Event Calendar
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Performances and Films/Videos
Lectures and Conferences
Tours and Talks
Family Activities
Courses and Demonstrations
Exhibitions
Food Events
Free Hours at L.A. Museums (PDF, 269 KB)
Autry National Center
Craft and Folk Art Museum
Fowler Museum at UCLA
Hammer Museum
Huntington Library
Japanese American National Museum
LACMA
Los Angeles Public Library
MAK Center for Art & Architecture
MOCA
Museum of Latin American Art
Natural History Museum
Norton Simon Museum
Orange County Museum of Art
Pacific Asia Museum
Pasadena Museum of California Art
Santa Monica Museum of Art
Skirball Cultural Center
December 21, 2010
Family Activities
Family Art Stops
Tuesdays - Fridays through December 31, 2010
2 pm, 2:30 pm
Museum Galleries, Getty Center


Get up close and personal with a single work of art at this half-hour, hands-on gallery experience geared for families with children ages 5 and up. Sign-up begins 30 minutes before the program at the Museum Information Desk.

Learn more about Family Art Stops

Tours and Gallery Talks
Garden Tour
Daily
11:30 am, 12:30 pm, 2:30 pm, 3:30 pm
Getty Center


This is a 45-minute tour of the Getty gardens, including Robert Irwin's Central Garden. Meet the docent outside at the bench under the sycamore trees near the front entrance of the Museum.

Focus Tour: Medieval and Renaissance Art
Tuesdays
3 pm
Museum Galleries, Getty Center


Enjoy a one-hour tour focusing on the Getty's Medieval and Renaissance collections by exploring the art and culture of these related and distinctive historic periods. Meet the educator at the Museum Information Desk.

Getty Center
Architecture Tour
Daily
10:15 am, 11 am, 1 pm, 2 pm, 3 pm, 4 pm
Museum Entrance Hall, Getty Center


Discover more about Richard Meier's architecture and the design of the Getty Center site in this 45-minute tour. Meet the docent outside at the bench under the sycamore trees near the front entrance to the Museum.

Halberdier / Pontormo
Collection Highlights Tour
Daily
11 am
Museum Galleries, Getty Center


This one-hour tour provides an overview of major works from the Museum's collection. Meet the educator at the Museum Information Desk.

Exhibitions
La Roldana's Saint Gines
La Roldana's Saint Ginés: The Making of a Polychrome Sculpture
Daily

South Pavilion, Plaza Level, Getty Center


Luisa Roldán (Spanish, 1650–1704), affectionately known as La Roldana, was one of the most celebrated and prolific sculptors of the Baroque period. This intimate exhibition introduces visitors to La Roldana, whose artistic superiority catapulted her to fame at the royal court in an otherwise male-dominated profession. She ran a workshop, worked for the king, raised a family, and was a celebrity in her own day. With her polychrome sculpture of Saint Ginés de la Jara from the Getty Museum's collection as a focal point, this exhibition explores the artist's life, artistic achievement, and the multifaceted process used to create masterfully lifelike polychrome sculpture.

 Learn more about this exhibition
Foundry to Finish
Foundry to Finish: The Making of a Bronze Sculpture
Daily through January 2, 2011

North Pavilion, Plaza Level, Getty Center


Get a rare look at how bronze sculpture is born in Foundry to Finish. Visitors explore a process called direct lost-wax casting—a method that yields a single, unique bronze cast of an artist's original clay-and-wax model. Thirteen step-by-step models illustrate the sculpting and casting process. Through X-radiographs, visitors can even get a glimpse inside an original sculpture to see firsthand evidence of how the bronze was cast. The installation complements Cast in Bronze: French Sculpture from Renaissance to Revolution, an international touring exhibition also on view.

 Learn more about this exhibition
Obsidian Mirror-Travels
Obsidian Mirror-Travels: Refracting Ancient Mexican Art and Archaeology
Daily through March 27, 2011

Research Institute Exhibition Gallery, Getty Center


This exhibition explores representations of Mexican archaeological objects and sites made from the Colonial era to the present. Featuring images of ancient Maya and Aztec ruins by archaeologist explorers such as John Lloyd Stephens, Desiré Charnay, and Augustus and Alice Le Plongeon, the exhibition showcases depictions of the Aztec Calendar Stone and other Mexican antiquities as well as panoramic visions of Mexico—all in the context of the Spanish conquest, the 19th-century French intervention in Mexico, and the lengthy presidency of Porfirio Díaz (1876–1910). Some of the works exhibited are accurate, while others are fanciful; each portrays a distinct vision of Mexico.

 Learn more about this exhibition
Illuminated Manuscripts from Belgium and the Netherlands
Illuminated Manuscripts from Belgium and the Netherlands
Daily through February 6, 2011

North Pavilion, Plaza Level, Getty Center


During the Middle Ages, the area occupied today by Belgium and the Netherlands flourished economically and artistically. By the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the towns of Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp, and Utrecht participated in one of the greatest flowerings of book illumination in Europe. This exhibition surveys the Getty Museum's holdings of medieval manuscripts from this region, including masterworks made for such influential patrons as the dukes of Burgundy—Philip the Good and Charles the Bold—and the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II. After eleven weeks the books' pages will be turned to reveal further illuminated riches.

 Learn more about this exhibition
Imagining the Past in France
Imagining the Past in France, 1250–1500
Daily through February 6, 2011

Exhibitions Pavilion, Getty Center


In the Middle Ages, history played such an integral role in French culture that some of the greatest imagery of the period is found within the covers of historical manuscripts. Illuminations enabled heroic figures of the past—the biblical King David, Alexander the Great, the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne—to come alive before the eyes of medieval readers. Serving as both exciting narratives and propaganda, such images were immensely successful at the French court. On view exclusively at the J. Paul Getty Museum, this major international loan exhibition features rare manuscripts drawn from the collections of more than twenty-five of the world's most famous museums and libraries. The books are supplemented with ivories, tapestries, and metalwork that demonstrate how historical tales leapt from the illuminated page into other artistic forms.

 Learn more about this exhibition
In Focus: Still Life
In Focus: Still Life
Daily through January 23, 2011

West Pavilion, Terrace Level, Getty Center


The term still life was coined during the 1600s, when painted examples were popular throughout Europe, and artists created increasingly complex compositions, bringing together a broad variety of objects to convey allegorical meanings. Still life featured prominently in the early photographic experiments of Jacques Louis Mandé Daguerre and William Henry Fox Talbot, the pioneers most widely recognized for inventing the medium during the late 1830s. Since then, it has served as both a conventional and an experimental form during periods of significant aesthetic and technological change. Drawn exclusively from the Getty Museum's photographs collection, this one-gallery exhibition surveys some of the innovative ways artists have explored and refreshed this traditional genre.

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Felice Beato: A Photographer on the Eastern Road
Felice Beato: A Photographer on the Eastern Road
Daily through April 24, 2011

West Pavilion, Terrace Level, Getty Center


Felice Beato (British, born Venice, 1832–1909) had a long and varied photography career, and of his contemporaries, covered one of the widest geographical areas—from the Middle East to Southeast Asia. Establishing premier photographic studios in Yokohama, Japan, and Mandalay, Burma, he produced topographical and architectural views, portraits and studies of local life intended for Western audiences. A pioneer of war photography, he covered the Crimean War in 1856 and documented the aftermath of the Indian Mutiny in 1858 as well as chronicling the Second Opium War in China in 1860 and the American forces in Korea in 1871. The Museum's 2007 acquisition of more than 800 Beato photographs is the impetus and foundation for this exhibition—the first devoted to his <i>oeuvre</i>—represented through a selection of about 130 works.

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Photography from the New China
Photography from the New China
Daily through April 24, 2011

West Pavilion, Terrace Level, Getty Center


Providing a contrast to the nineteenth-century views of China and other parts of East Asia by Felice Beato presented concurrently in the Center for Photographs, this exhibition offers a cross section of Chinese photographs produced since People's Republic leader Deng Xiaoping introduced the current period of Opening and Reform. Highlighting the Getty's recent acquisition of photographs by Hai Bo, Liu Zheng, Song Yongping, Rong Rong, and Wang Qingsong, the show features some of the dominant styles in recent Chinese work, including performance for the camera, the incorporation of family photographs, and an emphasis on the body. Supplemented by loans of work by Huang Yan, Qiu Zhijie, and Zhang Huan, the exhibition explores such themes as prerevolutionary Chinese literati, vestiges of the Cultural Revolution, and the newly rampant consumerism.

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Secret Life of Drawings
The Secret Life of Drawings
Daily through February 13, 2011

West Pavilion, Plaza Level, Getty Center


Through a focused selection of about thirty sheets, this exhibition illuminates not only how drawings in the Getty's collection were made, but how they have been studied and cared for over time. While much is known about paintings conservation, this exhibition looks at restoration techniques for works on paper, comparing old techniques with modern ones. Stories will be shared about how the Getty's paper conservators work—repairing tears and holes, removing stains and mold, and reversing the process that turns lead white pigment black. The exhibition also reveals other discoveries, such as hidden watermarks, previously unknown <i>versos</i>, and the practice of cutting and/or reassembling drawings.

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Medieval and Renaissance Sculpture and Decorative Arts
New Galleries for Medieval and Renaissance Sculpture and Decorative Arts
Daily

North Pavilion, Plaza Level, Getty Center


A newly designed installation of medieval and Renaissance European sculpture and decorative arts is now on view in the J. Paul Getty Museum's North Pavilion at the Getty Center. Displayed with paintings, drawings, and illuminated manuscripts that enrich their context, the works of art are arranged by period and theme. The installation features innovative technologies, including interactive touch screens, that enhance the visitor's experience.

 Learn more about this exhibition
December 21, 2010
The Getty Villa is closed to the general public on this date.