Getty Art + Ideas

Enjoy this episode from season 2 of Getty's other podcast, Recording Artists. This series features materials from Getty's archives. This season, titled Intimate Addresses, highlights artists' letters. To hear the rest of the season, subscribe to Recording Artists on your favorite podcast app or on our website here. In 1944, Frida Kahlo is at a crossroads, both in terms of her health and her career. In April of that year, with World War II dragging on, she writes to her gallerist—and former lover—Julien Levy. In this tender and personal letter, she moves from the logistical challenges of sending art across national borders during wartime, to describing her painful new steel corsets, to asking after her many friends in New York, where Levy lives. Unpacking this letter and exploring Kahlo’s words written in her own hand provides a new understanding of an artist who has become larger than life in the years since her death at age 47. In this episode of Recording Artists: Intimate Addresses, host Tess Taylor highlights Kahlo’s vibrant personality, tracing how her artistic career developed alongside her long-running health struggles and her now-iconic style and persona. Anna Deavere Smith voices the letter. Photographer and poet Rachel Eliza Griffiths, whose work often addresses pain and the body, provides her artist’s insight while historian Circe Henestrosa, who co-curated the Kahlo exhibition Making Herself Up at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2018, shares charming anecdotes and important details of Kahlo’s life. For transcripts, images, and additional resources visit our website.

In Season 2 of Getty's podcast series Recording Artists, titled Intimate Addresses, each episode unpacks one letter from one artist, including Marcel Duchamp, Frida Kahlo, M. C. Richards, Benjamin Patterson, Nam June Paik, and Meret Oppenheim. Anna Deavere Smith reads the letters while our host, poet Tess Taylor, speaks with modern-day creators and historians to explore the artists’ lives. The season launches September 26, 2023. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app or learn more on our website here.

“I think you can see that from my work, that I try to put everything I know in there and everything I don’t know. I’m looking for stuff that I don’t know, in that pursuit of, like, a daily practice.” Terrance Hayes is fascinated by creating records of daily life. With a background in visual art and poetry, he has a nuanced understanding of what constitutes writing and reading across mediums. His work as a teacher also touches everything he does. In this episode, hosted by Getty Research Institute associate curator Dr. LeRonn Brooks, Hayes discusses his creative practice, as well as the possibilities of radical imagination in recording one’s life. Hayes is professor of creative writing at New York University. He is the author of the National Book Award finalist How to Be Drawn (Penguin, 2015) and Lighthead (2010), which won the 2010 National Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His numerous honors include a Whiting Writers Award and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, United States Artists, the Guggenheim, and the MacArthur Foundation. For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/art-and-poetry-recording-everyday-life/ or http://www.getty.edu/podcasts To learn more about Terrance Hayes, visit https://terrancehayes.com/

“What I tell my students—and most of them are writers—is that the only way for them to get to a place where they’re making what they should be making, writing what they should be writing, is to work from a place of courage.” Claudia Rankine is a skilled poet, playwright, essayist, and professor. She explores, across genres, how the act of witnessing is necessary in maintaining the social contract. During this period of immense global change, witnessing as an act is a powerful act for artists, who can incisively question the moral trajectory of a nation. In this episode, hosted by Getty Research Institute associate curator Dr. LeRonn Brooks, Rankine shares her thoughts on the role art and artists play in determining the course of history, her approach to teaching a new generation of artists, and the importance of introspection and intention in shaping our collective future. Rankine is professor of creative writing at New York University. She is the author of three plays and six collections, including Citizen: An American Lyric and Don’t Let Me Be Lonely; she has also edited several anthologies, including The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind. In 2016, she co-founded The Racial Imaginary Institute (TRII). Her most recent book is Just Us: An American Conversation (Graywolf, 2020). She is a recipient of numerous awards and honors, including MacArthur, Lannan Foundation, and Guggenheim fellowships. For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/art-and-poetry-how-to-witness-the-world/ or http://www.getty.edu/podcasts To learn more about Claudia Rankine, visit https://as.nyu.edu/faculty/claudia-rankine.html

“African American history is American history. You can’t tell it without talking about the contributions, the questions, the very heart of the creativity of African American culture.” As a poet and director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture , Kevin Young thinks a lot about how African American culture is a crucial part of American culture. From blues music to poetry, from cakewalk dances to Black Twitter, Young draws connections across time as he discusses a wide range of art forms and cultural phenomena. In this episode, hosted by Getty Research Institute associate curator Dr. LeRonn Brooks, Young discusses his poetry and the visibility and influence of African American art across mediums and history. Young is the Andrew W. Mellon Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and the poetry editor of The New Yorker. He has published fifteen books of poetry and prose and is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize and the PEN Open Book Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and MacDowell Colony. He was also finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/art-and-poetry-connecting-stories-at-the-national-museum-of-african-american-history-and-culture/ or http://www.getty.edu/podcasts To learn more about Kevin Young, visit https://kevinyoungpoetry.com/

“Culture isn’t just dead stones and statues; culture is life. Culture is, you know, all the ways in which we move and interact together as peoples.” In 2005, the United Nations agreed to a new framework called Responsibility to Protect (R2P) aimed at preventing genocide and crimes against humanity. However, this norm neglected to protect cultural heritage explicitly, despite the fact that the destruction of cultural heritage, including intangible heritage such as traditions and religious practices, often goes hand in hand with ethnic cleansing. This dynamic is playing out today in Xinjiang China, home to the ethnic minority Uyghur people. In this episode, former Getty President Jim Cuno speaks with Simon Adams, president and CEO of the Center for Victims of Torture, and Rachel Harris, expert on Uyghur culture and professor of ethnomusicology at SOAS, University of London, about the role of the UN in protecting cultural heritage in times of crisis and the current case of the Uyghur people in China. Adams and Harris are contributors to the recent publication Cultural Heritage and Mass Atrocities, edited by Jim Cuno and Thomas G. Weiss and available free of charge from Getty Publications. For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/cultural-heritage-under-attack-the-united-nations-and-uyghur-china/ or http://www.getty.edu/podcasts To read Cultural Heritage and Mass Atrocities, visit https://www.getty.edu/publications/cultural-heritage-mass-atrocities/

“Protecting cultural heritage, like protecting civilians directly, had strategic import.” How does the presence of a cultural heritage site on the battlefield change wartime decision making? In 1944, as Allied generals postponed an attack on an Axis stronghold—located at the culturally important Catholic abbey Monte Cassino—they had to consider the potential for loss of life, the cultural significance of the abbey, the negative propaganda they would face for attacking a religious site, and the possible strategic alternatives to an all-out attack. Political scientists Ron E. Hassner and Scott D. Sagan make the case that the presence of cultural heritage sites is always an important consideration for troops in both offensive and defensive positions—even in cases where those sites are ultimately destroyed. In this episode, hosted by former Getty President Jim Cuno, Hassner and Sagan discuss battles from WWII through the current war in Ukraine to explore how politicians and military officials think about cultural heritage sites during times of war. Ron E. Hassner is Chancellor’s Professor of Political Science and Helen Diller Family Chair in Israel Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Scott D. Sagan is the Caroline S. G. Munro Professor of Political Science and senior fellow and codirector at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. Hassner and Sagan are contributors to the recent publication Cultural Heritage and Mass Atrocities, edited by Jim Cuno and Thomas G. Weiss and available free of charge from Getty Publications. For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/cultural-heritage-under-attack-monuments-and-war-zones/ or http://www.getty.edu/podcasts To read Cultural Heritage and Mass Atrocities, visit https://www.getty.edu/publications/cultural-heritage-mass-atrocities/

“The society we now live in has been, in large measure, accomplished by destroying the cultural heritage of previous generations at various moments.” Cultural heritage is made up of the monuments, works of art, and practices that a society uses to define and understand itself and its history. The question of exactly which monuments or practices should be considered cultural heritage evolves as the society changes how it views itself—and, perhaps more importantly, how it views its future. This slippery definition of heritage is at the core of many of the challenges preservationists and heritage professionals face today. In this episode, hosted by former Getty President Jim Cuno, Neil Macgregor and Kavita Singh discuss who gets to define cultural heritage and why that matters, using examples pulled from the French Revolution to contemporary Sri Lanka. Neil Macgregor is the former director of the National Gallery, London, the British Museum, and the Humboldt Forum in Berlin. Kavita Singh is professor at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Macgregor and Singh are contributors to the recent publication Cultural Heritage and Mass Atrocities, edited by Jim Cuno and Thomas G. Weiss and available free of charge from Getty Publications. For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/cultural-heritage-under-attack-who-defines-heritage/ or http://www.getty.edu/podcasts To read Cultural Heritage and Mass Atrocities, visit https://www.getty.edu/publications/cultural-heritage-mass-atrocities/

"I know we call them art museums, but I think they’re really wellbeing centers, because people are coming in—maybe they don’t know that’s what’s about to happen—but you are helping them expand who they are, and give them these three feelings of awe, gratitude, and compassion, that are the keys to living a healthy and meaningful life." What exactly is the human mind? This question has occupied Dr. Dan Siegel since he entered the field of psychiatry in the 1980s. Drawing from his experiences on a suicide prevention hotline, his time pursuing dance, and his wide-ranging studies on subjects from complex systems to indigenous traditions, Siegel has worked to define and better understand the human mind. His approach is both neurobiological and takes into account relationships among people and between people and nature. Among other tools that support mental health, Siegel emphasizes the role of art in promoting mental and emotional wellbeing. In this episode, Siegel speaks with Getty Museum educator Lilit Sadoyan about his definition of the mind, the importance of art, and how we might think about our relationships to each other and our environment. Siegel is a best-selling author, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, and the founding co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA. For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/mindfulness-in-the-museum-art-for-mental-wellbeing/ or http://www.getty.edu/podcasts To learn more about Dan Siegel, visit https://drdansiegel.com/ To learn more about the Mindful Awareness Research Center, visit https://www.uclahealth.org/programs/marc

“The museums give us these just incredible opportunities to have some kind of an encounter with different ways of seeing the world, shining a light on some aspect of our history or aspect of our humanity that opens up a new doorway for me to see things differently.” While mindfulness is often thought of as a solitary practice, law professor and meditation teacher Rhonda Magee believes in its power to support collective healing. It can bridge the divide between subjects like law or physics, which are often thought of as cold and dispassionate, and our personal experiences, stories, and feelings by allowing us to become more in touch with and aware of the human element of academic disciplines. Approaching museum spaces and artworks with a similar mindset, Magee sees opportunities for mindfulness to increase empathy, understanding, and healing. In this episode, hosted by Getty Museum educator Lilit Sadoyan, Magee shares her own path to mindfulness and how mindfulness can be a critical tool in the classroom, the museum, and everyday encounters and experiences. Magee is professor of law at the University of San Francisco and author of the book The Inner Work of Racial Justice: Healing Ourselves and Transforming Our Communities Through Mindfulness. For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/mindfulness-in-the-museum-healing-through-mindfulness/ or http://www.getty.edu/podcasts To learn more about Rhonda Magee, visit https://www.rhondavmagee.com/

“Mindfulness, for me, enables me to experience an art museum as if I’m listening to music. To just listen, attend to how all these objects make me feel.” How can mindfulness change our experience of art? Experienced meditation teacher and guide Tracy Cochran sees museums as perfect places to practice the lessons of mindfulness. From focusing on how an artwork impacts the feelings in her body to using the meditation techniques of “beginner’s mind” or “don’t know mind” to understand a work of art in a new way, Cochran sees many opportunities for applying mindfulness in the museum. In this episode, hosted by Getty Museum educator Lilit Sadoyan, Cochran shares her understanding of mindfulness and its role in art spaces as well as some techniques for practicing mindfulness in museums. Cochran teaches mindfulness meditation and mindful writing in the greater New York area at institutions such as the Rubin Museum of Art, New York Insight Meditation Center, and numerous schools, libraries, and corporations. She is also the editorial director of Parabola magazine. For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/mindfulness-in-the-museum-lessons-from-a-meditation-guide/ or http://www.getty.edu/podcasts To learn more about Tracy Cochran, visit https://tracycochran.org/

“Whenever I take people in there, I say—and it’s not a very large room—I say, ‘You’re now in the presence of millions and millions and millions of living beings. Fortunately, most of them are very small, and most of them are very dormant.’” In the late 1920s, Susanna Bixby Bryant founded a garden devoted to preserving the diverse native plants of California. Well ahead of her time and against the advice of experts, she crafted a garden showcasing plants from across the state. Today, the California Botanic Garden, formerly known as the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden[KK1] , is an 86-acre park in Claremont that highlights the climate zones and plant families of California. The garden is home to rare plants, a seed bank, and an herbarium (a research collection of plant specimens), which allow it to play a key role in preserving California native species as they face increased pressure due to climate change and habitat loss. In this episode, host Brian Houck walks through the California Botanic Garden with Lucinda McDade, its executive director. They discuss the garden’s history, their favorite native plants, and some tips for growing them in your own garden. For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/the-art-of-gardening-california-native-plants/ or http://www.getty.edu/podcasts To learn more about the California Botanic Garden, visit https://www.calbg.org/

“I’m after the charm of tomatoes. I’m after the history of tomatoes. Just obviously, appeal and taste and all of that. But if I can tie it up all in one bundle, that’s what I wanna choose.” Tomatoes are a nearly universal plant—native to South America, they now flourish on every continent except Antarctica. Tomatoes have been bred, often by home gardeners, for their looks, flavors, and suitability for diverse climates. This has resulted in thousands of varieties of heirloom tomatoes, meaning tomatoes that can be grown from seed. These plants carry stories of exploration and innovation, and they can also teach important lessons about gardening and our connection to food. Every year, garden designer Scott Daigre celebrates heirloom tomatoes through his Tomatomania! pop-up events, which bring hundreds of varieties of tomato seedlings to Southern California gardeners. In this episode, Daigre explains what heirloom tomatoes are, why people love them, and how to grow them in your garden. For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/the-art-of-gardening-tomatomania/ or http://www.getty.edu/podcasts

“What it is that we do at Disneyland is tell stories. And the horticulture is a work of art helping to tell the story.” At Disneyland, elaborate, immaculate gardens spring to life literally overnight—four times a year. While plants might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think about a theme park, these gardens are a crucial part of the Disneyland experience because they tell the story of place through plants. For instance, in the Star Wars-themed zone Galaxy’s Edge, exotic succulents and flowers create an otherworldly atmosphere. Adam Schwerner, Disneyland’s director of horticulture and resort enhancement, uses lessons learned from artists to create a wonder-filled, magical environment at the park. In this episode, Schwerner and Getty grounds manager Luis Gómez, who previously worked at Disneyland, speak with guest host Brian Houck, Getty’s head of grounds and gardens, about how they came to work in horticulture, what it takes to design and maintain artful gardens, and what inspires them. For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/the-art-of-gardening-storytelling-with-plants-at-disneyland/ or http://www.getty.edu/podcasts

“I was there for the groundbreaking of the Getty Center. I was there for opening day of the Getty Center. I think for a lot of people, it said LA has arrived.” After nearly 15 years in the making, the Getty Center opened to much fanfare on December 16, 1997. Perched on a mountaintop with sweeping views of the surrounding city and coastline, the new campus quickly became an architectural and cultural landmark in Los Angeles. This year marks the Center’s 25th anniversary. In honor of this milestone, we asked our community to share their Getty memories. In this episode, Jim Cuno’s last as host and Getty president, he reflects on his time there. We also hear from staff, docents, and members of our community about the opening of the Getty Center and other favorite memories of the site. For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/podcast-reflecting-on-25-years-of-the-getty-center/ or http://www.getty.edu/podcasts

“There was a lotta negativity because there was just pictures of Black people. That was one of the critiques, that we just photographed Black people. Said, ‘Yeah. You photograph just white people.’ That was the argument.” In New York City in 1963, a group of Black photographers came together, naming themselves the Kamoinge Workshop. Translated from the Kikuyu language, kamoinge means a group of people acting together. The artists indeed worked closely together, focusing on reflecting Black life through photographs and increasing Black representation in professional organizations like the American Society of Magazine Photographers (now American Society of Media Photographers). The exhibition Working Together: The Photographers of the Kamoinge Workshop showcases members’ work from the 1960s and ’70s. In this episode, artist Adger Cowans and Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) curator Sarah Eckhardt discusses Kamoinge’s history and future as well as the exhibition Working Together. The exhibition is organized by the VFMA and is on view at the Getty Center through October 9, 2022. For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/podcast-black-photographers-represent-their-world/ or http://www.getty.edu/podcasts To learn more about the exhibition Working Together: The Photographers of the Kamoinge Workshop visit https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/kamoinge/index.html

"You know, everything is not just red, yellow, blue, and coming from a tube. It can be anything out there in the world. Grab it and use it." In 1956, artist Ed Ruscha left his home in Oklahoma and drove with his childhood friend to Los Angeles. Drawn to the city by its palm trees and apparent lack of an established art scene, Ruscha stayed to attend Chouinard Art Institute (now CalArts), where he aspired to be a sign painter. In the decades since, Ruscha has become a world-renowned artist, but much of his art continues to be informed by LA. In this episode, Ruscha discusses how he became an artist, his thoughts on his career today, and his decades-long project documenting Sunset Boulevard. For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/podcast-ed-ruschas-los-angeles/ or http://www.getty.edu/podcasts To learn more about Ruscha's photographs of Sunset Boulevard, visit https://12sunsets.getty.edu/map/narrative

“The camera sort of teaches you to see in a really different way and to experience your environment in a different way, and to pay attention to the act of looking.” Photographer Uta Barth’s photographs focus on the act of looking. She has long been interested in creating images in which there is no discernable subject, but rather the image or light itself is the subject. Barth’s conceptual photographs examine how we see and how we define foreground and background. Her series are often long-term engagements; she photographs the same place over many months, or even years, to understand how light changes a space over time. She recently completed a series at the Getty Center taken over the course of a year and comprising over 60,000 images. Barth has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation. In this episode, Barth discusses her approach to making images through several of her bodies of work including Ground, Figure, and her new Getty series. Her career will be the subject of a retrospective at the Getty Center in fall 2022. For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/podcast-uta-barths-atmospheric-photographs/ or http://www.getty.edu/podcasts To learn more about Uta Barth, visit https://utabarth.net/

“The underworld, the afterlife, is fairly dank, dark, shadowy; quite frankly, it’s a bit boring. Somewhat like waiting at a bus depot.” Homer’s Odyssey depicts an afterlife that is relatively dull, with heroic actions and glory reserved for the living. Nonetheless, people in Southern Italy in the fourth century BCE were captivated by the underworld and decorated large funerary vases with scenes of the afterlife—the domain of Hades and Persephone, where sinners like Sisyphus are tortured for eternity and heroes like Herakles and Orpheus performed daring feats. Little is known about precisely how these vases were used and seen in death rituals. A new book by Getty Publications, Underworld: Imagining the Afterlife in Ancient South Italian Vase Painting, brings together 40 such vases and explores new research on them. In this episode, Getty Museum curator of antiquities David Saunders discusses these enormous and often elaborate vases, explaining the myths they depict and what is known about the ways in which they were used. Saunders is editor of Underworld. For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/podcast-imagining-the-afterlife-through-ancient-vases/ or http://www.getty.edu/podcasts To buy the book Underworld: Imagining the Afterlife in Ancient South Italian Vase Painting, visit https://shop.getty.edu/products/underworld-imagining-the-afterlife-in-ancient-south-italian-vase-painting-978-1606067345 To learn more about the exhibition, visit https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/ancient_underworld/

“I had heard the tale and knew what to expect, but it was by far the most damaged painting I had seen. When it arrived, it came into the studio and the damage was almost all that you could see.” In 2017 Willem de Kooning’s painting Woman-Ochre returned to the University of Arizona Museum of Art (UAMA) more than 30 years after it had been stolen off the gallery walls. Because the theft and subsequent treatment of the work had caused significant damage, the UAMA enlisted the Getty Museum and Getty Conservation Institute to help repair the painting. When the work arrived at the Getty in 2019, the damage was so extreme that it was all paintings conservator Laura Rivers could see; prominent cracks and flaking paint obscured the artwork itself. Rivers worked alongside her colleague Douglas MacLennan, a conservation scientist who used advanced analytic methods like X-ray fluorescence and microfade testing to inform their conservation work. The results of their multi-year collaboration are finally on view in the exhibition Conserving de Kooning: Theft and Recovery. In this episode, Getty Museum conservator Laura Rivers and Getty Conservation Institute scientist Douglas MacLennan discuss their work conserving Woman-Ochre, which is on display at the Getty Center through August 28, 2022. For images, transcripts, and more, visit https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/podcast-damaged-de-kooning-on-display-at-last/ or http://www.getty.edu/podcasts To hear more about the theft and conservation process for Woman-Ochre, visit http://blogs.getty.edu/iris/podcast-the-recovery-and-conservation-of-a-stolen-de-kooning/ To learn more about the exhibition, visit https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/de_kooning/index.html