Happy new year!

Alfredo Boulton: Looking at Venezuela (1928–1978)

August 29, 2023–January 7, 2024

Getty Center, Research Institute

When the intellectual Alfredo Boulton began remodeling his vacation house on a Venezuelan island in the early 1950s, the 18th-century mansion was in a state of decay. But with an obsessive eye, Boulton brought together pre-Hispanic and colonial cultural traditions with the latest avant-garde styles in modern art and architecture—and then invited artists, intellectuals, and socialites for sumptuous dinners and lively nights.

Step into Boulton’s Pampatar house
 

Explore the exhibition

Cocktails With Curator: Optical Illusions

Saturday, January 13, 2024, 5:00 pm–7:00 pm
Getty Center, Ada Louise Huxtable Lecture Hall

Join us for a night of wonderment as GRI curators Isotta Poggi and Frances Terpak unveil rare material from special collections and share insights into whimsical uses of technology throughout history. The viewing introduces how early gadgets like celestial navigation, mirrors, and lenses were used to create visual puzzles, magic lanterns, and anamorphosis to entice curiosity. The evening is paired with themed cocktails and appetizers to surprise and delight.

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Intimate Addresses: Recording Artists Live

Saturday, January 24, 2024, 5:00 pm–7:00 pm
Getty Center, Museum Lecture Hall

Getty’s archives are filled with artists’ letters that reveal their inner lives. What was it like to be Frida Kahlo or Marcel Duchamp? How did they relate to their friends, lovers, colleagues, and gallerists? Join GRI curator Pietro Rigolo and Tess Taylor, host of Getty’s podcast Recording Artists: Intimate Addresses for a conversation and live podcast recording about the making of the series, what was discovered through the letters, and the artists’ stories and letters that didn’t make the cut.

The conversation will be followed by a reception with postcard writing stations to send your own artists’ letters.

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Getty Graduate Symposium 2024

Friday, February 2, 2024, 3:00 pm
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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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 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

Eva Gonzalès, Études littéraires sur le Moyen Âge

French Impressionist painter Eva Gonzalès (1849–1883), the daughter of a writer, was introduced to literary circles in Paris from an early age. In this signed manuscript, newly digitized by the GRI, she writes about different topics in medieval literature during the reign of Charlemagne, scholasticism, allegorical novels, chroniclers, bardic poetry, mystery plays, and the art of the troubadours.

Find the record in the library catalog

Persian Cultures of Power

Edited by Matthew P. Canepa

This volume is a cutting-edge analysis of 2,500 years of Persian visual, architectural, and material cultures of power and their role in connecting the world. Since the rise of the Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BCE), Iranian visual and political cultures connected an ever-wider swath of Afro-Eurasia over the next two millennia, exerting influence at key historical junctures. This book provides the first critical exploration of the role Persian cultures played in articulating the myriad ways power was expressed across Afro-Eurasia between the sixth century BCE and the nineteenth century CE.

Buy the book

The Getty Library will be closed December 25–January 7. Requests received during this time will be processed beginning January 8. To prepare for your visit, please consult the Library’s Policies.