Robert Polidori: 20 Photographs of the Getty Museum, 1997

 In celebration of the 20th anniversary of the opening of the Getty Center, the J. Paul Getty Museum announced today an exhibition of 20 works by renowned photographer Robert Polidori (Canadian-French-American, born 1951). Robert Polidori: 20 Photographs of the Getty Museum, 1997 is the first public exhibition of photographs showing the first installation of the Getty Center in the month leading up to its opening in December 1997.

Highly regarded for his depictions of human habitats and cultural museology, Polidori produced these intimate and unstaged views of the Getty Center in fall 1997 while on assignment for The New Yorker. Initially limited to surveying the exterior grounds because of restricted access, he lobbied successfully for permission to photograph the Center’s indoor spaces as well. Polidori ultimately produced about 60 exposures of the gardens, entrance hall, galleries, and various spaces across the site. Working in what he called an “old analogical way” with a large-format camera and Kodak Vericolor film, Polidori created this group of photographs at a moment when digital photography was gaining momentum, embraced by amateur and professional photographers alike.

This exhibition features a selection of photographs Polidori made of interior spaces within the Getty Museum, work he generated while in the midst of a multi-year project to document period rooms undergoing restoration at the Palace of Versailles. Many of the images reveal the process of installing objects from J. Paul Getty’s painting, sculpture, and decorative arts collections in the new galleries, some of which remain on display today. A book titled Synchrony and Diachrony, published by Steidl and featuring texts by Polidori, David Dorenbaum (psychoanalyst and assistant professor at the University of Toronto), and Amanda Maddox (associate curator, Department of Photographs, J. Paul Getty Museum), will be released on the occasion of the exhibition.

When
12 December 2017 to 6 May 2018
Where
The Getty Center
1200 Getty Center Drive
90049 Los Angeles, USA
Organizer
J. Paul Getty Museum
Link
The Getty

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