Recording Artists

Laser physicist Billy Klüver really loved his lasers. But what divided the beauty of the laser (at least in Klüver’s eyes) from art? As the co-founder of the nonprofit group Experiments in Art and Technology, drawing...

What do engineers get out of working with artists? In a series of talks designed to attract new engineers and artists to the group Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), engineers Fred Waldhauer and Robby Robbinson...

What makes good art good and what makes that experience stick with you? Engineer Billy Klüver, who co-founded the nonprofit group Experiments in Art and Technology, has a great answer to that question—but we couldn’t...

Did you know Robert Rauschenberg was fired by John Cage? Us either—until we heard Rauschenberg telling his side of the story to Barbara Rose in one of the interviews in Getty’s archives. We’re sharing clips from the...

Check out Getty’s newest podcast, ReCurrent, a series about what we gain by keeping the past present. In this inaugural episode, host and producer Jaime Roque shares a heartfelt journey through his family’s history and...

Laser physicist Billy Klüver had always been interested in art. So when he started working at Bell Labs in New Jersey in the late 1950s, he began going into Manhattan and meeting artists—and in short order he was...

Robert Rauschenberg is one of the best-known artists of the 20th century, in part because he never stopped exploring new mediums and styles. His work with new technology, however, is often overlooked. In 1960, a chance...

Artist Fujiko Nakaya is best known for her ethereal sculptures made with fog. But her very first fog sculpture, which kicked off decades of working with this unusual and highly technical material, came about almost by...

In season three of Recording Artists, artist and futurist Ahmed Best examines the groundbreaking art-science organization Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.). Through the stories of E.A.T.’s co-founders, artist...

In this special live episode of Recording Artists, season two host Tess Taylor speaks with Getty Research Institute curator Pietro Rigolo about the making of the series, what she discovered through the letters, and...

In 1975, Meret Oppenheim’s small painting Würgeengel, or Angel of Death, is included in a sprawling exhibition organized by famous curator Harald Szeemann. She had painted it over 40 years earlier, when she was only 16...

In the mid-1960s, Nam June Paik is living in a run-down studio in SoHo, struggling to make ends meet. But even as he jokes about his ongoing battle against cockroaches, he is building his network, seeking out support...

On May 20, 1962, the morning after his first child is born, Benjamin Patterson writes a touching birth announcement to his own parents. The letter covers all the usual details—the baby’s weight and height, how the birth...

By 1956, M. C. Richards has earned a PhD in English, taught poetry at Black Mountain College, gotten married (and divorced) twice, dedicated herself to pottery, helped found an artists’ cooperative alongside creators...

It’s July 1942, and the artist Marcel Duchamp has recently arrived in New York City after fleeing the Nazis in Vichy France. As he settles in, he writes to his longtime friend and fellow artist Man Ray, who is living in...