As Alison Saar explored the galleries, she was disappointed by the limited cultural scope of the predominantly Greek and Roman antiquities collection—then housed in the lower West Pavilion. Noticing the prominence given to the Statue of Hercules (Lansdowne Herakles), whose placement emphasized, in her words, his “power and importance within the realm of Western myth and history,” she conceived of a new sculpture titled Afro-di(e)ty. While a play on the name Aphrodite, Saar based her multimedia work on the Yoruba goddess Yemaya, a nurturing mother figure. As Lyons noted, the piece was “born in response not only to what Saar saw at the museum but to what she did not see.”
John Baldessari homed in on an artwork that would speak to the very act of acquiring and archiving: Albrecht Dürer’s Stag Beetle, a small 16th-century watercolor. Baldessari replicated and enlarged it to around 11 by 14 feet and pierced its bug with a comically large specimen pin. Former Getty Museum director John Walsh called it “a meditation on what we collect.” On permanent view, Baldessari’s Specimen (After Dürer) remains a visitor favorite for its drama and wit.
Judy Fiskin chose to focus on the symbolism of the Getty Center itself and how it shifted the gravitational center of L.A.’s cultural scene. Her video *My Getty Center* is a playful critique of what she describes as, “A chronicle of the winter of 1997, when El Niño and the Getty Center came to Los Angeles at the same time, generating a few rainstorms, a billion-dollar cultural complex, and an avalanche of hype.” Expressing a love-hate relationship with museums in general, and poking fun at the astounding wealth of collectors like J. Paul Getty, the video elicited rowdy laughter when shown to Getty staff.
Each of the 11 artists gave public talks during the three-month run of the exhibition, and their commissioned works are now part of Getty’s collections. Among Baldessari’s statements: “A masterpiece is only a masterpiece insofar as it informs the present.”
