The Art of Repair, Julie Mehretu, Getty Research Journal Open Access

Annual Theme: Repair

The Scholars Program welcomes interested scholars and professionals to learn more about our 2025–26 annual theme and to apply when applications go live on July 1, 2024.

Situated between creation and destruction, the act of repair can be deeply transformative, with the potential to heal, alter, and renew the material environment. Beyond such physical interventions, art and sites of commemoration are often mobilized to heal a fractured social fabric. The issue of repair has deep bearing for the arts, conceived in the broadest sense, and especially for institutions that aim to preserve and share global cultural heritage.

Deadline for GRI applications for the 2025–26 year is October 1, 2024.

Learn more and how to apply

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
 

First Came a Friendship: Sidney B. Felsen and the Artists at Gemini G.E.L. illustrates the rich ties between Gemini and the GRI’s collection and highlights the far-reaching research potential of the Felsen archive of photography. “Felsen’s photographs are born of an intimacy with his subjects,” says Naoko Takahatake, curator of the exhibition. “They offer rare insights into five decades of collaborations between artists, printers, and fabricators. They also celebrate the bonds of friendship that shaped Gemini to become more than a workshop and publisher, but a creative community where art is embraced as a way of life.
 

Explore the archive

Explore the exhibition

Julie Mehretu and Gemini G.E.L.

Saturday, June 8, 2024, 4–5 pm
Getty Center, Harold M. Williams Auditorium

Join us for a conversation with Julie Mehretu, moderated by curator Naoko Takahatake, that will explore the central place of printmaking in Mehretu’s creative practice, including reflections on the artist’s work at Gemini G.E.L., and her friendship with Gemini co-founder Sidney B. Felsen.
 

Julie Mehretu’s collaboration with Gemini G.E.L began in 2008 with a small, single-color drypoint. Now, her printmaking at Gemini has since evolved to multi-plate, richly colored works of monumental scale and remarkable technical complexity that push the limits of the medium.
 

Learn more

Black Nations/Queer Nations?: Screening and Community Discussion

Tuesday, June 18, 2024, 3–6 pm

Getty Center, Harold M. Williams Auditorium

Shari Frilot’s experimental documentary Black Nations/Queer Nations? chronicles the groundbreaking 1995 conference on lesbian and gay sexualities in the African diaspora that brought together an array of scholars, activists, artists, and cultural workers to interrogate the economic, political, and social realities of diasporic LGBTQIA+ peoples.
 

This special screening of the film will be followed by a discussion featuring the film’s director Shari Frilot and Columbia University’s Dr. Jafari Sinclaire Allen.
 

Learn more

Kipper Kids Records, 1970–2014

The Kipper Kids records document the career of performance artists Brian Routh (1948–2018) and Martin von Haselberg (1949–). In character as Harry Kipper and Harry Kipper with exaggerated makeup and prosthetics, the duo blended various art forms such as body art, Viennese Actionism, and vaudeville, often incorporating balloons, food, and self-abuse in their ceremonial performances. They were a fixture of the Los Angeles art scene from 1974 to 1982, performing at CalArts, LAICA, Otis College of Art, and Whisky a Go-Go.
 

View the finding aid

Digital Florentine Codex in the Classroom

For the Spring 2024 semester, Chapman University students had a unique opportunity to enroll in Dr. Amy Buono’s Art History 323 course, “The Arts of Tenochtitlán-Mexico City”. Through this course, students were able to study the Digital Florentine Codex (DFC) and collaborate with the DFC team of scholars and researchers at the Getty Research Institute and faculty from both UCLA and Occidental College.
 

Read on

ReCurrent Podcast

ReCurrent, Getty’s new podcast about cultural heritage hosted by Jaime Roque uncovers why cultural heritage—from music to murals, and petroglyphs to barber shops—is worth preserving, and what’s at stake when we don’t. Through personal stories, interviews with experts, and visits to sites where preservation efforts are in full swing, listeners will embark on a journey to understand, value, and connect with cultural heritage and Getty’s work in the field.

Listen to new ReCurrent episodes, out now wherever you listen to podcasts. Subscribe, and enjoy transcripts and bonus material on our website.
 

Listen to the podcast

Sculpting Harmony Wins 2 Webby Awards

We are proud to announce that Sculpting Harmony, a collaboration led by Getty Research Institute and Getty Digital staff, has won two Webby Awards.

Sculpting Harmony offers a momentous public debut of the Frank O. Gehry papers held at the GRI. Viewers can explore new interviews with Frank Gehry, interactive 3D media and novel scholarship. The digital exhibition provides a captivating glimpse into the innovative work that went into the design of the Walt Disney Concert Hall.

View the work

Now Available: First Open Access Issue of Getty Research Journal

We’re thrilled to announce that the first open-access issue of the Getty Research Journal is now available.
 

The new issue features essays on a fragmentary Kufic Qur’an of Early Abbasid style produced in Central Iran; cuttings from a 12th-century Bible written in southeastern France for a Carthusian monastery in the orbit of the Grande Chartreuse; a large folding panorama of the Brazilian city of Salvador in the state of Bahia, taken around 1880 by German photographer Rodolpho Lindemann; French traveler Jane Dieulafoy’s 19th-century photographic documentation of Ilkhanid monuments, including the Emamzadeh Yahya, one of Iran’s most plundered tombs; the wartime encounter between Polish painters stationed in Baghdad and Iraqi artists during the British military reoccupation of Iraq in 1941–45; and the integration of photography and poetry in East German samizdat artists’ books of the 1980s.
 

Explore the new issue

Robert Mapplethorpe: The Archive

By Frances Terpak and Michelle Brunnick
With essays by Patti Smith and Jonathan Weinberg
 

Celebrated photographer Robert Mapplethorpe challenged the limits of censorship and conformity, combining technical and formal mastery with unexpected, often provocative content that secured his place in history. Mapplethorpe’s artistic vision helped shape the social and cultural fabric of the 1970s and ’80s and, following his death in 1989 from AIDS, informed the political landscape of the 1990s. His photographic works continue to resonate with audiences all over the world.
 

Reserve your copy

Learn more about how to use the Getty Library, one of the world’s most comprehensive art historical research libraries, on our newly designed website. The Library is open to all, and we invite you to browse our extensive collections and online resources to help you find the information you need. To find out more, please visit the Library website.