This occasional series brings distinctive voices to the Getty to discuss the arts and the relationship of visual culture to our broader public culture.

All presentations are free and take place in the Harold M. Williams Auditorium at the Getty Center.

New Yorker contributor Adam Gopnik speaks about the vision of winter in modern art as it coursed through the German Romantic (and nationalist) paintings of Caspar David Friedrich to the sublime Swiss vistas of J. M. W. Turner, to the stylish Japanese-inflected snowstorms of Claude Monet and Camille Pissaro, and beyond.

Using her new book, Revelations, as a springboard, Elaine Pagels, author and professor of religion at Princeton University, explores the strangest book in the Bible—the book of Revelation—and shows its enormous impact on art, music, and politics.

The Ruins Lesson
May 5, 2011
Susan Stewart, Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities, Princeton University, examined the ruin as a subject for printmaking, especially from the Renaissance into the 18th-century, and for poetry in the 18th and 19th centuries. Stewart outlined the ruin as both an experienced phenomenon and a problem in representation.

Andrei Codrescu: The Poetry Lesson
February 23, 2011
Award-winning poet, essayist, and commentator Andrei Codrescu followed up on last year's how-to-live-as-art manual, The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara and Lenin Play Chess, with a "comic masterpiece," The Poetry Lesson. At the Getty, Codrescu talked art, poetry, and made you feel in peril.

Peter Greenaway: New Possibilities: Cinema and Art History
December 15, 2010
Acclaimed filmmaker Peter Greenaway discussed Nine Classic Paintings Revisited, a series of installations in which he uses cinematic techniques to explore paintings by Rembrandt, Veronese, and Leonardo. Greenaway talked about the three completed installations and plans for six more, in addition to his new production about Henrik Goltzius, a 16th-century engraver of erotic prints.

Edmund de Waal: A Hidden Inheritance: Objects, Memories, and Collections
October 5, 2010
Edmund de Waal, renowned ceramicist, curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and author of the new book The Hare with Amber Eyes, explored the ascent and decline of a Jewish dynasty in his October lecture at the Getty Center. Using examples from his family collections, including some works now at the Getty Museum as well as a group of netsuke that he inherited, de Waal examined how we can understand collecting as a family story.

Geoff Dyer: How Do We Experience Art?
May 13, 2010
In his most recent novel, Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, Geoff Dyer creates the character Jeff Atman. Dyer uses his character to examine the role of art in fiction and the idea of importing art to Venice. Dyer came to the Getty to explore the significant role that art plays in literature and in the understanding of a place.

Legacy: Black and White in America
March 16, 2010
Legacy: Black and White in America, an 80-minute documentary that premiered on PBS, explores the legacy of the civil rights movement and looks at the lives of African Americans today through conversations with celebrated figures. Following the screening of this film at the Harold M. Williams Auditorium, cultural commentator Lawrence Weschler led a discussion of the impact of race and civil rights in contemporary art and museum practice with artists Kerry James Marshall and Daniel Joseph Martinez; scholar and curator Nizan Shaked; and Richard Karz, producer of Legacy: Black and White in America.

Richard Sennett on Art and Craft
December 3, 2009
Since at least the Renaissance, fine artists have proudly distinguished their creativity from the handiwork of craftsmen. But are there really such clear boundaries between the work of the mind and the work of the hand? In this inspiring lecture, sociologist and author Richard Sennett considered the artificial boundaries between art and craft, expression and technique, suggesting that the desire to do a job well for its own sake is a key human impulse. The talk complemented the exhibitions Irving Penn: Small Trades and In Focus: The Worker.

Errol Morris and Ricky Jay on Art and Perception
October 8, 2009
Can anyone truly tell reality from illusion? When we pride ourselves on our ability to distinguish real from fake, forgery from masterpiece, are we only engaging in self-deception? Filmmaker Errol Morris and sleight-of-hand artist Ricky Jay considered these questions in a wide-ranging discussion of art and perception, offering a thought-provoking evening that challenged what we think we know about art and about ourselves.

Bill Ivey and Lewis Hyde on Cultural Rights
June 2, 2009
In the inaugural Getty Perspectives event, Bill Ivey and Lewis Hyde discussed the social value of the arts, of the cultural commons, and how policy and theory should ensure open access to creative work. Ivey was chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts from 1998 to 2001 and leader of President Obama's transition team on arts and the humanities, and is the author of the recent book Arts, Inc.." Hyde is a poet, essayist, translator, and cultural critic with a particular interest in the public life of the imagination.