Brooks, who has been a curator of drawings at the Museum since 2004, succeeds Lee Hendrix, who retired at the end of June following a 32-year career at the Getty.
“Throughout his twelve years at the Getty, Julian distinguished himself as a curator of outstanding exhibitions—most recently on Andrea del Sarto—and as a connoisseur of drawings for acquisition, at the same time, becoming progressively more and more involved with the management of the department,” says Potts. “During the search process, it became clear from our conversations with colleagues at home and abroad that he was the ideal candidate to lead the department’s continued growth in the development of the collection and the associated programs of exhibitions, publications, and public events, in partnership with a stellar team of curators.”
“I have had the pleasure of working at the Getty, under Lee’s direction, for more than a decade. I am excited to pick up where she left off and continue the exceptional work of the Drawings Department at the Getty,” said Brooks. “Through key acquisitions and exhibitions, Lee has brought drawings to the forefront of what the Getty can offer its visitors, with a dedicated suite of rotation galleries for works on paper unmatched anywhere else. It’s an immense privilege to continue that work.”
Before joining the Getty Museum, Brooks worked for four years at the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford as Print Room Supervisor. Prior to that, he was at The Burlington Magazine (1993–1995), the leading British art history journal, and at the Cadogan Gallery in London (1992–1993). He is considered one of the most widely respected figures in the field of master drawings today.
At the Getty Museum, Brooks has organized and co-organized numerous exhibitions, including most recently J.M.W Turner: Painting Set Free, Andrea del Sarto: The Renaissance Workshop in Action, which traveled to the Frick Collection in New York City, and Leonardo da Vinci and the Art of Sculpture: Inspiration and Invention, a show he co-curated that remains one of the most highly visited exhibitions in the Getty Museum’s history. He is also co-curator of the upcoming exhibition London Calling: Bacon, Freud, Kossoff, Andrews, Auerbach, and Kitaj which examines the artists of the “School of London” who rejected contemporary art’s preoccupation with abstraction and conceptualism in favor of the human figure and everyday landscape.
Brooks has given numerous talks and public lectures at the Getty and elsewhere, including “Andrea del Sarto: The Tailor’s Son and the Making of Masterpieces” (Frick Collection, NYC, November 2015) and has published many books, including most recently Andrea del Sarto: The Renaissance Workshop in Action and Master Drawings Close-Up, which was co-published by Getty Publications and British Museum Press
Since 2008, Brooks has been involved with judging the Werner Hirsch Prize for Contemporary Figurative Drawing at UCLA. He was appointed to the comitato scientifico of the Rivista d’Arte in 2011 and was closely involved in founding and now running the Disegno Group, the Drawings Council at the Getty Museum. From April to June 2013, Brooks was the Craig Hugh Smyth Visiting Fellow at Harvard’s Villa I Tatti in Florence.
Brooks received his BA from Exeter University and D Phil (PhD) from the University of Oxford, writing his dissertation on the drawings of the Florentine late-Renaissance artist Andrea Boscoli.