Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955–1985 @ National Gallery of Art, Washington + The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles + Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson

Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955–1985

National Gallery of Art, Washington

September 21, 2025 – January 11, 2026

The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

February 24 – May 24, 2026

Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson

July 25 – November 1, 2026

John W. Mosley

View of the crowd as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 

addresses civil rights demonstrators 

at 40th Street and Lancaster Avenue, Philadelphia, August 3, 1965

Gelatin silver print

image: 24.8 x 19.7 cm (9 3/4 x 7 3/4 in.)

sheet: 25.4 x 20.3 cm (10 x 8 in.)

mat: 12 1/2 x 14 in. / frame: 13 3/8 x 14 7/8 in.

John W. Mosley Photograph Collection, 

Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection, 

Temple University Libraries

Cecil J. Williams

During the summer of 1960, the elders of Orangeburg took to 

the streets as part of ongoing demonstrations and boycotts 

in support of civil rights. They are standing outside a segregated 

supermarket where they were allowed to shop 

but not sit down for lunch., 1960, printed 2024

Inkjet print

image/sheet: 37.3 x 55.9 cm (14 11/16 x 22 in.)

mat: 53.3 x 71.12 cm (21 x 28 in.)

frame: 55.6 x 73.3 cm (21 7/8 x 28 7/8 in.)

Harry Adams

Protest Car, Los Angeles, 1962, printed 2024

Inkjet print

image: 27.5 x 35.4 cm (11 x 13 15/16 in.)

sheet: 29.7 x 41.9 cm (11 11/16 x 16 1/2 in.)

mat: 16 x 20 in. / frame: 16 7/8 x 20 7/8 in.

Tom & Ethel Bradley Center, 

California State University, Northridge, Harry Adams Archive

© Harry Adams. All rights reserved and protected.

Courtesy of the Tom & Ethel Bradley Center 

at California State University, Northridge

Kwame Brathwaite

Untitled (Charles Peaker Street Speaker, head of ANPM, 

after Carlos Cooks passed away, on 125th Street), c. 1968, 

printed 2016 / Inkjet print

image: 37.2 x 37.2 cm (14 5/8 x 14 5/8 in.)

mat: 15 x 15 in. / frame: 15 7/8 x 15 7/8 in.

National Gallery of Art, Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund 

and Pepita Milmore Memorial Fund, 2023.129.2

The National Gallery of Art presents Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955–1985, an exhibition exploring the work of American and Afro-Atlantic diaspora photographers in developing and fostering a distinctly Black visual culture and identity. The first presentation to investigate photography's role in the Black Arts Movement, a creative initiative comparable to the Harlem Renaissance in its scope and impact, which evolved concurrently to the civil rights and international freedom movements, the exhibition reveals how artists developed strategies to engage communities and encourage self-representation in media, laying a foundation for socially engaged art practices that continue today. 

Photography and the Black Arts Movement will be on view in the West Building of the National Gallery of Art before traveling to The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles and the Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson

Doug Harris

Malcolm X speaks at a rally at Harlem's Williams Institutional 

CME Church on December 20, 1964, with Fannie Lou Hamer, 

and Professor Bill Strickland, 1964

Gelatin silver print

image: 20.32 x 25.4 cm (8 x 10 in.)

mat: 14 x 17 in. / frame: 14 7/8 x 17 7/8 in.

Collection of Doug Harris

© Doug Harris

Jeffrey Henson Scales

In a Time of Panthers 1, Chicago Summer, 1967, printed 2022

Gelatin silver print

image/sheet: 45.7 x 45.7 cm (18 x 18 in.)

mat: 26 x 26 in. / frame: 26 7/8 x 26 7/8 in.

National Gallery of Art, 

Alfred H. Moses and Fern M. Schad Fund, 2024.121.1

© Jeffrey Henson Scales

Photography and the Black Arts Movement brings together approximately 150 artworks spanning photography, video, collage, painting, installation, and other photo-based media, some of which have rarely or never been on view. Among the over 100 artists included in the exhibition are Billy Abernathy (Fundi), Romare Bearden, Dawoud Bey, Frank Bowling, Kwame Brathwaite, Roy DeCarava, Louis Draper, David C. Driskell, Charles Gaines, James E. Hinton, Danny Lyon, Gordon Parks, Adrian Piper, Nellie Mae Rowe, Betye Saar, Raymond Saunders, Jamel Shabazz, Lorna Simpson, and Carrie Mae Weems.

This expansive selection of work showcases the broad cultural exchange between writers, musicians, photographers, filmmakers, and other visual artists of many backgrounds, who came together during the turbulent decades of the mid-20th century to grapple with social and political changes, the pursuit of civil rights, and the emergence of the Pan-African movement through art. The exhibition also includes art from Africa, the Caribbean, and Great Britain to contextualize the global engagement with the social, political, and cultural ideas that propelled the Black Arts Movement.

"Working on many fronts—literature, poetry, jazz and new music, painting, sculpture, performance, film, and photography—African American artists associated with the Black Arts Movement expressed and exchanged their ideas through publications, organizations, museums, galleries, community centers, theaters, murals, street art, and emerging academic programs. While focusing on African American photography in the United States, the exhibition also includes works by artists from many communities to consider the extensive interchange between North American artists and the African diaspora. The exhibition looks at the important connections between America's focus on civil rights and the emerging cultural movements that enriched the dialog," said Philip Brookman, cocurator of the exhibition and consulting curator of the department of photographs at the National Gallery of Art.

"Photography and photographic images were crucial in defining and giving expression to the Black Arts Movement and the civil rights movement. By merging the social concerns and aesthetics of the period, Black artists and photographers were defining a Black aesthetic while expanding conversations around community building and public history," said Deborah Willis, visiting cocurator, university professor and chair of the department of photography and imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts and founding director of the Center for Black Visual Culture at New York University. "The artists and their subjects helped to preserve compelling visual responses to this turbulent time and their images reflect their pride and determination."

 

Isaac Sutton

Photograph of Etta Moten Barnett gazing at a painting, c. 1960

Gelatin silver print

overall: 26.5 x 26.5 cm (10 7/16 x 10 7/16 in.)

Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum 

of African American History and Culture, 

courtesy J. Paul Getty Trust and Smithsonian National Museum 

of African American History and Culture

© Johnson Publishing Company Archive. 

Courtesy J. Paul Getty Trust and Smithsonian National Museum 

of African American History and Culture

Roy Lewis

Nina Simone on a Sunday morning visit to the Wall of Respect 

mural at 43rd and Langley in Chicago's

Black Belt (Nina's Prayer), 1967, printed 2025

Inkjet print

sheet: 48.3 x 33.0 cm (19 x 13 in.) / mat: 18 x 24 in.

frame: 18 7/8 x 24 7/8 in.

National Gallery of Art, Alfred H. Moses 

and Fern M. Schad Fund, 2025.34.2

Bruce W. Talamon

David Hammons, Creating a Body Print, 

Slauson Avenue Studio, Los Angeles, 1974, printed 2025

Gelatin silver print

image: 61 x 50.8 cm (24 x 20 in.)

Bruce W. Talamon

Photo © 2018 Bruce W. Talamon All Rights Reserved

 

Drawing in part from the National Gallery's collection—with many newly acquired works—and from lenders in the US, Great Britain, and Canada, the exhibition presents the cultural and political titans of the era spanning 1955–1985, including civil rights leaders, artists, and musicians, as well as everyday people, scenes of daily life, and fashion and commercial photography. Structured around nine thematic sections—including explorations of the self, community, fashion and beauty, the media, and ritual—the exhibition weaves a holistic vision of the period and its cultural impact.

Ralph Arnold

Above This Earth, Games, Games, 1968

Collage and acrylic on canvas

overall: 114.3 x 114.3 cm (45 x 45 in.)

framed: 114.3 x 114.3 x 7.62 cm (45 x 45 x 3 in.)

Collection of Museum of Contemporary Photography 

at Columbia College, Chicago

Photo: P.D. Young / Spektra Imaging

David C. Driskell

Woman with Flowers, 1972

Oil and collage on canvas

overall: 95.3 x 97.8 cm (37 1/2 x 38 1/2 in.)

Art Bridges

© Estate of David C. Driskell, 

Courtesy of DC Moore Gallery, New York

Betye Saar

Let Me Entertain You, 1972

Wooden window frame with cut and pasted printed 

and painted paper, photocopy transparency, 

and wood veneer with found object

overall: 96.52 x 154.94 x 10.16 cm, 4.21 lb. (38 x 61 x 4 in., 1.91 kg)

On loan from National Afro-American Museum 

and Cultural Center, Wilberforce, Ohio

© Betye Saar

Courtesy of the Artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles

Roland Charles

Untitled, 1978, printed 2024

Inkjet print

image: 26 x 38.1 cm (10 1/4 x 15 in.)

sheet: 29.7 x 41.9 cm (11 11/16 x 16 1/2 in.)

mat: 16 x 21 in. / frame: 16 7/8 x 21 7/8 in.

Tom & Ethel Bradley Center, 

California State University, Northridge

Courtesy of the Tom & Ethel Bradley Center 

at California State University, Northridge

Among the works in the first section of the exhibition is a collage by Romare Bearden, 110th Street Harlem Blues (1972). A dynamic mixture of painted paper and photographs, the work illustrates the ongoing vitality of Harlem's community, echoing the vibrancy and social content of the Harlem Renaissance, which Romare Bearden was exposed to in his early life. Moving into the section titled Picturing the Self / Picturing the Movement, self-portraits by Coreen Simpson, Alex Harsley, and Barkley L. Hendricks underscore a central theme of the exhibition: artists asserting their presence within the broader narrative of the movement and the era, along with the importance of self-representation in their art. A highlight of Representing the Community—a section filled with everyday scenes of people at work and at rest—is Ralph Arnold's Soul Box (1969), a mixed-media assemblage of found objects and collage, serving as a time capsule that captures stories of the Black Arts Movement.

Photographs were a crucial tool used to communicate the events of the civil rights movement to a national audience. Artists and news media understood the power of photographs to address inequality and advocate for civil and human rights, and some works in the exhibition are by photojournalists who captured the speeches, marches, and sit-ins that defined the era. A rarely seen 1965 photograph by Frank Dandridge captures Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. watching President Lyndon B. Johnson's televised address following the Selma, Alabama, marches—events that would ultimately lead to the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Depicting Dr. King in a private, domestic moment, the image underscores not just the personal gravity of the moment but the television's growing role in shaping public understanding of the era's historic events. One of several works featured in the In the News section, it reflects how photographers responded to the shifting landscape of news media—from still photography to the rise of television.

The Black Arts Movement was instrumental in reshaping fashion, advertising, and media as tools of self-representation and cultural empowerment. A Kraft Foods advertisement (1977), photographed by Barbara DuMetz and featuring a young Black girl holding her doll, illustrates how the movement prompted advertisers to engage Black audiences more thoughtfully by hiring Black photographers and models in their campaigns. It is among the highlights of the Fashioning the Self section, along with an editorial photograph by Kwame Brathwaite, the photographer who helped coin the "Black is Beautiful" movement, and many depictions of women in beauty shops, showing the importance of these spaces to forming identity and community.

The exhibition's concluding section, Transformations in Art and Culture, reflects a shift in the Black Arts Movement's purpose—from its earlier focus on civil rights to a younger generation's engagement with more historical and conceptual ideas, while still drawing on the movement's visual language. Highlights include multimedia and time-based works by Ulysses Jenkins, Charles Gaines, and Lorna Simpson, which explore new and experimental ways to explore Black identity.

The exhibition is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington.

Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955–1985 - Curators

The exhibition is cocurated by Philip Brookman, consulting curator of the department of photographs at the National Gallery of Art, and Deborah Willis, university professor and chair of the department of photography and imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts and director of the Center for Black Visual Culture at New York University.

Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955–1985 

Exhibition Publication

Book Cover Courtesy of the Yale University Press

Artwork by James E. Hinton

Mahalia Jackson Singing at Rally, Soldier Field, Chicago, 1963

Gelatin silver print

support: 47.63 x 36.83 cm (18 3/4 x 14 1/2 in.)

framed: 63.5 x 53.3 x 3.2 cm (25 x 21 x 1 1/4 in.)

High Museum of Art, Atlanta, 

Purchase with funds from Jan P. and Warren J. Adelson

© James E. Hinton

Published in association with Yale University Press, the fully illustrated catalog accompanying the exhibition examines the vital role photography played in the evolution of the Black Arts Movement, which brought together writers, filmmakers, and artists as they explored ways of using art to advance civil rights and Black self-determination. Edited by Philip Brookman and Deborah Willis, with a preface by Angela Y. Davis and contributions by Makeda Best, Margo Natalie Crawford, Romi Crawford, Cheryl Finley, Sarah Lewis, and Audrey Sands, this book reveals how photographs operated across art, community building, journalism, and political messaging to contribute to the development of a distinctly Black art and culture. Essays by these distinguished scholars focus on topics such as women and the movement, community, activism, and Black photojournalism, and consider the complex connections between American artists and the African diaspora, and the dynamic interchange of Pan-African ideas that propelled the movement.

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART

West Building, 6th St and Constitution Ave NW, Washington, DC 20565

www.nga.gov

Exposition The Gold Emperor from Aventicum du J. Paul Getty Museum - Buste en or de Marc Aurèle découvert à Avenches en 1939

Exposition The Gold Emperor from Aventicum du J. Paul Getty Museum

Buste en or de Marc Aurèle découvert à Avenches en 1939

Jusqu'au 29 janvier 2024

Buste en or de Marc Aurèle découvert à Avenches en 1939 

et conservé par les Site et Musée romains d’Avenches  

Crédit: NVP3D

Le buste en or de Marc Aurèle exposé au sein du 

Getty Villa Museum  dans le cadre de l’exposition 

« The Gold Emperor from Aventicum », mai 2023. 

Crédit : Site et Musée romains d’Avenches

L’histoire du canton de Vaud est riche et les vestiges de cette dernière, conservés au sein des collections cantonales, le sont tout autant. La renommée du patrimoine cantonal dépasse ainsi parfois les frontières nationales et l’exposition temporaire actuelle de la Getty Villa, conçue en collaboration avec les Site et Musée romains d’Avenches, en est un brillant exemple.

La Getty Villa, deuxième site du renommé J. Paul Getty Museum de Los Angeles et dont l’activité se centre sur les arts et cultures de l’Antiquité, a ouvert mercredi 31 mai une nouvelle présentation intitulée The Gold Emperor from Aventicum. L’événement, comme son nom l’indique, est totalement dédié et construit autour du buste en or de l’empereur Marc Aurèle qui régna entre 161 et 180 après J.-C.

La sculpture en or, unique et d’une valeur inestimable, est une des pièces maîtresses des collections patrimoniales cantonales et un bien culturel d’importance nationale. Réalisée à l’aide d’une seule feuille d’or travaillée selon la technique du repoussé, elle pèse un peu plus de 1,5 kilo et fut trouvée à Avenches en 1939 lors des fouilles du sanctuaire du Cigognier. Afin de contextualiser ce chef-d’œuvre, la Getty Villa expose à ses côtés d’autres pièces significatives également trouvées sur sol avenchois, dont quatre inscriptions latines relatives aux élites indigènes romanisées de la ville et aux cultes des divinités locales, ou encore un médaillon de la « mosaïque de vents » trouvée en 1786.

Outre la belle mise en lumière du patrimoine gallo-romain vaudois, de la ville romaine d’Aventicum et plus particulièrement des collections des SMRA, l’occasion est d’importance et doit être soulignée de par sa rareté. En effet, le précieux buste n’a été prêté et exposé depuis sa découverte que cinq fois à l’étranger et cinq fois en Suisse. Le dernier prêt à l’étranger remonte à 2008 et la dernière présentation en Suisse à 2018, lors de l’exposition Cosmos au Palais de Rumine.

Pour Nuria Gorrite, conseillère d’Etat et cheffe du Département de la culture, des infrastructures et des ressources humaines, « cet événement témoigne de la grande valeur des trésors conservés avec soin par les institutions patrimoniales cantonales.  La concrétisation ces prochaines années d’un nouveau Musée romain d’Avenches, permettra enfin aux SMRA de déployer de manière adéquate l’exceptionnel patrimoine dont ils ont la responsabilité et offrira à l’ensemble de la population vaudoise un cadre approprié lui permettant de profiter de son précieux héritage. »

Le buste en or de Marc Aurèle sera exposé jusqu’au 29 janvier 2024 au sein de la Getty Villa à Malibu.

Source : Bureau d'information et de communication de l'État de Vaud, Communiqué de presse, 1er juin 2023

ETAT DE VAUD

www.vd.ch

Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium @ LACMA, Getty Museum, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney...

Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium 
LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art
March 20 - July 31, 2016
J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles 
March 15 - July 31, 2016 
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
September 10, 2016 - January 15, 2017 
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney 
October 28, 2017 - February 4, 2018

Robert Mapplethorpe, Lisa Lyon, 1982 

Gelatin silver print

Promised gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to The J. Paul Getty Trust 

and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art 

© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium, a major retrospective examining the work and career of one of the most influential visual artists of the 20th century. Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium is co-organized by LACMA and the J. Paul Getty Museum. In a historic collaboration, the two institutions will trace the artist’s working methods and materials, presenting the improvisational, experimental aspects of his practice alongside the refined perfection of his prints. The works on display provide new context for understanding the key genres that Mapplethorpe pursued: portraiture, the nude, and still life. His personal connections to sitters, his ability to manage a  successful studio, and his ambition to elevate photography to the status of contemporary art will be demonstrated through rarely seen correspondence, books, and other ephemera, including those from the artist’s archive held by the Getty Research Institute. 

Robert Mapplethorpe, Self-Portrait, 1980 

Gelatin silver print

Promised gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to The J. Paul Getty Trust 

and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art 

© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

LACMA’s presentation (March 20–July 31, 2016) focuses on Mapplethorpe’s working methods, sources, and creative processes—the experimental and performative aspects of his work—while the J. Paul Getty Museum (March 15–July 31, 2016) highlights the artist’s disciplined studio practice, figure studies, and legacy. Between the two museums, more than 300 works by Mapplethorpe will be on view, making this one of the largest-ever presentations of his work. The objects on view in Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium are drawn almost entirely from the landmark joint acquisition of art and archival materials made in 2011 by the J. Paul Getty Trust and LACMA from The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. 

Robert Mapplethorpe, Patti Smith, 1978 

Gelatin silver print

Promised gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to The J. Paul Getty Trust 

and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art 

© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

"4 years ago LACMA and the Getty came together to jointly acquire the art and archives of Robert Mapplethorpe," said Michael Govan, LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director. "It has been an exciting collaboration ever since, as our researchers, conservators, and curators have all spent time with this trove of Mapplethorpe's art. Now, we are glad to present this large-scale joint exhibition to Los Angeles and the world."

“Through this historic collaboration, the LACMA and J. Paul Getty Museum exhibitions offer a new perspective on this influential artist,” said Britt Salvesen, curator and head of the Wallis Annenberg Photography department. “Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium reveals the rich resources of the Mapplethorpe archive, which provides a broader context for the iconic images that brought him fame. Mapplethorpe’s refined style challenged viewers to consider his portraits, flowers, and sexually explicit images as equal expressions of a personal vision. His drive to capture the perfect moment is the core of his art.”

Following its Los Angeles debut, Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium will travel internationally beginning with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in Canada (September 10, 2016–January 15, 2017), the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, (October 28, 2017–February 4, 2018), and another international venue. This will be the first major traveling retrospective in North America since the landmark exhibition The Perfect Moment, organized in 1988 by the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated book, Robert Mapplethorpe: The Photographs, co-published by LACMA and the J. Paul Getty Museum. A comprehensive guide to the artist's work and career, this publication will feature an introduction by cocurators Britt Salvesen and Paul Martineau, five scholarly essays, an illustrated chronology, and a selected exhibition history and bibliography. The J. Paul Getty Museum presentation is curated by Paul Martineau, associate curator of photographs.

Exhibition Organization

The LACMA presentation is organized in five thematic sections. The first gallery establishes Mapplethorpe in the milieu of 1970s and 1980s urban gay culture, depicting himself and his models openly declaring their sexuality through clothing, body adornment, and gesture. The second gallery highlights the work Mapplethorpe created in the late 1960s and early 1970s before he took up photography in earnest. As a student of graphic design at the Pratt Institute, he demonstrated an early facility for draftsmanship and a penchant for geometric composition. He designed jewelry and temporary assemblages using items of clothing. Inspired by Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg, he also experimented with collages and constructions, often incorporating Catholic iconography and appropriated imagery from homosexual periodicals.

Robert Mapplethorpe borrowed a Polaroid camera from a friend in 1970 and, over the course of the next year, honed his vision as a photographer. These early unique images, installed in the third gallery, reveal his observational acuity and his ability to be in the moment. Mapplethorpe was one of his own best subjects, as his many self-portraits attest, and he was open about being a participant in the scenarios he depicted. The fourth gallery focuses on Mapplethorpe’s engagement with the leather and bondage community, his appropriation of pornographic source material, and his exploration of the African American male nude. Additionally, this gallery features ephemera relating to Robert Mapplethorpe’s first breakout exhibitions in New York, including a joint exhibition at The Kitchen and Holly Solomon Gallery in 1977. The fifth gallery presents work from the mid-1980s, when Mapplethorpe was running a successful studio and producing many commissioned portraits. Among his favorite subjects were the artists, musicians, and other performers he first encountered in the downtown art scene in the ’70s. He commented that photography was “the perfect medium for the 70s and 80s, when everything was fast. If I were to make something that took two weeks to do, I’d lose my enthusiasm. It would become an act of labor and the love would be gone.” 

Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium: Exhibition Highlights

Robert Mapplethorpe, Self-portrait (1980)

Robert Mapplethorpe’s turn to photography in the early 1970s coincided with his embrace of New York’s leather subculture, and, throughout the decade, he explored the potential of both forms of expression simultaneously. His 1980 self-portrait as a surly, smoking leatherman captures the hyper masculine posturing that was concomitant with the choice of leather as a fashion statement and as a sexual fetish. Staring defiantly into the camera, Robert Mapplethorpe declares his participation in the leather community. At the same time, the photograph expresses the playful and performative aspects of his studio practice. An element of dress-up and theater is evident in much of his portraiture. This self-portrait shows the artist posing in the role of an archetypal tough-guy—a greaser complete with popped collar, a lit cigarette dangling from his lip, and hair styled into a pompadour. 

Robert Mapplethorpe, Patti Smith (1978)

Robert Mapplethorpe was studying art at the Pratt Institute, in Brooklyn, when he met Patti Smith in spring 1967. Mapplethorpe and Smith spent the next decade in close proximity, inspiring one another's artistic aspirations. Mapplethorpe chose photography as his medium in the early 1970s, whereas Smith gravitated toward poetry and music, and the two collaborated in a number of portrait sessions. Here, Smith poses in the act of cutting her hair, a gesture of defiance. As she explained in a 1975 interview, she didn't "want to walk around New York looking like a folk-singer. I like rock 'n' roll. So I got hundreds of pictures of Keith Richards, and I hung them up and then just took scissors and chopped away until I had a real Rolling Stones haircut." Mapplethorpe captured Smith's androgynous style, composing the photograph to emphasize contrasts of black and white in Smith's features and wardrobe, in the background, and even in the cat.

Robert Mapplethorpe, Lisa Lyon (1982)

Robert Mapplethorpe met Lisa Lyon at a party in 1979, and he would go on to produce nearly 200 photographs of her over the next several years. The first woman to win the International Federation of Body Builders female competition, Lyon had an androgynous, muscular physique that appealed to Mapplethorpe’s interest in the sculptural body. “I’d never seen anybody that looked like that before,” he said. “Once she took her clothes off it was like seeing something from another planet.” The pinnacle of their collaboration came with the release of the book Lady (1983), a series of portraits of Lyon. In this portrait, Mapplethorpe captures Lyon in her work-out attire, a nod to her role as an early advocate for fitness and weight training, which came to be a defining feature of early and mid-1980s American culture. 

Complementary Exhibition

The LACMA exhibition will also be accompanied by the installation Physical: Sex and the Body in the 1980s, which will feature roughly 30 works from the museum’s permanent collection. Placing Robert Mapplethorpe’s work in dialogue with his contemporaries, the installation examines the cultural and artistic upheavals of a pivotal decade in the history of American art and society. Featured artists include Bruce Weber, Kiki Smith, Sarah Charlesworth, Laura Aguilar, and Marina Abramovic, among others. Physical: Sex and the Body is curated by Ryan Linkof, assistant curator of the Wallis Annenberg Photography department.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA, 90036
www.lacma.org

J. Paul Getty Museum
1200 Getty Center Dr, Los Angeles, CA 90049
www.getty.edu

A Revolutionary Project: Cuba from Walker Evans to Now, an Exhibition organized by the Getty Museum, Los Angeles and a Book

A Revolutionary Project: Cuba from Walker Evans to Now 

Exhibition Marks First Showing of Getty’s WALKER EVAN’ s Cuban Photographs; Also on view are Cuban Revolutionary Photographs and Contemporary Work by  VIRGINIA BEAHAN, ALEX HARRIS, and ALEXEY TITARENKO

J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Curator: Judith Keller
May 17 - October 2, 2011 

WALKER EVANS

American, 1903-1975

Stevedore, 1933

Gelatin silver print

Image: 20.1 x 15.1 cm (7 15/16 x 5 15/16 in.)

The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

84.XM.956.243

Cuba’s attempt to forge an independent state with an ambitious set of social goals, all the while moored to powerful political and economic interests, has been a source of fascination for nations, intellectuals, and artists alike. The exhibition A REVOLUTIONARY PROJECT: CUBA FROM WALKER EVANS TO NOW, looks at three critical periods in the island nation’s history as witnessed by photographers before, during, and after the country’s 1959 Revolution. 

A Revolutionary Project juxtaposes Walker Evans's 1933 images from the end of the Gerardo Machado dictatorship with views by contemporary foreign photographers Virginia Beahan (American, b. 1946), Alex Harris (American, b. 1949), and Alexey Titarenko (Russian, b. 1962), who have explored Cuba since the withdrawal of Soviet support in the 1990s. A third section bridging these two eras presents pictures by Cuban photographers who participated in the country’s 1959 Revolution, including Alberto Korda, Perfecto Romero, and Osvaldo Salas.  

“The Museum’s collection of Walker Evans prints is the largest in the U.S., but until now, we have not shown his photographs of Cuba,” explains Judith Keller, senior curator of photographs. “This exhibition allows us the opportunity to showcase this body of work, alongside newer work in the collection.” 

WALKER EVANS IN HAVANA: 1933 

Walker Evans (1903-1975) is one of the photographers most responsible for the way we now imagine American life in the 1930s. His distinctive photographic style, which he declared “transcendent documentary,” was nurtured in New York in the late 1920s and fully formed by his experience in Cuba in 1933.  In the spring of that year, Walker Evans was asked by publisher J. B. Lippincott to produce a body of work about Cuba to accompany a book by the radical journalist Carleton Beals (1893-1979). This book, The Crime of Cuba, would be a scathing indictment of the then-current regime of Cuban President Gerardo Machado. Leaving the country less than two months before Machado was forced out of office, Walker Evans was able to capture Cuba at the start of the revolutionary movement but almost 30 years before the 1959 Revolution. 

During Evans’s time in Cuba, he made substantial strides in his photographic practice. There he worked with different format cameras, large and small, one more deliberate and descriptive, the other more spontaneous and agile. He created both close-up and wide, inclusive compositions that he could then combine in intense sequences to best communicate his response to the poverty, the ferment, and the beauty of his environment. While in Havana, Evans met the American writer, Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), whose acclaimed avant-garde work he knew and admired.  Hemingway's terse narrative style, which he was then applying to his own Harry Morgan stories set in Havana and Key West, no doubt influenced Evans's approach to the subject of Cuba's current political and economic struggles. Evans's photographs also reflect the inspiration of French photographer Eugène Atget's Parisian pictures that Evans critiqued for an arts journal in 1931. The series that comprised Atget's thorough study of "Old Paris" seem to have provided additional motivation for Evans's selection of Havana subjects: the signage of urban storefronts, the abundant street offerings of fresh produce, the decorative balconies of old houses, the many studies of archaic horse-drawn wagons and carriages, and the portraits of women, some of whom appear to be prostitutes. 

1958-1966: REVOLUTION IN CUBA

Machado’s fall from rule in 1933 resulted in a long power struggle that culminated in the country’s 1959 socialist revolution to overthrow dictator Fulgencio Batista, anchoring Cuba to the Soviet bloc for the next thirty years and defining a relationship with the United States that still exists today. Fidel Castro, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, and their new government harnessed photography as a means of keeping the project of the Revolution at the forefront of Cuba’s collective consciousness. As both genuine records of popular insurrection and propagandistic documents used for political purposes, pictures of the Revolution and its aftermath have shaped how both Cubans and Americans understand the significance of that revolutionary moment. Photographs in the second section of the exhibition are drawn from the work of nine Cuban photographers who participated in recording the political context and triumphs of the emerging state in the years surrounding 1959. 

Included in the exhibition is an iconic image of the revolutionary hero Che Guevara by ALBERTO KORDA titled Guerrillero Heroico (March 5, 1960).  One of the world’s most reproduced images, it has been adopted for political causes, appearing on countless numbers of t-shirts, banners, and street art around the globe. The print on view in the exhibition is among the earliest versions of the photograph known to exist.  Made as a press print, it was used as a source to reproduce the image in media outlets a year after Korda photographed Guevara at a rally in Havana. 

Also on display in the exhibition is the well-known revolutionary photograph Patria o Muerte, Cuba (Negative, January 1959; print, 1984) by OSVALDO SALASO, one of Cuba’s most important photographers.  Salas effectively captures and conveys the populist fervor in Cuba shortly after the movement’s triumph with an image of a patriotic sign framed by a celebratory crowd. 

The photographs included in this section of the exhibition are culled from the extensive holdings of Cuban photography assembled by the Austrian collector, CHRISTIAN SKREIN , including a number of recent acquisitions by the Museum. 

CUBA: THE SPECIAL PERIOD - SINCE 1991

After Soviet troops began to withdraw from Cuba in September of 1991, the troubled Cuban economy suffered severe internal shortages, and Fidel Castro declared what is known as the “Special Period” (período especial), marked by food rationing, energy conservation, and a decline of public services.  In the nearly twenty years since the Soviet withdrawal, Cubans have managed to survive through perseverance, the forging of new political relationships, and the easing of socialist systems. This period of transition, which continues today with the recent transfer of power from Fidel Castro to his brother Raúl, has attracted the attention of photographers from around the world who are interested in exploring the relationship between Cuba’s revolutionary past and its uncertain future. 

The final section of the exhibition looks specifically at the work of three CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHERS with diverse approaches to documenting the island in recent decades: Virginia Beahan, Alex Harris, and Alexey Titarenko. 

VIRGINIA BEAHAN 's work concentrates on the landscape’s relationship to history and culture. In 2001, she began a multiyear project on Cuba, photographing its topography in search of remnants of the island’s diverse past. The work resulted in a publication in 2009 called Cuba: Singing with Bright Tears. Virginia Beahan’s Cuba is a land of contradictions, full of disappointments and hope, decay and rejuvenating beauty, simultaneously anchored to the past while looking beyond the present. 

VIRGINIA BEAHAN

American, born 1946

Post-Revolutionary “Hombre Nuevo” (New Man), Las Tunas, 2004

Chromogenic print

Sheet: 86.4 x 104.1 cm (34 x 41 in.)

Wilson Centre for Photography

© Virginia Beahan

EX.2011.4.22

Born and raised in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg), Russia, ALEXEY TITARENKO became fascinated with Cuba in 2003, when he made his first trip to Havana. Titarenko’s goal was to represent the soul of the Cuban capital. In the artist’s photographs, the city is shown with little overt reference to its politics. Instead, Alexey Titarenko describes the conditions of life in the communist country, depicting people persevering amid varying states of ruin. Venturing out of the tourist zones of Havana into the network of dilapidated avenues beyond the old city walls, his images depict a gray metropolis whose inhabitants congregate on the streets to collect food rations, fix long-outmoded cars, and play baseball. 

ALEXEY TITARENKO 

Russian, born 1962

Untitled [Havana], 2006

Gelatin silver print

Image: 40.6 x 40.6 cm (16 x 16 in.)

The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Gift of Alexey Titarenko and Nailya Alexander

© Alexey Titarenko

2010.69.2

A former student of Walker Evans, ALEX HARRIS made several trips to Cuba following the collapse of the eastern bloc and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, developing a powerful body of color work that addresses the country’s cultural fabric during a period of difficult economic circumstances. His photographs focus on portraits of women whose lives are affected by the tourist-fueled sex trade, landscapes made through the windshields of refurbished 1950s American cars, and monuments to the Cuban national hero José Martí. His study was published in the form of a book, The Idea of Cuba, in 2007. Through these distinct vantage points, Harris probed the country’s propensity for ingenuity as it underwent great transition. 

ALEX HARRIS 

American, born 1949

Sol and Cuba, Old Havana, Looking North from Alberto Roja’s 1951 Plymouth, Havana, 

May 23, 1998

Chromogenic print

Image: 76.5 x 95.9 cm (30 1/8 x 37 3/4 in.)

The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Gift of Michael and Jane Wilson, 

Wilson Centre for Photography

© Alex Harris

2010.90.3

A Revolutionary Project is curated by JUDITH KELLER, senior curator of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum, and Brett Abbott, former associate curator of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum and, currently, curator of photography at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. 

WALKER EVANS VISION OF CUBA: THE BOOK

Cover of Walker Evans: Cuba, paperback edition.  

The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. 

More than seventy Walker Evans photographs of Cuba are reprinted in WALKER EVANS:CUBA (Getty Publications, $24.95), available in paperback, along with a provocative essay by noted writer and commentator ANDREI CODRESCU. Together they bring to life what Codrescu has called “the eternal Cuba.” With an introduction of JUDITH KETTER, the curator of the exhibition.

Codrescu argues that what Walker Evans saw in Cuba may not have been what he was supposed to see, not what Beals and his publisher expected him to find. Assigned to lend visual support to impassioned rhetoric, the hallmark of Beals’ prose, Evans instead created beautiful portraits not distinguished by outrage or horror. As Codrescu writes, “[Evans] tried to photograph misery, but shapeliness got in the way.” From movie theaters to shantytowns, coal miners to loiterers, these “irresistibly photogenic” subjects present us with Evans’ own Cuba, not Beals’. Looking closely at individual photographs, Codrescu shows how Evans was just beginning to combine his early formalist aesthetic with the social concerns that would figure so prominently in his later work, especially his renowned images of Depression-era America. 

To capture the spirit of the imagery, Walker Evans: Cuba reproduces, without any cropping, 73 photographs at the full size Evans intended. 

Andrei Codrescu is a poet, novelist, essayist, and commentator for National Public Radio. He is the author of Ay, Cuba! (Picador, 1999) and the founder of Exquisite Corpse: A Journal of Letters and Life. 

Judith Keller is senior curator in the Department of Photographs at the Getty Museum and author of Walker Evans: The Getty Museum Collection (Getty Publications, 1995).

Walker Evans 
Cuba 
Essay by Andrei Codrescu
Introduction by Judith Keller
J. Paul Getty Museum
96 pages, 11 ½ x 10 inches, paperback
73 duotone illustrations
ISBN 978-1-60606-064-3, $24.95 [UK £16.99]
Publication Date:  May 17, 2011

J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM
GETTY CENTER
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

www.getty.edu

German Drawings at J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Exhibition: Spirit of an Age 

Drawings from the Germanic World, 1770-1900 

J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center, Los Angeles

Through June 19, 2011 

CARL BARTH (German, 1787-1853). 

Portrait of Peder Hjort, about 1818-1819. Pencil on wove paper. 

The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Image courtesy of the Museum

Unveiling recent acquisitions that reflect a new area of the Museum's collection, this exhibition features about forty German and Austrian drawings and watercolors. The works reflect  the profound changes—intellectual, social, and political—that the Germanic world underwent from about 1770 to 1900. Events such as the publication of the writings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and the formal unification of Germany contributed to shaping the artist's world. Drawing captured the spirit of the age and evolved quite dramatically over the course of this  period, which is rarely showcased by North American museums.  

Spirit of an Age: Drawings from the Germanic World, 1770-1900 

March 29 - June 19, 2011

J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM 

Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 

www.getty.edu

The Photographs of Paul Strand, Getty Center, Los Angeles

Three Roads Taken: The Photographs of Paul Strand
Getty Center, Los Angeles
May 10 – September 4, 2005

“Three important roads opened for me… My work grew out of a response, first, to trying to understand the new developments in painting; second, a desire to express certain feelings I had about New York where I lived; third… I wanted to see if I could photograph people without their being aware of the camera.” — Paul Strand

One of the country’s most profound photographers, Paul Strand (1890–1976) developed a modernist aesthetic that revealed itself in over half a century’s work with the camera, shaping the development of American photography. The power and impact of his creations are explored in the new exhibition Three Roads Taken: The Photographs of Paul Strand, on view at the Getty Center.

The exhibition features approximately 75 of the 186 Strand prints in the Getty Museum’s collection. The works on view trace the development of Paul Strand’s aesthetic as he sought to express the principles of modern art through photography, convey a sense of place, and create truthful portraits of people. The exhibition presents these three approaches in a chronological survey of the photographer’s work, and includes a continuous screening of Paul Strand’s experimental and influential short film Manhatta, made in 1920 and considered the first avant-garde film in America. 

Three Roads Taken: The Photographs of Paul Strand is part of American Visions, a sequence of four exhibitions featuring works by some of the country’s preeminent practitioners drawn from the Getty Museum’s renowned photographs collection. Together, the exhibitions offer insight into 75 years of photographic innovation, exploring the medium’s versatility as a new creative language used to document reality and as a means for artistic expression. Three Roads Taken will be on view concurrently with The Photographs of Frederick Sommer: A Centennial Tribute, offering a rare opportunity to explore and contrast the almost parallel growth of two very different creative sensibilities. In September, American Visions will focus on photojournalism with Scene of the Crime: Photo by Weegee and Pictures for the Press, featuring sometimes sensational tabloid pictures by the great crime photographer Weegee and memorable news images recording key events in American history from the 1940s to the 1970s.

Paul Strand’s work reflects a particular moment in the history of photography, when a modernist vision was explored, defined, and celebrated. He saw the medium as an expressive fine art, taking inspiration, in particular, from Cézanne’s landscape paintings, which he admired for their ability to unite depth and space. Strand paid careful attention to the structure of his own compositions and the interaction of key elements in his images by exploiting line, shape, and mass. In his still lifes, Strand uses light and shadow to define near-abstract arrangements of shapes and forms. And although more documentary in nature, his portraits and cityscapes, particularly those of New York City, are as equally composed. With its nontraditional perspective and elongated format, one image titled City Hall Park, New York captures the vitality of the modern metropolis while evoking Japanese scrolls.

Paul Strand’s interest in expressing the truth was guided by his search for a sense of humanism in his subjects—something he referred to as the “essential character” of a person. Early in his career, he strove to achieve this by using a camera fitted with a false lens that would allow him to create portraits of people without them being aware of it.

The exhibition includes a continuous screening of Strand’s influential short film Manhatta, made in 1920 with fellow American photographer Charles Sheeler (1883–1965). The film attempts to capture the spirit of New York in seven minutes, tracing a day in the life of the city, beginning with the arrival of the Staten Island Ferry and ending with a sunset on the Hudson River. The sequences in Manhatta display a similar approach to the still photographic work of both Strand and Sheeler, with extreme camera angles used to capture the dynamic character of the city.

PAUL STRAND: BIOGRAPHY

Born in New York in 1890, Paul Strand received his first camera, a Kodak Brownie, when he was 12. He attended the Ethical Culture School in New York from 1907–1909, which shaped Strand’s outlook with its humanist emphasis on creative, critical, and pragmatic approaches to learning. It was here that Strand met and studied with Lewis Hine, whose powerful images of child labor helped guide Strand’s social ideals.

As a young man, Paul Strand was exposed to modern European art at the 1913 Armory Show and at Alfred Stieglitz’s “291” Gallery, where works of art by Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso, and Duchamp were on display for the first time in America. Paul Strand took inspiration from the modernist movement and, in turn, explored its ideas and themes in his photography.

After serving in the army during World War II, Paul Strand experimented with filmmaking, which he practiced in the 1920s through the 1930s. A founding member of Frontier Films, a New York documentary film cooperative, and a director of the Photo League, which was dedicated to social photography in the United States, Strand’s affiliation with both organizations reflected his growing involvement with leftist politics. Finding the political climate inhospitable with the rise of McCarthyism, Paul Strand left the U.S. in 1950 to permanently settle in France, where he worked until his death on March 31, 1976. Throughout his career, Strand applied elements of modernism, realism, and portraiture to all of his works, making for an interesting and diverse body of work that reflects the three roads taken.

RELATED PUBLICATION: In Focus: Paul Strand. Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum

Anne M. Lyden

Featuring significant examples of Paul Strand’s far-reaching and powerful work from a 40-year period, this newest addition to the In Focus series is a perfect accompaniment to the current exhibition Three Roads Taken: The Photographs of Paul Strand.

Three Roads Taken is sponsored by Merrill Lynch.

GETTY CENTER, LOS ANGELES
www.getty.edu

The J. Paul Getty Museum Collection, Los Angeles

THE J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM COLLECTION

The J. Paul Getty Museum focuses on seven areas of collecting: Greek and Roman antiquities; European paintings, drawings, manuscripts, sculpture, and decorative arts; and photographs.  (Note: The Getty Research Institute also collects but with a scholarly audience in mind. The holdings of the Research Library at the Getty Research Institute include primary source materials such as artists’ sketchbooks, original documents, personal notes and letters, prints, and rare books.)

ANTIQUITIES

Antiquities were one of the most important elements of the collection that Mr. Getty built. Over the years, it has grown into one of the finest in this country. It is particularly strong in Greek vases.  Among the highlights is a Chalcidian amphora (storage jar) made in Rhegion (modern Reggio Calabria), one of the south Italian colonies of the Greek city state Chalcis. It depicts accurately a scene from the Iliad, told in brutal clarity, in which the wily Greek heroes Diomedes and Odysseus sneak into the camp of the enemy Thracian King Rhesos while he and his troops are asleep and cut their throats in order to steal their immortal horses.

A group of ten silver drinking vessels from the outer reaches of the empire of Alexander the Great, perhaps as far east as modern Afghanistan, includes a rhyton (a horn shaped vessel with a spout) in the form of a stag, the noblest quarry of hunters. This and others of the group—a lion, two lynxes—are among the most vigorous representations of animals from all of antiquity. Silver like this, a token of wealth and imperial favor in antiquity, was melted down by captors and thieves on such a scale that very little has survived. The Getty also holds pieces of Hellenistic gold jewelry, including a spectacular Macedonian gold wreath—a lavish shimmering crown with leaves and various types of flowers, including myrtle, made of thin sheet gold and inlaid with blue and green glass paste.

A unique Greek statue, the over-life sized cult figure of Aphrodite was acquired by the Getty in 1988. Almost certainly made for a temple in the colonies of Magna Grecia, it combines marble and limestone in an unusual composite image called an “akrolith.” The piece is one of the most complete examples of the most important type of sculpted figure to survive from antiquity.

While Aphrodite is monumental, many of the Getty’s greatest acquisitions have been very small. The bronze dead warrior is one of the most beautiful Greek works in the collection. The complex arched and twisting pose embodies the artist’s interest in exploring the expressive possibilities of his medium. This Greek bronze of the early fifth century eloquently embodies the ideal of kalos thanatos, beauty in death.

Another highlight is the recently acquired Oppenländer collection of ancient glass, nearly 400 objects of exceptional quality and chronological breadth. The group constitutes a comprehensive overview of ancient glass, including statuettes, amulets, inlays, and seals, as well as numerous vessels for eating and drinking, and for holding perfume or ointment.  Although most are Greek or Roman, the collection also comprises pieces of Egyptian, Achaemenid, Minoan, Mycenaean, Etruscan, Byzantine, and Islamic manufacture. The acquisition places the Getty among the nation's leading centers for the display and study of ancient glass.

In 1996, the Getty received the most important group of antiquities since Mr. Getty's gift of his personal collection. More than 300 objects from one of the finest private collections of antiquities—that of Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman of New York—arrived through a combination of gift and purchase. The group included major Greek and Roman marble statues, vases, bronzes, and terracottas that complement the works already in the Getty’s collection. Among the highlights are an Etruscan terracotta antefix (roof ornament) in the form of a Maenad and Satyr dancing, and a magnificent large Greek wine vessel (lebes) of the Hellenistic period, decorated with relief attachments and silver inlays.

The Getty’s collection of antiquities will be housed and exhibited at the Getty Villa when it opens in Winter 2005/2006 on completion of a major construction project.  The Getty Villa in Malibu will serve as an educational center dedicated to the study of the ancient Mediterranean cultures of Greece, Rome, and Etruria.  Together, the Getty Villa and the Getty Center will provide an expanded range of exhibitions and programming in the visual arts. 

PAINTINGS

The Getty’s paintings collection is among the most popular with visitors, featuring famous works such as Van Gogh's Irises. The painter’s view of a flowerbed in the asylum of Saint-Rémy stands as one of the most memorable and personal images of the natural world in all of art. In addition to a small core of Impressionist pictures by Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Sisley, and Renoir, the Getty also houses the famous Christ's Entry into Brussels in 1889 by James Ensor, long recognized as the masterpiece of the artist and one of the key works of the fin de siècle in Europe. This huge painting still shocks. Its bitter political message is conveyed by thoroughly modern distortions and intentional crudity. Other important works from the following decade are Still Life with Apples and Young Italian Woman at a Table, two of the most satisfying mature paintings by Cézanne.

The 19th century is also represented by masters such as Jacques Louis David, the key French painter of the Revolutionary period and its aftermath. His Bonaparte Sisters, a portrait of unusual subtlety, depicts Napoleon’s nieces united in devotion to their exiled father.  Another portrait, The Convalescent, is an exceptional example of Edgar Degas’ achievements in that genre, offering unique insight into an artist better known for his images of ballet dancers and bathers, both subjects also represented by Degas in the Getty collection.  Paintings by the leading Romantics have also been added, notably a gruesome bullfight scene by the Spaniard Francisco Goya, a moor on horseback by Eugène Delacroix, and J. M. W. Turner's rousing seascape of 1844, which presents nature as not only beautiful but also potentially dangerous.

The Getty’s collection of Renaissance paintings is also strong.  In addition to Italian panels by Masaccio, Gentile da Fabriano, and Carpaccio, the Getty also features a rare 14th century triptych of the Virgin Mary and saints by Bernardo Daddi, the principal painter in Florence after Giotto. Rarer still is its spectacular condition. The original gilding and its elaborate tooled decoration are preserved intact, as is the delicate modeling of the saints' costumes.  This is also true of the earliest painting in the collection of the Madonna and Child  by the Florentine Master of Saint Cecilia of around 1295. The Getty’s collection also features The Adoration of the Magi with Saint Anthony Abbot, a rare and masterful example of the International Gothic style that dominated taste across Europe around 1400. The work, by an unknown artist, is one of very few northern European panel paintings of this period in any American museum. 

Sharing the same theme is Andrea Mantegna’s The Adoration of the Magi. Painted on thin linen canvas, the 15th-century picture long ago was mistakenly varnished, causing it to darken and giving it a shiny surface very different from the original matte effect. Now, after painstaking treatment by conservators at the Getty Center, the picture has regained most of the peculiar combination of sophistication and delicacy Mantegna intended us to see. 

Fra Bartolommeo’s The Flight into Egypt, a large panel with life size figures painted in about 1509 in Florence, is a major work of the High Renaissance, and the most important in America outside the East Coast. Another cornerstone of the collection is the famous Renaissance picture Portrait of a Halberdier by Pontormo. Paintings by Fra Angelico, Dosso Dossi, Correggio, and other great painters of the 15th and 16th centuries have also transformed the collection. In particular, one of the most important works in the Getty’s collection is Titian’s Portrait of Alfonso d’Avalos, Marchese del Vasto, a 16th-century masterpiece by the leading exponent of Venetian Renaissance painting. This major picture ranks among the half dozen finest paintings by Titian held in this country. It joins important secular and religious paintings by him in the Getty’s collection and allows the museum’s public to see the full range of this artist.

Spanish paintings have come more slowly into the collection, which can now boast major examples by El Greco, Jusepe de Ribera, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, and others.

Flemish and Dutch pictures of the 17th century are represented by a marvelous late Rembrandt, St. Bartholomew, whose meditative expression is reinforced by complex light and rich brushwork.  The Getty also holds three early Rembrandt panels, of which The Abduction of Europa of 1632 is the best known. Meindert Hobbema’s landscape of about 1665 is a masterpiece of one of the greatest 17th-century Dutch genres.

As the collection has grown, more and more historical and thematic connections between pictures have become obvious. The young Rembrandt's biblical stories enacted by lively small figures, for instance, continue the tradition of Jan Brueghel, among others. Brueghel's The Entry of the Animals into Noah's Ark of 1613 shows a fabulous menagerie being gathered to go aboard the ark.  It not only celebrates the wonder of God's creation but also implicitly boasts of the fact that Dutch and Flemish sailors had mastered the oceans and traveled to the four corners of the world to bring back living marvels. The Getty also holds one of Rubens's most beautiful modelli (smaller preliminary versions of large compositions that were shown to patrons for approval), The Miracles of St. Francis of Paola, which shows a swirl of courtiers, saints, and the afflicted being cured.  Tiepolo's modello for the now destroyed ceiling painting in the church of the Scalzi in Venice is perhaps the Getty’s most important Italian picture of the 18th century.  It is joined by his delightful cabinet picture Alexander the Great and Campaspe in the Studio of Apelles. Other impressive Italian 18th-century pictures include those by Batoni, Bellotto, Canaletto, and other contemporaries.

The Getty’s collection of still lifes is crowned by Still Life with Fish, Vegetables, Gougères, Pots, and Cruets on a Table by the great 18th-century French painter Jean-Simèon Chardin, a celebrated master of the genre. Created at the height of Chardin’s powers, the commanding work ranks among the most significant 18th-century paintings in an America collection.  It is also significant as it is thought to be Chardin’s final signed and dated still-life work. It joins a growing collection of 18th-century French paintings by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Claude-Joseph Vernet, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, and Nicolas Lancret, as well as an important gallery devoted to pastels of the 18th through the 19th centuries including the popular portrait of a Maria Frederike van Reede-Athlone by Jean-Étienne Liotard.

DRAWINGS

Drawing has for centuries been seen as the foundation of artistic endeavor, widely practiced by artists to hone their skill, and used to create preparatory studies for paintings, sculptures and other works of art. Because of the spontaneous nature of this exploratory medium, drawings can trace the thought processes of artists, revealing their techniques and struggles to refine an idea before committing it to final form. As a first step towards a major project, a drawing can be an important artistic document. Beginning in the 1500s, the status of drawings began to change as they came to be collected and recognized as works of art in their own right. 

The Getty’s collection of drawings numbers over 700 sheets, consisting of preparatory studies as well as independent works in various media including chalk, charcoal, crayon, ink, watercolor, metalpoint, and pencil. Many are by the most famous masters, including Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo—three artists for whom the discipline of drawing was the basis of their entire far-reaching production, setting an example that defined the tradition of drawing for four centuries. The Getty’s collection of drawings by Rembrandt, perhaps the finest Dutch draftsman, is particularly strong. The German Renaissance master Albrecht Dürer, another key figure in any drawings collection, is represented at the Getty by 3 drawings, including his well known study of a stag beetle, evidence of Dürer's omnivorous curiosity about the natural world, a characteristic that ran through the art of Germany and the Netherlands for several centuries. 

Drawings of the 18th and 19th centuries have recently been a particular focus for the Getty.  Few Rococo works are as seductive as the Museum’s large study of a woman and child walking in a park by Thomas Gainsborough, who used broad strokes of chalk and pastel to render billowing fabric and foliage.  The great French neoclassical master Jacques Louis David is represented by a group of drawings, including a grim profile portrait David made in prison of André Antoine Bernard, one of his revolutionary comrades during Robespierre’s Reign of Terror. The Getty’s collection also includes works by Francisco de Goya, Jean-François Millet, Édouard Manet, Georges Seurat, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Henri de Toulouse- Lautrec, and Vincent van Gogh, and a sketchbook by Edgar Degas, which features his studies of singers and dancers.

ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPTS 

The establishment of the Getty’s manuscripts department brought a unique resource to Los Angeles, greatly enriching the West Coast’s representation of medieval and Renaissance works. Today, the variety and quality of the collection make it the finest in the United States after that of the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York.  With over 180 objects containing approximately 5,000 miniatures and historiated initials, covering more than 1,000 years and representing nearly every region of Europe, this important repository preserves a formidable art form that has since faded into history.

  

Meticulously crafted by hand and often decorated using gold, silver, lapis lazuli, and other precious materials, the Getty’s manuscripts hold some of the most beautiful works of art by the finest artists of their time.  Private devotional books, missals, scripture, choir books, and secular works ranging from legal texts to histories and romances are all represented.  They were assembled from a core group of over 100 manuscripts, originally owned by the German collector Peter Ludwig, which comprised masterpieces from across Europe, but had particular distinction in German, central European, and Flemish works.  Numerous purchases since 1984 have added French, Italian, Belgian, Greek, Spanish, Dutch, English, and Czech examples to the collection.  In recent years the Getty has developed particular strengths in French and Italian illumination.  Among the early acquisitions were portions of the Hours of Simon de Varie, with miniatures by the greatest French painter of the 15th century, Jean Fouquet.

  

One of the greatest objects in the collection is the Stammheim Missal, a manuscript created in the 1100s for use at the Abbey of Saint Michael at Hildesheim.  Painted in a style characterized by symmetrical compositions offset by alternating color schemes and patterns, the illuminations are dynamic, vibrant, and majestic.  A 16th-century prayer book created by the esteemed Flemish artist Simon Bening for the powerful Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg is one of the collection’s finest works.  Bening produced a sequence of 41 brilliantly colored, full-page miniatures to evoke an intense empathic response as the viewer contemplated Jesus' suffering.  The important late 15th-century Franco Flemish manuscript The Visions of Tondal, with miniatures by Simon Marmion, is another highlight.  The book tells the story of an errant knight who is given a preview of the fate awaiting the wicked after death.  The text gave Marmion the opportunity to explore the landscape of Hell in all its variety and wonder, and he ingeniously summoned up the torments of the inferno in detail.  Also of note is a magnificent copy of Boccaccio's The Fates of Illustrious Men and Women of  about 1415, with more than 50 illustrations by the anonymous French artist known as the Boucicaut Master.  The manuscript depicts the many ways the lives of notable people in history, specifically those who strove for power and glory, often came to unhappy ends.  

Although a broad range of entire codices are held, there are also many beautiful individual miniatures and cuttings, orphans of richly decorated manuscripts that were unbound and dispersed in centuries past.  One example is a brilliant initial with The Conversion of Saint Paul of around 1440–50, attributed to the great Italian painter Pisanello. The artist ingeniously worked into the letter S the episode of Saint Paul being thrown from his horse by God. The man in the tall hat, witnessing the sacred event, is likely the patron of the book that contained the initial. Another highlight is the magnificent Pentecost by Girolamo da Cremona of about 1470.  The work is as stately and ample as a Bellini altarpiece of the same era, though a tiny fraction of the size.

The Getty’s holdings of medieval and Renaissance illumination continue to be a key area for growth due to their importance and originality as works of art, which also provide exceptionally rich insights into medieval and Renaissance culture.  Finally, they offer a vital link between the Getty’s distinguished holdings in Greek and Roman antiquities and its European paintings from the Renaissance onward.

SCULPTURE AND DECORATIVE ARTS

Sculpture

The Getty’s collection of sculpture concentrates on works after about 1450.  Highlights include a Renaissance bronze bust of a young man by the Mantuan artist Antico; a devotional statue of the Virgin and Child by Andrea Briosco, known as Riccio, made around 1520; and a previously unknown work, a marble bust of the infant Saint Cyricus by Francesco Laurana, the leading sculptor of Naples in the late 15th century.  

The great strength of the sculpture collection is in works made by later Renaissance artists, especially in bronze. A Satyr by the great sculptor and autobiographer, Benvenuto Cellini, is complex in pose and alive with animal vigor.  Giambologna's life size female nude is a youthful masterpiece, and not only a virtuoso performance of marble carving, but also the creation of a pose of such complexity that it served as a challenge and prototype for painters and other sculptors.  The Getty’s collection is rich in such examples, for instance, a marvelous bronze juggler by Giambologna's best Northern follower, Adriaen de Vries, which embodies the sculptor’s taste for expression in a figure both balanced and agile. A similar approach is seen in a large bronze Mercury by Johan Gregor van der Schardt, de Vries's Flemish contemporary, that has a striking air of poise and refined grace.

One of the Getty’s most exciting purchases was the marble Boy with a Dragon, carved by the precocious Gianlorenzo Bernini who was around the age of 16 and soon to become the presiding genius of sculpture and architecture in Rome. The cheeky little boy, maybe an infant Hercules, defeats a dragon with as much ease as the boy sculptor demonstrates in mastering a difficult pose and undercutting the brittle marble.

The collection also includes a fine group of French sculptures in marble and bronze from the mid 16th through the 19th century. The most impressive ensemble is a pair of large bronze groups by François Girardon and Gaspard Marsy, both acquired with pedestals made by the Boulle workshop. There are also French terracottas, such as Clodion's amusing exercise in classicizing eroticism, in which a Vestal Virgin urges a hesitant girl toward a leering statue of Pan, whose lower parts are discreetly concealed by smoke from a censer.

There is an important group of sculpted portraits, not only from France but also from Italy, Holland, England, and Germany.  One of the most memorable is Jean-Antoine Houdon’s bust of Marie-Sébastien-Charles-François Fontaine de Biré, the moving image of a dignified government official.  Memorable in a different way is the bust portrait of an unknown man, carved in 1758 by the English sculptor Francis Harwood.  The lustrous black stone mimics the skin of the man, who is portrayed with a resolute intelligence and seriousness that contrasts sharply with the racial stereotype so common at the time.

Decorative Arts

In 1952, Mr. Getty purchased the famous double desk by Bernard II van Risenburgh, a Rococo masterpiece.  By 1954, his collection of decorative arts, which consisted of around 30 pieces of French furniture, was among the finest in the country.  Today, the collection of decorative arts has grown and expanded.  It is more coherent than the others, partly because it covers the shortest period of time and does so in greater depth and with greater consistent excellence.

At the Getty Center, the decorative arts collection occupies a suite of 14 galleries designed by Thierry Despont, in association with architect Richard Meier, that form a kind of museum-within-a-museum, incorporating original paneled rooms with other rooms designed in various period styles that suggest the contexts from which the pieces come.

Over the years, the Museum has made something of a specialty of the work of André-Charles Boulle and his Parisian atelier, which originated in the late 17th century. The Getty’s 18 pieces attributed to this genius—coffers, tables, cabinets, candle stands, and others—are extraordinary for their intricate marquetry, using veneers of ebony, brass, tortoiseshell, pewter, horn, and ivory, as well as many exotic woods. So naturalistic are the designs that individual flowers can be identified.

Since Mr. Getty's death, emphasis has been placed on furniture and objects of the Neoclassical period. These pieces demonstrate the diffusion of a newer, more severe and architectural style, often with motifs derived from newly excavated Roman houses at Pompeii and Herculaneum.  One of the major examples is the rolltop desk of about 1785 by the German David Roentgen; another is from a group of pieces by the Parisian Martin Carlin decorated with porcelain plaques from the Sèvres manufactory. 

The Getty’s holdings of decorative objects such as clocks, wall lights, candelabra, and hardstone vases has also increased.  Among the most intriguing examples are a few 18th-century scientific instruments, including a spectacular bronze compound microscope in working condition, complete with natural specimens on slides and a carrying case of tooled leather lined with velvet.

Porcelain has been added as well.  Highlights include two rare Sèvres vases in the shape of eggs, their blue bodies strewn with gilded dots.  Oriental ceramics with Parisian gilt-bronze mounts have been a specialty of the collection—Japanese and Chinese pieces commissioned in Asia and brought from Amsterdam by Paris dealers to be fitted with bronze and silver.  The resulting hybrid objects are fascinating evidence of the cultural contacts between Asia and the West.  Tapestries are another strong point.  The collection includes a splendid Emperor of China series.

Part of the appeal of all this material lies not only in its astonishing craftsmanship but also in its ability to suggest to visitors how a class of cultivated and wealthy people lived in the past.  This is especially true of the Getty’s four paneled rooms.  These include a neoclassical room of carved and painted decorations designed by Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, the leading architect in late 18th century Paris. 

The collection has also grown to include furniture and other works of decorative arts made outside France.  Included are 28 Italian majolica objects of the Renaissance—rare, well preserved pieces of unusual beauty.  Majolica gives us an interesting link to the ancient tradition of Greek vase painting so well represented at the Getty, and to the ceramics of France and Germany of the 18th-century. 

One of the latest and most exciting additions to this collection is a group of over 50 pieces of rare and beautiful stained glass spanning the 13th to the 16th century.  The Getty is now one of the largest repositories of stained glass in the country, with large works created for Gothic churches and cloisters, as well as lively heraldic panels made for houses, town halls, and other secular settings.

PHOTOGRAPHS

The Getty’s photographs collection began in 1984 with a series of major acquisitions, from the holdings of two of the most notable American collectors of their time—Samuel Wagstaff and Arnold Crane—as well as choice parts of André and Marie Thérèse Jammes's  distinguished holding of French photographs, the collections of Bruno Bischofberger, and the joint holding of Volker Kahmen and George Heusch. In a short period, the Getty had assembled some 26,000 master photographs and thousands more in albums and books.

The initial works collected emphasized the earlier eras of photography and spanned the simultaneous development of the medium in England and France, from its birth in the 1830s through the 1860s. Included are major groups by such key European pioneers as William Henry Fox Talbot, Hippolyte Bayard, Gustave Le Gray, Nadar, Roger Fenton, and Julia Margaret Cameron.  The Getty also holds rare daguerreotypes made by the French photographic pioneer Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey.  These include the earliest surviving photograph of the Parthenon and other ancient monuments in Greece, Italy, and the Holy Land.  There are also American photographers represented in depth: daguerreotypes by Southworth and Hawes, early views of post Gold Rush California by Carleton Watkins, and Civil War scenes by Mathew Brady's assistants Timothy O'Sullivan and Alexander Gardner.

Photography represented the Getty Museum's debut in collecting 20th-century art as well. Among European and American modern masters in the collection are 226 works by Man Ray, 181 by Alfred Stieglitz, 147 by Paul Strand, 104 by László Moholy Nagy, 173 by Albert Renger Patzsch, 1,192 by Walker Evans, and about 1,200 works by August Sander.  More recent additions include photographs by the great French modernist Eugène Atget, including examples from 1917 to 1925, the rarest and most sought-after period of the artist’s career.  Known for his beguilingly ordinary street scenes of Paris, Atget’s work complements the Getty’s collection of photographs of old Paris by Charles Marville.

Often the greatest finds, however, were single pictures. The River Scene of 1858 by Camille Silvy, for instance, was a famous image in its time, a perfectly composed view of a river fully in the spirit of contemporary French paintings, yet exact in a way that only the new art of photography could be. A key 1996 purchase—a  daguerreotype view by John Plumbe, Jr., of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., made in 1846 before the present day Senate and House wings were added—is the finest and earliest photograph of this building in existence. In 2001 the Museum was fortunate to be able to acquire a splendid, highly detailed and unique photograph by Roger Fenton of the interior of the billiard room at Mentmore, a Rothschild house in Buckinghamshire.  The most important acquisition of 2004 was the best surviving of two known prints of Carleton Watkins’s Agassiz Rock, Yosemite, of about 1880, an acquisition that complements in important the existing collection of more than 300 Watkins photographs. 

THE J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM
1200 Getty Center Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90049
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