Judith has been at the J. Paul Getty Museum since 2015 as part of the Antiquities Provenance Project. Her research focuses on the history of the Getty’s collection and on documenting the 20th-century art market for antiquities. She holds a BA in classical and near eastern archaeology from Bryn Mawr College and an MSt in classical archaeology from the University of Oxford. In 2019, she co-developed “Provenance Research: Collecting Histories” as a course for the Museum Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University. She is a co-author of the book Provenance Research for Mediterranean Antiquities: Methods and Resources (forthcoming, Getty Publications.)
ABOUT THE COLLECTION
J. Paul Getty started acquiring antiquities in Rome in 1939 and subsequently built an important collection concentrating on Greek and Roman marble statues and reliefs, bronze statuettes, and mosaics. These works were kept in his Malibu ranch house and made available for public viewing beginning in 1954, but the growth of the collection called for a larger space, leading him to design and construct a full-scale replica of the Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum. The new museum opened in 1974, and Getty felt the need to expand the scope of its displays, adding ancient Roman frescoes, Greek painted pottery, and other objects. After his death in 1976, museum curators added significantly to the collection, which now includes important Greek vases, engraved gems, Romano-Egyptian mummy portraits, ancient glass, carved ambers, silver vessels, and gold jewelry.
The earliest objects are Neolithic clay figurines, dating back to the sixth millennium BC, and marble vessels and figurines from the Cycladic islands and Cyprus, dating from the Bronze Age. There are also significant holdings of Greek bronzework, sculpture from southern Italy, and an original Greek bronze statue of the Hellenistic period known as The Victorious Youth.
The Antiquities collection is on view year-round at the Getty Villa.
CONTACT INFO
PERSEPOLIS REIMAGINED

Persepolis Reimagined is an interactive website that leads you through a recreation of the ancient city. It is the result of a collaboration between historians, creatives, and technologists, in the context of the Getty Villa Museum exhibition, Persia: Ancient Iran and the Classical World.
PUBLICATION

Persia: Ancient Iran and the Classical World
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Stories about how people lived thousands of years ago, and the art they made.
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DIGITAL RESOURCES
Egypt and the Classical World: Cross-Cultural Encounters in Antiquity
From Mycenaean weaponry found among the cargo of a Bronze Age shipwreck off the Turkish coast to the Egyptian-inspired domestic interiors of a luxury villa built in Greece during the Roman Empire, Egypt and the Classical World documents two millennia of cultural and artistic interconnectedness in the ancient Mediterranean.
Mummy Portraits of Roman Egypt: Emerging Research from the APPEAR Project
Once interred with mummified remains, nearly a thousand funerary portraits from Roman Egypt survive today in museums and galleries around the world, bringing viewers face-to-face with people who lived two thousand years ago.
Athenian Red-Figure Column and Volute Kraters: Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum 10
The newest volume in the Getty’s CVA series presents a selection of columns and volute kraters ranging from 520 to 510 BC through the early fourth century BC.
FEATURED VIDEO
The ancient Egyptians developed a sophisticated method to preserve a dead body for the afterlife: mummification. Follow the steps of the mummification process in this short animation about the Getty Museum's Romano-Egyptian mummy Herakleides.
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ABOUT THE GETTY VILLA
The Antiquities collection is displayed at the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades. Opened in 1974, the building is a recreation of the Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum, a Roman country house that was buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD Remodeled in 2006, the surrounding gardens are planted with species known from the ancient Mediterranean.The Outdoor Classical Theater hosts a production each fall, while innovative reinterpretations of ancient plays occur throughout the year as part of the Villa Theater Lab program. In addition to regular public lectures by eminent archaeologists and art historians, the Villa also welcomes visiting scholars as part of the Getty Research Institute’s Classical World in Context project.