Art is Magic: A Conversation with Jeremy Deller and Hamza Walker

Talk
A group of performers is surrounded by a crowd in front of a large, stone neoclassical building.

Boss Morris, an all female progressive Morris dancing troupe, perform alongside students from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, Dundee as part of The Triumph of Art, 2025, Jeremy Deller. Commissioned by the National Gallery, London, as part of the Gallery’s Bicentenary celebration. Courtesy of the artist and The Modern Institute/ Toby Webster Ltd., Glasgow

Photo: Jeremy Deller

Tuesday, Apr 28, 2026

7pm

Getty Center & Online

Museum Lecture Hall

Free

Tickets are free, but required for event entrance. Your event ticket will also serve as your Center entrance reservation. Please note, there is a fee for parking.

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About

British artist Jeremy Deller and Los Angeles–based curator Hamza Walker (The Brick) come together for a conversation on monuments, memory, and the public imagination. Anchored in MONUMENTS, the current exhibition at The Brick and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles—co-curated by Walker—which reassesses Confederate monuments amid a recent wave of removals, and in Deller’s career-survey book Art is Magic, the program reflects on how histories are constructed, contested, and performed through sites, symbols, and collective experience. From ancient gathering places to newly imagined landmarks, the discussion considers how artists intervene in the stories that define civic life—and the role of art in rethinking historical narratives.

A dessert reception follows the conversation.

The exhibition Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955-1985 will be open until 6:45pm for in-person attendees. Parking is $10 after 6pm.

    1. Jeremy Deller

      Conceptual, Video, and Installation Artist

      Jeremy Deller studied art history at the Courtauld Institute and at Sussex University. He won the Turner Prize in 2004 for his work Memory Bucket and represented Britain in the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013. His projects over the past two decades, such as Battle of Orgreave (2001), We’re Here Because We’re Here (2016) as well as the documentary Everybody in the Place: An Incomplete History of Britain 1984–1992 (2019) have influenced the conventional map of contemporary art. In his first book, Art is Magic (2023), the artist reflects on the entirety of his career, his life, and his art.

    2. Hamza Walker

      Executive Director, The Brick

      Hamza Walker is the recipient of the 2026 Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. He is the executive director of The Brick (formerly LAXART) in Los Angeles, where he has overseen the institution’s evolution into one of the city’s most vital nonprofit spaces for experimental and socially engaged art. Most recently, Walker co-curated the landmark exhibition MONUMENTS (currently on view in Los Angeles at The Brick and MOCA through May 3, 2026) which displays decommissioned monuments with contemporary artworks to examine how symbols placed in public spaces have shaped national identity and historical memory.

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    Duration

    Approximately 1 hour.

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    Can’t make it?

    Shortly following this event, a recording will be available on Getty's YouTube channel under "Talks and Conversations."

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