Look Ahead: Exhibition Calendar

Photographer Robert Polidori, known for his images of architecture and human habitats, created a series of images of the Getty Center shortly before the opening of the multipurpose complex in 1997. As the Center celebrates its twentieth anniversary, this exhibition features behind-the-scenes views of the building and galleries as objects from J. Paul Getty’s painting, sculpture, and decorative arts collections were being installed in the Museum for the first time.

European paper was not manufactured in giant sheets until the nineteenth century. Competing with painters who worked on monumental canvases, eighteenth-century pastellists joined together multiple sheets of paper in order to create large, continuous surfaces. The piecing together of pastels, however, also served other purposes, allowing artists to paper over their mistakes or paste the heads of important sitters onto bodies posed by models. Matching each exhibited pastel with a map of its component sheets, this installation encourages visitors to consider how these objects were made.