The eight artists in this installation share an interest in collecting, arranging, and manipulating objects and images drawn from sources such as popular media and family archives. Their acts of layering and remixing present new ways to think about our relationships to both personal and shared histories.

Los Angeles-based artist Mercedes Dorame’s work explores how we position ourselves in relation to the land we inhabit. For this new commission, Dorame was drawn to the view from the Getty Center across the Pacific Ocean to Pimugna, or Pimu (Catalina Island), long inhabited by the Tongva people. To conjure a return gaze from Pimugna, her installation includes painted views of the coastline and suspended sculptures of abalone—an endangered mollusk and important cultural resource for coastal California Native peoples.

This project is the first “Rotunda Commission,” a series of art installations inspired by the Getty Museum’s collection, architecture, and site.

This exhibition brings together two of the most extraordinary surviving sets of vases owned by King Louis XVI and Queen Marie-Antoinette of France during the late 1700s. The vases are among the highest achievements of the Sèvres porcelain manufactory made before the French Revolution, becoming personal treasures of the royal family at the time. They were initially kept at the Palace of Versailles outside Paris, the royal family’s primary residence, and are a testament to the exemplary skills of the artists who took part in their creation. This exhibition reunites all eight vases, that were separated during the Revolution, offering the rare opportunity to appreciate the craftsmanship and design of the ensembles.

The loan of the queen’s vases is part of an artistic exchange between the J. Paul Getty Museum and Versailles, where an important desk made for Louis XVI from the Museum’s collection is currently on long-term loan.

This exhibition is presented in English and Spanish. Esta exhibición se presenta en inglés y en español.

One of the largest pastels made in the 18th century, Maurice Quentin de La Tour’s Portrait of Gabriel Bernard de Rieux is an astonishing object. In this colossal portrait, the ambitious La Tour pushed pastel to new heights, capturing his sitter’s likeness and surrounding de Rieux with the trappings of his wealth: fine furniture, an extensive library, imported porcelain, and a globe turned to display the West coast of Africa. This focused exhibition highlights both La Tour’s technical achievement and the global reality that financed and furnished de Rieux’s world.