The Getty Center
Los Angeles
SOME UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS

Imagining Christ
May 6–July 27, 2008
Medieval and Renaissance images of Christ functioned as powerful entry points to prayer. This exhibition of manuscripts from the Getty's permanent collection spans the years from around 1000 to 1500, and demonstrates the multiple, overlapping ways in which Christ was understood: as the son of God and as God, as human and divine, as the sacrifice made for mankind and the divine judge who would come again. The exhibition examines the role Christ played in the devotional life of medieval and Renaissance faithful and demonstrates how manuscript images allowed viewers to imaginatively participate in Christ's life, sacrifice and acts of salvation.

The Marvel and Measure of Peru: Three Centuries of Visual Histories, 1560–1880
July 8–October 19, 2008
This exhibition features Martín de Murúa's (Spanish, active late 16th and early 17th centuries) Historia general del Piru held in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum, a recently rediscovered and related manuscript chronicle by Murúa in a private collection in Ireland, textiles from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the University of California, Santa Barbara, two early books in the Huntington Library, and books, prints, maps, watercolors and photographs from the special collections of the Research Library at the Getty Research Institute. The Research Library's collections include such famous volumes as de Bry's Grands voyages of 1596 and 1617, and the gently satirical watercolors by 19th-century Lima caricaturist Pancho Fierro. Other highlights are early photographs from a newly acquired collection of long lost views of ancient sites by the pioneering archeologist Augustus Le Plongeon, and studio albums depicting modern Peruvian life. Leading up to the exhibition, the Research Institute is working with the Museum and Conservation Institute, as well as outside scholars, on technical analysis of the two manuscript chronicles. A scholarly workshop, a facsimile publication of the Getty Murúa, and an accompanying volume of essays on the manuscript by an international group of scholars are also under way.

Faces of Power and Piety: Medieval Portraiture
August 12–October 26, 2008
The art of portraiture in illuminated manuscripts developed from the highly stylized portrayals of the early Middle Ages to the late medieval emergence of recognizable portraits. The exhibition explores both historical portraits of people from the past, including religious figures, authors, and artists, and portraits of living individuals, usually the owner or donor of a book. Throughout the period, the goal of portraiture was to present a person not at a particular moment in time, but as the subject wished to be remembered for the ages.

The Belles Heures of the Duke of Berry
November 18, 2008–February 8, 2009
The Belles Heures of John, Duke of Berry is one of the most beloved books of the Middle Ages and one of the most sumptuous. Painted by the Limbourg brothers when the art of manuscript illumination in France reached new heights of elegance and sophistication, the book, in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, will be presented with its individual leaves unbound. The resulting display offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the visitor to walk through the book to view all of its major miniatures, a unique gallery of paintings of sublime beauty.

Go to the Getty website.