A sublime chanteuse; use our art for free; what is polychromy?

Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Carmen McRae

Carmen McRae sang jazz standards like you’ve never heard them before. Just listen to “I Only Have Eyes for You,” a song you’ve probably heard on Black Mirror, Euphoria, or The Crown and sung by Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and other artists. Over her 50-year career, she released over 70 albums and was nominated for seven Grammy awards.

What a leading music critic thought of McRae, plus our curated playlist

Ghost in the machine

Seeing the words “computer” and “art” next to each other still makes some people bristle. Given our anxieties about things like ChatGPT and deepfakes, that’s understandable; but art’s relationship with technology has a long history. 

How humans throughout history have used new technologies to create art

Experience a Botticelli

Sandro Botticelli’s Madonna of the Magnificat is now on view at the Getty Center in gallery N202. The painting is on loan from a private collector for six months. Six workshop replicas and variants of the painting are known today, but only this version is thought to have been painted almost entirely by Botticelli himself. We are thrilled to have the opportunity to display this celebrated work.

Make a free reservation to the Getty Center

Grete Stern’s weird world of dreams

Amidst the odd objects found in the Getty Research Institute’s archives is a series of illustrations of women in vexatious situations: walking along a beach covered in nails, dangling from a rope, clambering up a rocky cliffside, falling out of the sky. For photographer Grete Stern, images like these were all part of a day’s work. Stern studied photography in her native Germany and took courses at the influential Bauhaus before immigrating to Buenos Aires in the mid-1930s to escape Nazi persecution.

A peek into the female subconscious

When Apollo had purple hair

Walk through the galleries at the Getty Villa, and most of the sculptures look like some shade of white. But sometimes, that’s just because stone or terracotta lasts longer than the added polychromy. What is polychromy, you ask? Watch Jessie’s newest Becoming Artsy video and find out. 

Polychromy: tacky or delightful?

Download, edit, and print your favorite Getty artwork for free

Nearly 88,000 images of artworks from the Getty Museum’s collection are now available for free dowload on its Open Content database under Creative Commons Zero (CC0). You can edit and repurpose high resolution images of you favorite Getty artworks without any legal restrictions. Add a print of your favorite Dutch still life to your gallery wall or create a shower curtain using Irises by Van Gogh. Really!

Why are we doing this?

SONOROUS PRESENT: Songs of Border Crossings, Sunrises, and Mournings

Saturday, March 16, 6:00 pm
Sunday, March 17, 3:00 pm
Getty Center, Harold M. Williams Auditorium

Sounds of LA 2024 launches with an exclusive performance from Alex E. Chávez’s forthcoming album SONOROUS PRESENT. Enjoy a never-before-heard blend of Mexican and Latin American folk elements with progressive jazz, poetry, dance, field recordings, and ethnographic songwriting that crosses America’s musical and cultural borderlands.

Learn more and get free tickets

When a window frames a view just so, turning it into a work of art

From Get Inspired subscriber Kelly Costello Pekar:

“I took this photo at Drottningholm Palace near Stockholm, Sweden, on an iPhone 8. The windows were propped open during our tour, framing wonderful views.”

Have a window-framed scene “hanging” on your wall? Did you snap one somewhere else? Send us the photo! Include your name, camera used, location, and anything else you’d like to share. stories@getty.edu