and project notes, was jointly acquired by the Getty Research Institute and the University of Southern California School of Architecture in June 2020. In this episode, Karen Elyse Hudson, author and granddaughter of the architect, and LeRonn Brooks, associate curator for modern and contemporary collections at the GRI, discuss Williams’s trailblazing work and his impact on both the field of architecture and the city of L.A.

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

We’ve asked members of the Getty community 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, curator Davide Gasparotto reminisces on his days as a student through Vilelm Hammershøi's Interior with an Easel, Bredgade 25. To learn more about this work, visit: https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/332549/.

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

Transcript

JAMES CUNO: Hi, I’m Jim Cuno, president of the J. Paul Getty Trust. In a new podcast feature, we’re asking members of the Getty community to share short reflections on works of art they’re thinking about right now. We’ll be releasing new recordings every other Tuesday. 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.

"The idea of a kind of intact tomb, at a certain moment where the archaeologist breaks through the door and lifts up a lamp to reveal the glint of gold everywhere. That’s become the defining moment for archaeology."

What do we know about the people who explored and studied Egypt’s ancient civilizations? The notebooks of well-known figures such as Howard Carter, who unearthed King Tut’s tomb in 1919 and created stunning, detailed renderings of it, reveal how Europeans have tried for centuries to unravel the mysteries of Egypt’s ancient languages, cultures, rituals, and monuments. The history of the exploration of Egypt tells not only of our drive to understand the ancient world, but also the political machinations and contests that motivated such exploration.

Chris Naunton’s new book, Egyptologists’ Notebooks: The Golden Age of Nile Exploration in Words, Pictures, Plans, and Letters, uses the often-beautiful records of early explorers and archaeologists from the 17th through 20th centuries to give insight into their discoveries. In this episode, Naunton discusses some of the key figures in Egyptology, highlighting their contributions to the field and to our contemporary understanding of ancient Egypt. 

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