Collector's Choice: J. Paul Getty and His Antiquities

Special Exhibitions

Collector's Choice: J. Paul Getty and His Antiquities
By STAN PARCHIN
November 4, 2009

Gerald L. Brockhurst (English, 1890-1978). Portrait of J. Paul Getty (1938). Oil on canvas. 73.7 x 61 cm (29 x 24 in.). J. Paul Getty Museum.

Roman. Statue of Venus (the Mazarin Venus) (100-200 A.D.). Marble. H: 184 cm (72 7/16 in.). J. Paul Getty Museum.

The J. Paul Getty Museum celebrates the 70th anniversary of its founder's first purchase of an ancient artwork with Collector's Choice: J. Paul Getty and His Antiquities (November 18, 2009-February 8, 2010). On the second floor of the Getty Villa (modeled largely after the Roman Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum), the exhibition presents 30 objects from the philanthropist's original collection. The Getty Research Institute enriched the presentation with vintage photographs, correspondence and historical records that document the works' acquisition.

American industrialist J. Paul Getty (1892-1976) had an overwhelming fascination with Greek, Etruscan and Roman art. In his book The Joys of Collecting (1965), he wrote, "Few human activities provide an individual with a greater sense of personal gratification than the assembling of a collection of art objects that... he feels have true and lasting beauty." The oil tycoon replaced a small gallery on his Malibu estate with a museum in 1974. Closed in 1997 for extensive renovations, the building reopened in 2006 as the Getty Villa, a destination for scholars of classical antiquity replete with 44,000 artifacts, some 1,200 currently on view.

Collector's Choice... (the exhibition's name taken from the title of a 1955 book Getty co-authored with Ethel Le Vane) displays the businessman's favorite works of ancient art. The installation describes his interaction with scholars and connoisseurs, their wise counsel having determined the objects' purchase by the billionaire. Among Getty's most prized acquisitions to be seen are the Mazarin Venus (100-200 A.D.) and Head of a Young Woman from a Grave Naiskos (ca. 320 B.C.).

The Mazarin Venus
Its history shrouded in myth and folklore, the Mazarin Venus (100-200 A.D.) depicts the goddess of love clutching a piece of cloth to conceal her nudity. A Roman marble copy based on a popular Hellenistic sculpture by Praxiteles (ca. 350 B.C.), the deity stands beside a dolphin, symbolic of her birth from the sea.

Discovered in Rome in 1509, the voluptuous sculpture of Venus (its breasts, arms, dolphin and parts of its cloth restored) is still thought by some to have been owned by Cardinal Mazarin (1502-1661), the crafty Italian advisor of Louis XIV (r. 1643-1715) during the ostentatious French king's minority. The legendary statue's head is possibly part of another classical antiquity.

Permalink: http://artmuseumjournal.com/collectors_choice_getty_and_his_antiquities.aspx

Art Museum Journal

The latest news from museums worldwide about permanent installations, special exhibitions and art history, covering antiquity through modern times.