NEW EXHIBITION SURVEYS LATE 20Th CENTURY AMERICAN LIFE, AS CAPTURED by LEADING CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHERS

EXHIBITION INFORMATION NEW EXHIBITION SURVEYS LATE 20th CENTURY AMERICAN LIFE, AS CAPTURED BY LEADING CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHERS Where We Live: Photographs of America from the Berman Collection At the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Center, October 24, 2006–February 25, 2007 Presentation Marks the Opening of the Getty Museum’s New Center for Photographs LOS ANGELES—A wide-ranging survey of life in the U.S. since the 1960s will be on view in Where We Live: Photographs of America from the Berman Collection, at the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Center, October 24, 2006–February 25, 2007. The exhibition showcases the richness of American color photography in nearly 170 works by 24 important contemporary artists, and includes works that will be shown for the first time. The presentation marks the opening of the Getty Museum’s new and expanded suite of galleries devoted to photographs, reflecting the importance of the art form in the Getty’s collection. Expanding from 1,700 to 7,000 square feet, the new Center for Photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum reaffirms the Getty Museum, and Los Angeles, as a major center for photography and provides for the most diverse program of exhibitions of any museum. The Center for Photographs also underscores the Getty’s commitment to acquiring, displaying, and interpreting contemporary photographs. The new galleries mirror the tremendous growth of the Getty Museum’s photographs collection through acquisitions and key donations from collectors such as Nancy and Bruce Berman. Where We Live draws from nearly 500 examples of postwar American photography donated by the Bermans to the Museum over the past eight years. The collection recognizes that the ordinary markers of life—barns, churches, billboards, and Main Streets of even the smallest towns—may one day be historic artifacts. The photographs that the Bermans have donated to the Getty form an archive of late 20th-century American life. -more- Page 2 Among the photographers represented in the exhibition are John Divola, Jim Dow, Doug Dubois, William Eggleston, Mitch Epstein, Karen Halverson, Alex Harris, Sheron Rupp, Stephen Shore, Joel Sternfeld, George Tice, and the team of Virginia Beahan and Laura McPhee. Working mostly in color and in a range of styles, the photographers’ diverse backgrounds in sociology, anthropology, art, and psychology inform their efforts to document the country from the 1960s onwards. The resulting images speak of the vast social, geographical, and psychological landscape of the country, offering insight into life in postwar America. Where We Live features subjects ranging from the American landscape to popular culture. Included are John Divola’s photographs of isolated structures in the Southern California desert that seem to mark the final edge of a vast urban sprawl, and Camilo José Vergara’s testament to resilience in his images of churches in poor neighborhoods established in former stores, garages, factories, and other abandoned buildings. William Eggleston’s family and friends appear as subjects in his snapshot-style pictures, offering quick slices of life. His domestic revelations include what is in the refrigerator, under the bed, in the laundry room, or soaking in the sink. Other photographers such as Mary Kocol and Joel Meyerowitz explore traditional American family icons, like the white picket fence and the decorated Christmas tree. The exhibition also includes personal journeys, among them William Christenberry’s observances of the subtle changes to pastoral Hale County, Alabama, where he grew up; David Husom’s fascination with the fairground architecture of his home state of Minnesota; and Doug Dubois’ portraits of life in the mining town of Avella, Pennsylvania, as influenced by his grandmother’s memories. This exhibition is curated by Judith Keller, Associate Curator, and Anne Lacoste, Assistant Curator, in the Department of Photographs. GettyGuide™ Audio Player: Hear the Collector and Artists The audio guide for Where We Live: Photographs of America from the Berman Collection includes a special feature: excerpts of recorded interviews with the collector and six of the artists. Visitors can hear Berman discussing his approach to collecting, and Christenberry, Eggleston, Epstein, Halverson, Rupp, and Vergara sharing personal reflections about the people and places depicted in their works on view. -more- Page 3 Exhibition Catalogue Accompanying the exhibition is a 200-page color catalogue, Where We Live: Photographs of America from the Berman Collection, with full color illustrations of all the photographs on view in the exhibition, along with essays written by photography historian and critic Colin Westerbeck, USC professor Kenneth Breisch, and Los Angeles novelist Bruce Wagner. The Collectors: Bruce and Nancy Berman Over the past 15 years, Nancy and Bruce Berman have collected work by a large number of photographers, as they have found themselves drawn to certain subjects rather than individual artists' careers. What has united the photographers in their collection is that they are passionate—not sentimental—about America. Their feeling for their subject matter springs from an intense, frequently personal relationship with it, tempered by a sense of self- restraint. Bruce Berman is chairman of Village Roadshow Pictures, a prominent film production company affiliated with Warner Brothers. Among the films he has produced are Goodfellas, Training Day, Ocean's Eleven, Mystic River, and the Matrix series. He is a founding member of the J. Paul Getty Museum's Photographs Council. The New Center for Photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Center Located on the Terrace level of the West Pavilion, the J. Paul Getty Museum’s new 7,000-square-foot series of galleries at the Getty Center is one of the largest spaces dedicated to photographs in North America. Four times the size of the former exhibition space, the new galleries have been specially reconfigured to provide the optimal environment for the display of photographs. The space was made available by the relocation of the Museum’s antiquities collection from the Getty Center to the Getty Villa, which opened in January 2006. The Center for Photographs features a newly redesigned entrance by Richard Meier and Partners, the architects of the Getty Center, that is approached through a dramatic open-air courtyard that feature newly installed 20th-century works from the Fran and Ray Stark Sculpture Collection. The sculptures will be unveiled in full in Spring 2007 across the Getty Center site. The new Center for Photographs will allow the Museum to mount a broader range of presentations, including loan exhibitions, and will provide opportunities for greater -more- Page 4 collaboration between the Museum and other programs of the J. Paul Getty Trust. The special collections at the Getty Research Institute hold rare historical images and photography archives for study purposes, while the Getty Conservation Institute is a leader in research on the conservation of photographs. The J. Paul Getty Museum’s Department of Photographs The Getty Museum’s Department of Photographs was established in 1984 with the acquisition of several major American and European collections. Since then, the photographs collection has grown to include more than 30,000 individual prints, 1,500 daguerreotypes and other cased objects, 30,000 stereographs and cartes-de-visite, and 475 albums containing almost 40,000 mounted photographs. The collection, which has expanded significantly in the past five years alone, largely due to gifts, includes examples from photography’s experimental beginnings in England and France in the 1830s to the fine art and social documentary traditions of the 20th century, making the Getty, and Los Angeles, an important center for the study of the history and art of photography. Over the last 22 years, along with continuing to build the collection, the Department of Photographs has presented 80 exhibitions and produced 43 publications. RELATED EXHIBITION Public Faces/Private Spaces: Recent Acquisitions October 10, 2006 - February 4, 2007 Recently acquired work by four accomplished American photographers is presented in this exhibition, with an emphasis on images made from the mid-1960s through the early 1980s. Incorporating elements of portraiture, social documentation, and street photography, selected works by Donald Blumberg, Anthony Hernandez, Mary Ellen Mark and Bill Owens demonstrate a commitment to observing the people and places that define community. # # # Page 5 MEDIA CONTACT: Beth Laski Getty Trust Communications 310-440-7360 [email protected] The J. Paul Getty Trust is an international cultural and philanthropic institution devoted to the visual arts that features the Getty Conservation Institute, the Getty Foundation, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and the Getty Research Institute. The J. Paul Getty Trust and Getty programs serve a varied audience from two locations: the Getty Center in Los Angeles and the Getty Villa in Malibu. Visiting the Getty Center: The Getty Center is open Tuesday through Thursday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. It is closed Monday and major holidays. Admission to the Getty Center is always free. Parking is $8. No reservation required. Reservations are required for event seating and groups of 15 or more. For more information, call 310-440-7300 (English or Spanish); 310-440-7305 (TTY line for the deaf or hearing impaired). Additional information is available at www.getty.edu. Sign up for e-Getty at www.getty.edu/subscribe to receive free monthly highlights of events at the Getty Center and the Getty Villa via e-mail, or visit www.getty.edu for a complete calendar of public programs. .

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