Spring 2015 PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE
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theGETTY A WORLD OF ART, RESEARCH, CONSERVATION, AND PHILANTHROPY | Spring 2015 PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE theGETTY Spring 2014 TABLE OF President’s Message 3 by James Cuno President and CEO, the J. Paul Getty Trust CONTENTS New and Noteworthy 4 Earlier this year I attended the World Economic Forum in Keeping it Modern 6 Davos, Switzerland, during which government officials and corporate, education, and cultural leaders gather to explore Darkroom Alchemists Reinvent Photography 14 the economic and political prospects for the coming year. I gave a presentation about the ways in which digital technol- A Sense of Place in the City of Angels 20 ogy is transforming the museum experience—from initial dis- covery, to visiting, to research and collaboration, to the ways Thousands of Rare Books on your Desktop 24 in which visitors can engage more deeply with the collection through digital resources. This issue of The Getty expands Book Excerpt: J. M. W. Turner: Painting Set Free 27 on our previous coverage of how the Getty is “going digital” through projects like the HistoricPlacesLA initiative from the New from Getty Publications 28 Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) and the many digital fac- ets that are accessible to researchers and patrons around the From The Iris 30 world from the Getty Research Institute Library. Last month, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti joined GCI New Acquisition 31 Director Tim Whalen, Foundation Director Deborah Marrow, and me to launch HistoricPlacesLA, the city’s groundbreaking Getty Events 32 new system for mapping and inventorying historic resources in Los Angeles. HistoricPlacesLA contains information gath- Exhibitions 34 ered through SurveyLA—a citywide survey of LA’s significant historic resources—a public/private partnership between the From the Vault 35 City of Los Angeles and the Getty, including both the GCI and Foundation. You can see pictures of this event on page 33. In our cover story, you will read about an exciting new James Cuno initiative from the Getty Foundation, Keeping It Modern, which has awarded an initial ten grants to stewards of Modern Movement buildings of outstanding architectural significance The J. Paul Getty Trust is a cultural and philanthropic institution around the globe. These projects promise to advance con- dedicated to critical thinking in the presentation, conservation, servation practices. You will also learn about the seven living and interpretation of the world’s artistic legacy. Through the artists featured in the Museum’s upcoming exhibition Light, collective and individual work of its constituent programs— Paper, Process: Reinventing Photography, and how they are Getty Conservation Institute, Getty Foundation, J. Paul Getty eschewing traditional methods of working with photography Museum, and Getty Research Institute—it pursues its mission in in favor of experimental techniques that shift the understand- Los Angeles and throughout the world, serving both the general ing of the medium from that which accurately records the interested public and a wide range of professional communities world to one that revels in its very materiality and processes. with the conviction that a greater and more profound sensitivity I hope you can visit us in person this spring. You can always to and knowledge of the visual arts and their many histories is visit the Getty online through our website, or connect with us crucial to the promotion of a vital and civil society. on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Send correspondence and address changes to Getty Communications 1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 403 On the cover: Los Angeles, CA 90049 Sydney Opera House. Photo: © nzgmw Email: [email protected] 2 3 NEW AND NOTEWORTHY J. Paul Getty Trust Report 2014: Digital Humanities at the Getty Now Available The J. Paul Getty Trust annual report was released with a new format for fiscal year 2014, uniting the content in the report under one overarch- ing theme. Essays by the four Getty programs—the Getty Conservation Institute, the Getty Foundation, the Getty Research Institute, and the J. Paul Getty Museum—reported the activities from the past year that have contributed to the digital humanities. Two experts in the field, Johanna Drucker from UCLA and Jeffrey Schnapp from the metaLAB (at) Harvard, contributed scholarly essays that provide a frame for the report, and also raise questions that should be considered as the humanities, especially arts institutions, create a new digital future. The report is free to read and download at getty.edu/about. Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA Update The Getty Foundation has awarded a major archival grant as part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston for the International Center for the Arts of the Americas’ (ICAA) Documents of 20th-Century Latin American Art and Latino Art. Initiated in 2002 and developed with the support of several Foundation grants, this multiyear project is dedicated to the recovery and digital publication of primary source materials related to artists, critics, and curators from Mexico, Central and South Participants in the 2013 International Stone Course engaged in plant removal and documentation at the historic Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome. America, the Caribbean, and the United States. ICAA launched its free online archive in 2012 International Course on Stone Conservation out on selected monuments in the Non-Catholic and has published more than 4,700 documents What will bring a group of architects, conservators, Cemetery in Rome. Course participants will also to date from Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, conservation scientists, engineers, geologists, and benefit from Rome’s distinguished architectural Reference Librarian Sarah Sherman of the Getty Research Institute Puerto Rico, and the United States, with many archaeologists from across the world to Rome this heritage, as well as its legacy of stone conservation more awaiting processing. The new grant will spring? Rocks—or, more accurately, stone. They practice. Unforgetting L.A. Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon accelerate processing on over four thousand are coming to participate in the 19th International The stone course has long served a vital edu- On February 21, the Getty Research Institute (GRI) partnered with records that are critical to the research teams Course on Stone Conservation, which runs from cational role by offering an intensive program in online magazine East of Borneo to host a daylong Wikipedia edit-a-thon. involved with Pacific Standard Time: LA/ mid-April to July 2015. The course is co-organized which to learn theoretical and practical method- The GRI invited Getty staff and the interested public to learn how to edit LA. Prioritized materials include documents by the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) and ologies for stone conservation. Equally important, Wikipedia and to help fill gaps in its coverage of the architecture, design, from Brazil, Chile, Peru, and Venezuela that ICCROM (International Centre for the Study it has provided a constructive forum for profes- people, and places in Los Angeles. The event was part of the magazine’s pertain to exhibitions in development at the of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural sionals to exchange ideas about the conservation Unforgetting L.A. project, which aims to build a better online history Hammer Museum, the Fowler Museum, the Property), in cooperation with the Non-Catholic practices and challenges in their home countries. of art in Southern California—a history anyone can contribute to and Orange County Museum of Art, and others. Cemetery in Rome. Collectively, the course has a truly international access, entirely for free. The Foundation’s grant support will also serve The International Course on Stone reach. In the three previous courses that the GCI Participants arrived at the Getty, laptops in hand, and used resources the teaching of Latin American and Latino art Conservation was first held in 1976, with the GCI has presented in partnership with ICCROM, par- provided by the GRI, including books and research files, as well as hands- worldwide, as well as collection development joining ICCROM as a partner in 2009. It takes ticipants have come from thirty-four different on help from librarians to navigate the immense collection of digital and bibliographic controls through use of the place at ICCROM’s headquarters in Rome, provid- countries and every continent except Antarctica. resources available on the GRI’s website, and contributed updates to Getty Vocabularies and English- and Spanish- ing participants direct access to its laboratories This year they will add more countries to that important figures, movements, publications, artworks, and other parts of language versions of the Getty’s Art and and library. Practical fieldwork will be carried number. the L.A. story that are missing from Wikipedia. Architecture Thesaurus. 4 5 Centennial Hall, interior, contem- porary photograph, 2013. Photo: Miroslaw Lanowiecki (Museum of Architecture in Wrocław) Oppsite: Sydney Opera House. Photo: © andresr Today twentieth-century architec- Modern form a roster of striking mod- Conserving Modern Architecture tural heritage is at considerable risk. ern architecture spread across several Initiative (CMAI), which works to The cutting-edge building materials continents (see following pages for full advance the practice of conserving and structural systems that defined descriptions). Following a rigorous peer twentieth-century heritage; two of the the Modern Movement were often review process by experts in the history first ten Keeping It Modern grants are untested and have not always per- and conservation of modern architec- related to CMAI projects (the Eames formed well over time. Even seasoned ture, the initial round of grants was House and the Salk Institute). The Getty professionals do not always have chosen for the buildings’ architectural Research Institute holds extensive and enough information about the nature significance and the promise of the growing special collections about the and behavior of these materials and projects to advance conservation prac- work of twentieth-century architects. systems to develop models and stan- tices for Modern Movement heritage.