Illuminated Manuscripts from Belgium and the Netherlands
August 24, 2010–February 6, 2011
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.

In Focus: Still Life
September 14, 2010–January 23, 2011
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.

Obsidian Mirror-Travels: Refracting Ancient Mexican Art and Archaeology
November 16, 2010–February 6, 2011
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.

Imagining the Past in France, 1250–1500
November 16, 2010–February 6, 2011
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.

The Secret Life of Drawings
November 23, 2010–February 13, 2011
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 versos, and the practice of cutting and/or reassembling drawings.

Felice Beato: A Photographer on the Eastern Road
December 7, 2010–April 3, 2011
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 oeuvre—represented through a selection of about 130 works.

Photography from the New China
December 7, 2010–April 3, 2011
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.

In Focus: The Tree
February 8–July 3, 2011
Since the origins of photography in the nineteenth century, the tree has remained a popular subject for photographers. Through the works of artists such as Gustave Le Gray, Carleton Watkins, Eugène Atget, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Eliot Porter, William Eggleston, Simryn Gill, and Myoung Ho Lee, this exhibition spans the history of photography to address the image of the tree in its many connotations: as a graphic form, a universal icon of strength, and a symbol of the beauty of nature.

Stories to Watch: Narrative in Medieval Manuscripts
February 22–May 15, 2011
The illuminators of medieval manuscripts found creative solutions for telling stories through pictures. A sequence of illustrations was often linked on a page, or several parts of a tale were incorporated in a single image. This exhibition displays twenty-one books and leaves with narrative illuminations from different periods and regions, presenting a fascinating variety of pictorial storytelling.

Gods of Angkor: Bronzes from the National Museum of Cambodia
February 22–August 14, 2011
Cambodia is renowned for the extraordinary art produced during the Angkor period of the Khmer empire, between the ninth and the fifteenth centuries, when sculptors mastered the art of bronze casting and created profound images of Hindu and Buddhist divinities. A focused exhibition of loans from the National Museum of Cambodia in Phnom Penh, Gods of Angkor includes some of the finest Cambodian bronzes in existence as well as a small group of bronzes from the pre-Angkor period and some recently excavated works. It also celebrates the establishment of a bronze conservation studio at the National Museum of Cambodia and that institution's role in conserving Cambodia's cultural heritage.

Spirit of an Age: Drawings from the Germanic World, 1770–1900
March 29–June 19, 2011
Unveiling recent acquisitions that reflect a new area of the Museum's collection, this exhibition features about forty German and Austrian drawings and watercolors. The works reflect the profound changes—intellectual, social, and political—that the Germanic world underwent from about 1770 to 1900. Events such as the publication of the writings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and the formal unification of Germany contributed to shaping the artist's world. Drawing captured the spirit of the age and evolved quite dramatically over the course of this period, which is rarely showcased by North American museums.

Paris: Life & Luxury
April 26–August 7, 2011
Evoking the elegant, prosperous world of Rococo Paris, this major, international loan exhibition brings to life activities that took place inside a Parisian town house over the course of a typical day—from dressing and letter writing to dining, music, and other evening entertainments. Paris: Life and Luxury unites prime examples of the extraordinary creative virtuosity of the period's great artists and craftsmen, including furniture, fashion, silver, paintings, sculpture, musical instruments, clocks, and books. Rarely shown together, these objects literally and figuratively open up, allowing their functions and the parts they played in the fine art of eighteenth-century Parisian living to be understood by contemporary visitors.

Fashion in the Middle Ages
May 31–August 21, 2011
The figures that inhabited the illuminated pages of medieval manuscripts could be recognized at a glance by the clothing they wore. Artists used costumes to identify people by profession or to place them in a social hierarchy. Yet, as this exhibition demonstrates, illuminations did not provide accurate depictions of dress. Wealthy patrons commissioned images of a perfect world, filled with glamorous versions of themselves and rather too-well-dressed peasants, while biblical figures were given a "historical" wardrobe that mixed ancient and contemporary elements.

Current Exhibitions at the Getty Center

Past Exhibitions at the Getty Center

The Art of Ancient Greek Theater
August 26, 2010–January 3, 2011
Theatrical performance emerged in ancient Athens from the worship of Dionysos, the god of wine and theater. From productions in the Theater of Dionysos, the tragedies and satyr plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides as well as the comedies of Aristophanes and Menander spread throughout the Mediterranean, flourishing especially in southern Italy. There, in Magna Graecia, vase painters and sculptors created vivid depictions of dramatic scenes, representing sets, costumes, masks, choreography, and music. This major international loan exhibition is the first exploration in nearly sixty years of the many ways Greek plays and stagecraft inspired classical artists, whose works are often the only surviving evidence of the performing arts in antiquity. The exhibition coincides with the Villa's Outdoor Theater production of Sophocles' Elektra.

A Statue of Apollo from Pompeii: Investigating an Ancient Bronze
March 2–September 12, 2011
Buried during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79, the Apollo Saettante (Apollo as an Archer) was unearthed in pieces between 1817 and 1818. Depicting the god in the act of shooting an arrow, the statue was one of the first major bronzes to be found at Pompeii. As part of the J. Paul Getty Museum's collaboration with the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, the sculpture was brought to the Getty Villa for study and conservation treatment in 2009. This exhibition offers a behind-the-scenes look at that project, revealing how the statue was manufactured in antiquity as well as the methods and materials used to restore it in nineteenth-century Naples.

In Search of Biblical Lands: Nineteenth-Century Photography of the Ancient Near East
March 2–September 12, 2011
In the 1800s travelers came to the eastern margins of the Mediterranean and encountered a landscape of belief, at once forbidding and monotonous. Propelled by a connection to the Old and New Testaments of the Bible and encouraged by texts recently discovered in Egypt and Assyria, explorers, excavators, and entrepreneurs came to photograph places hitherto only imagined. This exhibition presents images of the ancient Near East—known variously as Palestine, western Syria, the Transjordan Plateau, and the Holy Land—drawn from the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Getty Research Institute. Subjects range from architectural sites and strata to evocative geography and scenes of pastoral life.

Current Exhibitions at the Getty Villa

Past Exhibitions at the Getty Villa