The Art of Printmaking, Artists’ Things, Dawoud Bey

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

Sidney Felsen began taking photos of artists at Gemini in the late ’60s, and would chronicle over a half century of printmakers who became close friends. In the familial, intimate space of the print shop, he documented a community where artists were, and still are, encouraged to experiment freely. These photographs record the energy and dedication of the artists and the power of their collaborations with master printers and fabricators.

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Behind the Scenes: Printmaking with Gemini G.E.L.

Saturday, March 23, 2024, 11 am and 2 pm

Gemini G.E.L. 8365 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles, CA

Join us for a behind-the-scenes look at Gemini G.E.L. printers at work. During the session, attendees will learn about printmaking techniques and participate in making a print. Gemini G.E.L. is an artists’ workshop and publisher of limited edition prints and sculptures. Founded in 1966, Gemini has collaborated with renowned artists including Tacita Dean, Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein, Julie Mehretu, Robert Rauschenberg, Analia Saban, and Richard Serra, who embrace broad-ranging visual languages and innovative technical approaches.
 

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On Elegy: Dawoud Bey and LeRonn P. Brooks in Dialogue

Saturday, March 2, 2024, 4 pm

Arcana Books, 8675 Washington Boulevard, Culver City, CA

On the occasion of the landmark exhibition and publication, Elegy, renowned American artist Dawoud Bey and Getty curator and scholar Dr. LeRonn P. Brooks discuss how Bey has reimagined photography’s capacity for considering and evoking the now invisible history of the Black presence in the American landscape.
 

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Huasteca Mapping Project

Although the Huasteca along the Gulf of Mexico was a densely populated, multiethnic region during pre-Hispanic times, it has often been thought of as peripheral to Mesoamerica. But magnificent stone sculptures and distinctive ceramics indicate that it was a hub of artistic innovation and cultural exchange.

Huastec archaeology is underfunded, and modern developments along the coast severely endanger the area’s ancient heritage. In a new research project, Getty experts and archaeologists at partner institutions will leverage new technologies to produce new maps of settlements and to conduct material analysis of Huastec artworks.
 

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Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery video collection

The Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (LAMAG) was established in 1954 under the Department of Cultural Affairs of the City of Los Angeles. LAMAG exhibits art by emerging and underrepresented artists from Los Angeles and Southern California. The video collection includes artworks that have been exhibited at the gallery, and documentaries screened as part of the programming. These videotapes are primarily from the 1980s, representing the multiple communities within Los Angeles. Additionally, the collection includes documentation of performances, events, and exhibitions at LAMAG.
 

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Mary Kelly’s Ephemeral Materials

To make works that explore motherhood, artist Mary Kelly used materials like shells, seeds, dried dandelions, and cotton swabs. The Getty has all these preparatory and test materials as part of Kelly’s archive. This poses a question for conservators: how to preserve organic and ephemeral materials?

This fall, Kelly joined a group of conservators, curators, archivists, scientists, and artists at the Getty Research Institute to discuss her artistic process and possible ways to display and preserve her works.

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Artists’ Things: Rediscovering Lost Property from Eighteenth-Century France

Katie Scott and Hannah Williams

Artists are makers of things, yet we rarely consider the everyday items they own. This innovative book looks at objects that once belonged to artists, revealing not only the fabric of the eighteenth-century art world in France but also unfamiliar—and sometimes unexpected—insights into the individuals who populated it, including Jean-Antoine Watteau, François Boucher, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, and Elisabeth Vigée-LeBrun.

From the curious to the mundane, from the useful to the symbolic, these items have one thing in common: they have all been eclipsed from historical view. In this fascinating book, the authors engage with fundamental historical debates about production, consumption, and sociability through the lens of material goods owned by artists.

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Remembering Kurt Forster

Kurt Forster, founding director of the Getty Research Institute, died on January 6 at the age of 89. Tapped to develop a research arm for the J. Paul Getty Trust in 1984, Forster left his lasting intellectual mark on the GRI. Reflecting on this step in his long and distinguished career as a professor, author, and curator, Forster considered the eight years he spent establishing it “one of the most exciting experiments in the recent history of American scholarship.”
 

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