Archival Program Information
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Conference


Thursday and Friday, December 2 and 3, 2010
9:15 a.m.–5:00 p.m.; Museum Lecture Hall, The Getty Center
Admission is free. Reservations required for each day.


Thursday, December 2, 2010
Friday, December 3, 2010

Self Portraits: Fictions /  book cover
 
About the Conference
Rome—with its cardinals and international ambassadors to the papal court, its ancient barons and its newcomers trying to appear as if they descended from Caesar, all building, expanding, remodeling, and furnishing magnificent palaces, or trying to rent quarters befitting their needs and status—provided a powerful model for how the elites of Europe and beyond should live with an abundance of art. Here, display of art was calibrated to the ceremony of life and work in these great houses, to an etiquette and hierarchy that applied to every person, space, and thing.

This two-day conference is part of a Getty Research Institute research project on display in Roman houses from 1550 to 1750, two centuries that encompass the beginnings of collecting, as it is generally understood today, and the end of the "baroque," by which time a very different concept of the interior had taken shape. Different media categories, moveable and immoveable—such as frescoes, cabinet pictures, tapestries, sculpture, and architecture—have been studied, yet little attention has been given to their integration into ensembles in which people conducted their lives. The wealth of microhistories on collecting allows for a broad-gauged analysis of display, and how it informed emerging concepts of art and art history. Conference presentations will explore the social and cultural context for display, the circuitry of production and the art market, access to interiors, and the processes by which desire was negotiated into concrete aesthetic environments that responded to the contingencies of life and change.

Accommodations
Hotel Angeleno, Brentwood: (800) 738-7477
Luxe Hotel Sunset Boulevard, Bel Air: (800) 468-3541

Ask for the Getty (Roman Palaces Symposium) rate.