A new exhibition rooted in friendship

First Came a Friendship: Sidney B. Felsen and the Artists at Gemini G.E.L.

February 20, 2024–July 7, 2024

Getty Center, Research Institute

The photographs of Sidney B. Felsen (b. 1924) eloquently document the remarkable history of Gemini G.E.L, the Los Angeles artist’s workshop and publisher of limited-edition prints and sculpture, founded in 1966. They capture with great empathy the joy and demands of the creative process, record the many close friendships fostered with artists who collaborated at Gemini, and bear witness to the evolving Los Angeles art scene.

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Getty Graduate Symposium 2024

Friday, February 2, 2024, 9:45 am
Getty Center, Museum Lecture Hall

The GRI hosts the sixth annual Getty Graduate Symposium, which showcases the work of emerging scholars from art history graduate programs across California. Organized into three sessions, the symposium includes nine individual presentations, panel discussions moderated by faculty mentors, and Q&A sessions with the audience.
 

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Screening: Robert Irwin: A Desert of Pure Feeling

Saturday, February 10, 2024, 2 pm

Getty Center, Harold M. Williams Auditorium
 

This feature length documentary Robert Irwin: A Desert of Pure Feeling (2022, dir. Jennifer Lane, 93 minutes), chronicles the life and times of internationally celebrated artist Robert Irwin (1928–2023), creator of Getty’s 134,000 square foot Central Garden and whose archive is part of the GRI’s holdings. Brian Houck, head of Getty Grounds and Gardens, and Jackie Flor, Getty horticulturist, introduce the film and share insights into caretaking for Irwin’s living work of art. Following the program, enjoy a light reception and take a stroll through the Central Garden.
 

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Conserving Photographs with the Johnson Publishing Company Archive

Are you a student at an HBCU and interested in careers in preserving cultural heritage? Apply for this summer workshop in Chicago to learn about photograph conservation and allied fields, working with materials from the iconic Johnson Publishing Company Archive.

Deadline to apply is February 9.

Learn more and apply

Cinema posters from the Merrill C. Berman Collection, circa 1962–2000

Posters from the Merrill C. Berman collection of 20th-century graphic design encompass avant-garde movements from Dada, Bauhaus, Futurism, New Objectivity, Constructivism, and the de Stijl movement to Japanese post-war graphic design and American modernism. Originally gathered by filmmaker and journalist Jonas Mekas (1922–2019), this small group of posters from the Merrill C. Berman collection focus on queer and experimental cinema, as well as feature film screenings at institutions founded by Mekas, such as the Film-Makers’ Cinematheque and Anthology Film Archives.
 

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Collecting Mesoamerican Art before 1940: A New World of Latin American Antiquities

Edited by Andrew D. Turner and Megan E. O’Neill

This book traces the fascinating history of how and why ancient Mesoamerican objects have been collected. It begins with the pre-Hispanic antiquities that first entered European collections in the sixteenth century as gifts or seizures, continues through the rise of systematic collecting in Europe and the Americas during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and ends in 1940—the start of Europe’s art market collapse at the outbreak of World War II and the coinciding genesis of the large-scale art market for pre-Hispanic antiquities in the United States.

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