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The Getty Center

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1200 Getty Center Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90049 United States

March 2017

Does Art Capture Reality Better Than the News?

March 29, 2017 • 7:00 pm PDT
The Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90049 United States
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As American social problems become more wickedly complicated, they also become harder to understand—and describe. And few in the news media, which has always struggled with complicated stories, still have the resources to tell these tales. Into this void have stepped artists, who have used their skills to capture the tragedies of the drug war, the peculiar institution of prisons, and the trauma of economic dislocation. What stories can artists tell that professional and citizen journalists can’t? And are we…

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April 2017

Adventures with the Royal Game of Ur

April 2, 2017 • 2:00 pm PDT
The Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90049 United States
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FREE

This extraordinary board game, played for three thousand years over half the ancient world with unceasing enjoyment, has bewitched Irving Finkel of the British Museum since boyhood. Due to his extensive research of an ancient cuneiform tablet containing the original rules, we can see why the game endured. In this illustrated talk, Dr. Finkel describes some of the remarkable discoveries and heart-thumping adventures of a lifetime's fascination. Above image: The Royal Game of Ur, 2600 BC, south Mesopotamia (present day…

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June 2017

What Does Blue Mean?

June 8, 2017 • 7:00 pm PDT
The Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90049 United States
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A Zócalo/Getty "Open Art" Event Moderated by Reed Johnson, Managing Editor, Zócalo Public Square Blue is, perhaps, the most poignant color. From Picasso’s Blue Period to Tennessee Williams’ “blue roses” to the Mississippi Delta Blues, the fifth hue on Newton’s centuries-old color wheel has come to convey depth, sadness, and yearning. Blue describes emotional states, musical and literary genres, and moral codes. And yet, historically, humans have found the color itself notably difficult to pin down—although blue was the first man-made pigment, it was…

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January 2018

Is L.A. Really Part of Latin America?

January 16, 2018 • 7:30 pm PST
The Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90049 United States
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A Zócalo/Getty "Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA" Event Moderated by Gregory Rodriguez, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief, Zócalo Public Square The “Mexicanism” of Los Angeles, wrote Mexican poet and onetime L.A. resident Octavio Paz, “floats, never quite existing, never quite vanishing …. I say ‘floats’ because it never mixes or unites with the other world, the North American world based on precision and efficiency.” L.A.’s historical connections to Mexico and the rest of Latin America are well known, and its human connections—in a…

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April 2018

College Night at the Getty Center

April 16, 2018 • 6:00 pm PDT
The Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90049 United States
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The J. Paul Getty Museum will host its annual College Night on Monday, April 16, 2018, from 6:00–9:30 p.m. at the Getty Center. Students from every college & university are invited to enjoy a night of music, hands-on art projects, gallery activities, special tours and talks, free food, and more. Getty College Night is a great opportunity for students to experience free exclusive access to the museum’s exhibitions and resources all for free while meeting students from all around the Greater Los Angeles area and beyond! An event…

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June 2018

A Conversation with Shirin Neshat, Shoja Azari and Mohsen Namjoo

June 4, 2018 • 7:00 pm PDT
The Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90049 United States
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$10

Renowned Iranian singer-songwriter and composer Mohsen Namjoo, and artists Shirin Neshat and Shoja Azari, come to the Getty to discuss their collaboration, On the String of the Tear's Bow. This musical and visual odyssey investigates the confluence of cultures along the Silk Road with interpretations of traditional songs by Namjoo and video and photographic installations by Neshat and Azari. Opera and theater director Peter Sellars joins the artists for this conversation.   Monday, June 4, 2018, at 7 pm Harold M.…

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August 2018

Did Women Ever Rule the World?

August 8, 2018 • 7:00 pm PDT
The Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90049 United States
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BBC documentary filmmaker Bettany Hughes, UCLA archaeologist Kara Cooney, and Joyce Tyldesley, author of Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt, visit Zócalo to examine the legacies of women who once reigned. Women might have more control over their own destinies today than at any previous time in history. But in the great game of geopolitics, contemporary women rulers hold little sway. Even Angela Merkel, often referred to as the world’s most powerful woman, is merely the head of a weak coalition…

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March 2019

Did Truth Ever Matter?

March 13, 2019 • 7:30 pm PDT
The Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90049 United States

Moderated by Sandy Banks, Former Columnist, Los Angeles Times Today, Americans wring their hands about the systematic lying in politics, and media claim to be fighting to uphold the principles of truth and the existence of verifiable facts against unprecedented challenges. But the very idea that ‘fake news’ is a new problem is itself ‘fake news.’ Way back in 1710, Gulliver’s Travels author Jonathan Swift wrote, “Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it.” And lies, slander, and libel…

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May 2019

Medieval Bestiaries and their Original Purpose

May 19, 2019 • 4:00 pm PDT
The Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90049 United States
Free

Take a journey back in time to where wild things told stories. A "descriptive or anecdotal treatise on various real or mythical kinds of animals, especially a medieval work with a moralizing tone," bestiaries are among the most enchanting and endearing of all illuminated manuscripts. Renowned manuscript expert Christopher de Hamel looks at what a bestiary comprises and where these manuscripts were made. He asks the bigger question of what their original purpose was and how bestiaries were used by their owners. The…

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June 2019

Bauhaus Beginnings

June 11, 2019 • 8:00 am PDT
The Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90049 United States

Exhibition runs through Oct 13. The origins of the Bauhaus art school (Germany 1919 to 1933) lie in the late 19th century anxieties about the soullessness of modern manufacturing, and fears about art's loss of social relevance. The Bauhaus aimed to reunite fine art and functional design, creating practical objects with the soul of artworks.  The school is also renowned for its extraordinary faculty, who subsequently led the development of modern art - and modern thought - throughout Europe and the United States. Marking…

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Is Civilization on the Verge of Collapse?

June 19, 2019 • 7:30 pm PDT
The Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90049 United States

Moderated by Edan Lepucki, Novelist and Author of California Twenty-first century visions of the future now seem drawn from Hollywood horror films. Runaway climate change portends the wholesale destruction of economies and species. Scientists fear new mass epidemics. Old technologies are breaking down and new technologies are used for oppression and social control. The deluge of digital information makes it hard to separate truth from fiction. What are the risks of human society of entering a darker, less civilized age? Do the…

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