Displaying items by tag: the getty

There has been another twist in the long-running restitution battle between Italy and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles over the 2,300-year-old Greek bronze known as the Victorious Youth. The statue has been in the Getty’s collection since 1977. Crucially, a decision made by Italy’s court of cassation earlier this month means that the museum does not, for now, have to return the sculpture to Italy.

The major retrospective of Robert Mapplethorpe's work that the J. Paul Getty Museum and Los Angeles County Museum of Art promised four years ago when they jointly acquired some 2,000 images by the New York City photographer is set to open in 2016 in an exhibition at both museums.

The Getty's part will run March 15 to July 31, 2016; the LACMA dates are March 20 to July 31, 2016, the two museums announced Thursday. The co-curators are Paul Martineau of the Getty and LACMA's Britt Salvesen.

Although Peter Paul Rubens is recognized as one of the baroque period’s greatest artists, no woman wants to be called Rubenesque, a term describing the overly healthy figures that populate his work, like the meaty angel of truth in "The Triumph of Truth Over Heresy," or the round-shouldered women in "The Israelites Gathering Manna in the Desert." Both are in the Getty’s unique new exhibit, "Spectacular Rubens: The Triumph of the Eucharist," through Jan. 11.

Rubens and Infanta Isabel Clara Eugenia go all the way back to 1609 when he was appointed court painter for her husband, Albert VII of Austria. Widowed in 1621, Isabel, a devout Catholic, turned to her faith and to Rubens as a confidant, even sending him on diplomatic missions, including spying on the French.

The Getty’s “Rococo to Revolution: 18th-Century French Drawings from Los Angeles Collections” displays high points of the museum’s drawing collection alongside loans from private collectors. The surprise is how well the loans stand up. There are  privately owned drawings by Watteau (a counterproof of one of the first drawings the Getty bought, in 1982), Boucher, Fragonard, Greuze, and David. There are also sheets by artists lately rediscovered by scholars and collectors. On loan are an impressive Gabriel de Saint-Aubin and a famous François-André Vincent. His trois crayons Bust-Length Study of a Young Woman (1780) was one of the first drawings to be reproduced as a color engraving. In case you missed the memo, Vincent was David’s archrival, husband to Adélaïde Labille-Guiard. The Getty also has an important Vincent drawing, The Secret.

The Getty, which includes the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Research Institute and the Getty Conservation Institute, has lifted restrictions on the use of images that the Getty holds the rights to or are in the public domain. Jim Cuno, the president and CEO of the Getty, made the announcement in a post on The Iris, the Getty’s blog.

Approximately 4,600 images of paintings, drawings, manuscripts, photographs, antiquities, sculptures and decorative arts from the J. Paul Getty Museum are now available in high resolution on the Getty’s website. The Getty Research Institute is currently deciding which images from its collections can be made available under the initiative and the Getty Conservation Institute is working to make images from its international projects available to the public.

Timothy Potts, the J. Paul Getty Museum’s director, said, “The Museum is delighted to make these images available as the first step in a Getty-wide move toward open content. The Getty’s collections are greatly in demand for publications, research and a variety of personal uses, and I am please that with this initiative they will be readily available on a global basis to anyone with Internet access.”

Previously, the Getty’s images were only available upon request, for a fee and carried certain terms and conditions. The images will now be available for direct download on the website, free of charge.