Press Materials

This single-work display showcases the Museum’s recently acquired Destruction of Pharaoh’s Host by the English Romantic artist, John Martin (1789-1854). The installation explores this fascinating drawing and highlights Martin’s connection to Los Angeles, namely the artist’s influence on generations of Hollywood movie makers, including Cecil B. DeMille and Ray Harryhausen. Curated by Edina Adam. 

The Getty Villa is modeled on the Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum. Buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, the ancient villa was rediscovered and explored by subterranean tunnels in the 1750s and '60s again in the 1990s and early 2000s. It has yielded spectacular colored marble and mosaic floors, frescoed walls, a large collection of bronze and marble statuary, and a library of more than a thousand papyrus scrolls. This exhibition presents rare original artifacts and traces attempts to unroll and decipher the carbonized papyri.