Workshop instructor and photographs conservator, Ronel Namde, holds a photo of Angela Davis from the Johnson Publishing Company archive.
This month we continue to dig into all things codex, find out the story behind a global architectural landmark, and learn how to conserve old photographs.
EXHIBITION
Alfredo Boulton: Looking at Venezuela (1928–1978)
August 29, 2023–January 7, 2024
Getty Center
Alfredo Boulton was one of the most important intellectuals of the 20th century in Latin America and a seminal photographer of the modern period. Through his body of work, Boulton generated a new cultural definition of Venezuela. This exhibition explores Boulton’s photography, his relationships with modern artists, and his influence on the formalization of art history in his country.
Quinta Barutaima, Los Guayabitos, no. 53, 1947, Alfredo Boulton. Partial donation of the Alberto Vollmer Foundation. Getty Research Institute, 2021.M.1
NEW DIGITAL EXHIBITION
The Story of the Walt Disney Concert Hall
From the moment the Walt Disney Concert Hall emerged in downtown LA—a breathtaking assemblage of undulating, shining curves—it became an internationally recognized architectural landmark. But just how did Frank Gehry and his team design this monument to music? A new digital exhibition, Sculpting Harmony, tells this fascinating story through interviews with Gehry, materials from his archive at Getty, and much more.
The organ, a sculptural ensemble of 6,134 pipes, crowns the symmetrical interior of the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Photo: Mike Kelley / @mpkelley
EVENTS
Site & Sounds: The Florentine Codex at the Getty Center
Saturday, November 4, 2023, 4 pm Walt Disney Concert Hall
To celebrate the launch of the Digital Florentine Codex, join us for an outdoor concert debuting an original score by musician Lu Coy. Known for their mastery of woodwinds, electronics and agile vocals, Coy mines inspiration from ancient texts, stories, and musical traditions, guiding audiences through splendid architectures of ancestral memory. Musical group Xochi Cuicatl and Chris Garcia will open the performance with sound and instruments of Mesoamerica.
Introducing the performances, LAist reporter Adolfo Guzman-Lopez and Getty Research Institute researcher Kim Richter will discuss the historical resonances of the Florentine Codex in Southern California, the ancestral homeland of the Gabrieleño/Tongva, Chumash, and Tataviam peoples, and as well as the Codex’s impact on numerous Indigenous groups throughout the Americas.
Lu Coy with Vriesea, 2018. Photograph by Phuc Le. Courtesy the artist
Curatorial Conversation: Ed Ruscha’s Streets of Los Angeles
Saturday, November 7, 2023, 4 pm Online
Since 1965, Ed Ruscha has extensively photographed various streets in Los Angeles. Now comprising over 750,000 images, the resulting project offers a compelling record of the city’s metamorphosis and serves as a resource for scholars studying a range of subjects, from Ruscha’s design training to demographic, architectural, and cultural changes across decades.
In conjunction with ED RUSCHA / NOW THEN, join Getty Research Institute senior research specialist Zanna Gilbert, art historian Jennifer Quick, and cultural historians Eric Avila and Josh Kun for a live online conversation about how Ruscha’s unique archive captures his creative process and celebrates the layered history of Los Angeles.
This is a members-only event. To register, enter “Getty” under “Member ID.”
Going Viral in the Renaissance featuring Stephanie Porras
Saturday, December 2, 2023, from 4 pm – 5:30 pm The Getty Center
What do today’s TikTok dances and Renaissance prints have in common? In this talk, Stephanie Porras describes how early modern prints invited repetition and emulation, taking advantage of new media technologies and emerging global infrastructures long before the invention of the Internet. Examining how prints and other artworks were used as models by artists working across the early modern world, Porras reconstructs how such images were copied and, in doing so, challenges assumptions about artistic invention in Renaissance art. The talk will be followed by a wine and cheese reception.
Details from St. Michael the Archangel, from left to right: Hieronymus Wierix after Maerten de Vos, St Michael the Archangel, 1584, engraving published by Adriaen Huybrechts and Hieronymus Wierix. London, British Museum; Cristóbal Vela Cobo, St Michael the Archangel, ca. 1631, oil on canvas. Museo de Bellas Artes, Cordoba; Hispano-Philippine, St Michael the Archangel, ca. 1630, ivory with polychromy and gilding. Mexico City, Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe; Limeño, St Michael the archangel with donor, ca. 1630, oil on canvas. Lima, San Pedro
NEW FOR RESEARCHERS
Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital
The 16-century Florentine Codex, housed in Florence, Italy, is regarded as the most reliable early colonial source of information about central Mexican Nahua culture, Mexica life, and the conquest of Mexico (1519–1521). Each manuscript page features exquisite images and two columns of writing: the primary Nahuatl text and its Spanish interpretation. With the newly released digital edition—the Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, complete with Nahuatl and Spanish transcriptions, English and Spanish translations, and searchable texts and images—you can enjoy unprecedented access to this important manuscript.
Weaver working with a backstrap loom in Book 10 of the Florentine Codex. Sahagún, Bernardino de, Antonio Valeriano, Alonso Vegerano, Martín Jacobita, Pedro de San Buenaventura, Diego de Grado, Bonifacio Maximiliano, Mateo Severino, et al. Historia general [universal] de las cosas de Nueva España. 1577. Ms. Mediceo Palatino 220, fol. 129v (detail). Courtesy of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence, and by permission of MiBACT
The Fate of Antiquities in the Nazi Era
How did antiquities change hands during the precarious Nazi period? In a free special issue of RIHA Journal, a collaboration between Getty and the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, scholars examine the history of ancient art under the Nazi regime.
Unknown, Luna, Roman, 100 B.C.–A.D. 100. J. Paul Getty Museum, 96.AB.38.
Pancho Fierro, Album of watercolors, 1850s-1860s
The album contains watercolors by the Afro-Peruvian artist Pancho Fierro (1809-1879), one of the most important proponents of costumbrismo in South America, and by other unidentified artists who were also interested in depicting local everyday life and costumes. The illegitimate son of an enslaved servant, Fierro was an extremely successful self-taught artist and became well known for his watercolors of life in Lima. The watercolors in this album include representations of tapadas or veiled women, as well as members of the clergy, policemen, military members, street vendors, musicians, and Afro-Peruvians performing the Zamacueca dance.
Pancho Fierro, Festivities in Peru, watercolor, 1850s-1860s. Getty Research Institute, 2022.M.2
NEW ACQUISITION
Getty Acquires Prominent Los Angeles-Based Gallery Archive
The Daniel Weinberg Gallery, fostering artists from the 1970s to the early 2000s, was one of the main commercial galleries to bring a stream of blue-chip offerings to Los Angeles, cementing the reputation of Los Angeles as a global art market. The archive, adding to the GRI’s collection of gallery archives, includes business records, correspondence, extensive photographic documentation as well as exhibition cards.
Learning the Art of Conservation with the Johnson Publishing Company Archive
Go behind the scenes at a hands-on photo conservation workshop just for students of historically Black colleges and universities. Participants viewed materials from the Johnson Publishing Company archive—photographs from Jet and Ebony magazines—and then created documentation for the archive, rehoused slides, and cleaned and repaired photographs.
Workshop instructor and photographs conservator, Ronel Namde, holds a photo of Angela Davis from the Johnson Publishing Company archive.
Frequently Asked Art Questions: What is a Codex?
The massive 16th-century Florentine Codex is considered a masterpiece of Mesoamerican history and culture. But what is a codex? In this new episode of Frequently Asked Art Questions, host Jessie Hendricks finds out.
Butterfly-and Jaguar-Fish in Book 11 of the Florentine Codex (“On Earthly Things”). Ms. Mediceo Palatino 220, 1577, fols. 62v and 63. Courtesy of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence, and by permission of MiBACT
PUBLICATIONS
Art History and Anthropology: Modern Encounters, 1870–1970
Edited by Peter Probst and Joseph Imorde
While today we are experiencing a revival of world art and the so-called global turn of art history, encounters between art historians and anthropologists remain rare. Even after a century and a half of interactions between these epistemologies, a skeptical distance prevails with respect to the disciplinary other. This volume is a timely exploration of the roots of this complex dialogue, as it emerged worldwide in the colonial and early postcolonial periods, between 1870 and 1970. Entering the current debates on decolonizing the past, this collection of essays prompts reflection on future relations between these two fields.
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