The still life; keeping art safe from climate change; check out this playlist

What’s a still life?

Take a close look at Paul Cézanne’s Still Life with Apples and find out more about the popular “still life” genre (you’ll be seeing these kinds of paintings everywhere if you plan to hit a lot of museums this summer). “Painting from nature is not copying the object,” Cézanne wrote. “It is realizing one’s sensations.”

Read and watch

Conserving art while conserving energy

As climate change escalates, how do museums keep art safe when galleries and storage spaces run too hot or too cold, too humid or too dry? Getty launched the Managing Collection Environments initiative 10 years ago to find answers. 

Eco-friendly ways to keep artworks safe
 

The Dawoud Bey & Carrie Mae Weems playlist

Listen to a selection of songs curated by jazz host LeRoy Downs and inspired by Dawoud Bey and Carrie Mae Weems: In Dialogue, on view through July 9 at the Getty Center. You’ll hear Dorothy Ashby, Herbie Hancock, Charles Mingus, and other artists who reflect the Black America depicted in the photographs on display.

What does an image sound like?
 

Eight Black modernist buildings receive Getty support

A vibrant cultural center in LA’s Watts neighborhood, two of the oldest Black Baptist churches in the US, and five other historic modern buildings will receive $1.2 million in grants as part of Getty’s Conserving Black Modernism initiative, a partnership with the National Trust for Historic Preservation to address the omissions of buildings designed by Black architects from the story of modernism in the US.

Conserving Black Modernism grantees for 2023

A Maya book that predates the arrival of Europeans

Some 900 years ago a Maya scribe made Códice Maya de México, a sacred book that tracked and predicted the movements of the planet Venus. Today it is the oldest book of the Americas. Getty’s Andrew Turner and Smarthistory’s Lauren Kilroy-Ewbank tell us more about the fascinating codex (recently on view at Getty)—where it was found, the artist’s materials (including red pigment from beetles), and how Mayans used the book.

Watch now
 

The art of collecting

Curator Marcia Reed knows that collecting is part of an artist’s creative process. “Artists collect to gather ideas,” she says. But collecting can also be part of a curator’s process. “I collect because I am always thinking about connecting single works and collections in meaningful ways,” she tells us.

How an acquisition of four works honors a curator’s legacy

Festivals of War and Peace: The Evolution of Jousts and Tournaments

Sunday, June 25, 11:00 am PT
Online only

The Age of Chivalry in Europe was a time of almost constant warfare, but also of fabulous celebrations and courtly festivals. Historian Tobias Capwell discusses the fascinating history of these events.  

Register for this free online talk