My Year at the Getty, 2025: Memory Poetics
In 2025 I went to the Getty Center every week it was open. I also visited the Getty Villa several times. And, of course, LACMA, the Hammer, MOCA and a few museums in other cities during travel.
In January 2025, as any reader likely knows, LA Country experienced two devastating wild fires in Pacific Palisades (this is the Getty Villa neighborhood and close to Getty Center) and in Altadena. Getty Villa was closed for almost half the year, the Getty Center for a couple of weeks.
Here in this essay I recall my aggregate experiences - my memory wayfinding - my Getty poetics.
I have many other expressions coming from My Year At the Getty, 2025. Drawings, photos, emotional responses to the fire, perhaps.
the gardens in pink bloom
The 9:45a white light bright but still cool at the top.
At some point the tram soundtrack fell silent. I missed it then.
Several window panes at the pristine museum seem to always collect dust.
Crowds pull back and deform permanently a handful of window shades seeking yet a better view.
West pavilion doors opening push a wonderful fragrance. Long associated with drawings to me.
The air conditioning on the second floor between buildings always works better than in the galleries.
I rest in Flemish lands.
When the sun positions just right the Italian Renaissance glows. Slanted light doors into the back corner, a Mary and a Jesus and some baptism of light.
I take the stairs to catch the spectrum.
I take the stairs to work harder.
I take the stairs to feel the railing.
I take the stairs to anticipate.
I take the stairs to feel the weight.
I take the stairs to ascend.
I take the stairs.
Fra A and Masaccio, right there, the crowds usually have no idea. This is the start. The start of the greatest paintings. These little humble paintings of solemn people, naturally aged and scared. They have shadows and form and heavy eyes. St. Jerome is gaunt next to them.
Madonna with the Cherries. The solemn Dutch. A German rider. Demons at the mount. A headless man, again. Boats coming ashore. The golds and vermillions loosening into the blues and velvety reds. Gold leaf to tree canopies. Landscapes emerging behind their eyes looking into mine. Soon the landscape is the thing, but not yet. We’re in Venice now or Spain. Everyone’s trying, the icons get confused with the past, the peasants speak up. But now the artists make real money and real fame and have names, you can see, you have seen.
Crossing through. E206. Most months it’s large paintings the crowds overlook. The seating is better. This year though, a rare treat. Artemisia spoils onlookers with delicious paintings of ugly truths. It’s different when she paints these subjects, these poses, these men and these women. And this gallery now always has crowds.
I’m always eager to reach to the painter of the flesh. Breaking Baroque. But. Between here and there there’s a sneaky good and big gallery of technically great paintings - lower left to top right - up up up, keep going. Always something to see over there, over there, over there! O Fortuna! Oh, misfortune. Oh. Fortune.
I rest again. I sleep sometimes. I, too, upon a slab. A ginger pulsing blue and read, orange and grey. Limp from life lived, eyes closed, but still seeing through. Carry me now, carry me out. Carry me up. No point in crying. How is this body so strong when it was denied? Not mine, that one.
It’s easy to look elsewhere. To the hunt, to the Poussin country side, to the bounty on the table, to the Jordans water spout, to Ark, to the studies in oil, to the temptations of flesh and war, to the next gallery, of all those flowery trails, boated ways, farmlands to Rembrandts natural bounty.
I will stay here though. I draw here now. I draw closer to this flesh. This glow. They all see something, and I see them.
In the winter they close me off from these sights. I must skip over, go around, go on, to the South. Where there are a lot of wigs and fish and clothes.
Flesh hidden. Everyone making sure to make good. To look good, wear good, seem good. People vacation now, they travel to places for good fun and good looks. Conquesting good. Borrowing good. It’s not so good, these ideas, to me. The painting is glorious, in technique. Painting with technique is now good, a good, for the good of those who seem good! Rococo! Romance! Pastels! Those French Wallpapers!
God, when can I just go look at the drawings again.
Oh wait, I must, as a requirement, see those painters painters! Delacroix! Cezanne! Millet! Manet! Monet! Van Gogh! Degas! CDF! Turner! Prud'hon! Gericault! I do, I swear, love them all. And not just because the wigs are gone and the regular people and myths are back! I love them for the colors and forms and skill and love they clearly have The Art of the Art!
Alas, I am aging, now. I am aged in my art, in my museuming. And I am drawn to drawing. Because it is good. The Good. It is the Art.
First floor. West. Always west. Paper and Light. Brush with Nature. Lines of Connection. Learning to Draw. Oh how I remember the Da Vinci drawings here once. Or the Michelangelo exhibit cancelled during covid. All in the past! The drawings here now. Always here now. The study. The process. The ideas. The re-imagining. The good. If there is something at the root, it is the drawing, to draw, the marks, the deformation of surface by mark, directly.
I have looked at thousands upon thousands of marks on all types of surfaces. These marks all make their mark on me. I am to draw. Always be drawing. Drawn in, draw in, draw through, this place, with these artists.
Release through the symbolists, the decorative arts, the paintings hiding above the tables and beds and globes. I know where you are Ricci. I study you, too, Rodin and your contorted rock. And you, too, weird Belgian painting!
Eventually I am back in the North, looking at bowls, plates, glasses, trinkets, amulets and statuettes. They remind me to turn around and do it again and again and again and again.
Each week, I’ll do it twice. I’ll come early, stay late. Come later, stay still later. Sometimes in the garden I’ll compose myself, within the Robert Irwin flourish, recite his incantation to be ever changing, ever present. I’ll catch the sight of LA proper and the ocean’s way. I’ll rest my eyes with the sound poem. Always to re-enter the galleries, sometimes via photographic path other times back through the steps, other times across those Moore-ish forms - to the drawing doorstep.
I forget to mention all the special exhibits I’ve seen. 2025 had The Amateur painting men and Queer Lives and Maria C and so much more. I studied those too, as much as I could. All these are the tail end of Lumen and science and art, a remarkable 2024.
I tire. Of what though? Not the art. Not the space. Not the light. I tire of putting into words what I cannot. Perhaps in my exhaustion you are left with an invitation. Join a future me in a future stroll among a sensory pull.
The End
a sketch of the facade of a research building
Epilogue
What is this memory palace I’ve recounted here?
What purpose? What for? For me? For you? For the artists before? The artists come next? Is this what artists do? Why now? Why 2025? More in 2026? Again in 2026?
Where does this memory palace end? The spaces within the spaces? The stories within my story? My story entwined with these stories? Is this memory? Is this an imagined palace? Am I seeing things? Who would ever want to look this much at the same things over and over and over? There are people that work here, academically study here, is that what I am doing? Am I looking and drawing in the way they do? Is this a prison now? A place I come to because I can’t now go anywhere else? Does it collapse if I stop coming? Does the imagination fade as memories fade? Will they repair those tarnished shades?
