Amuse Me
Hundreds of these muses lead architecture, garden and gallery tours at the Getty Center and Villa.
Who are the docents?
Monet sat for hours in a farmer’s field to paint these.
What are Wheatstacks?
The Panathenaic amphora stored this type of "liquid gold.”
What is olive oil?
This feature was famously referred to by Museum director John Walsh as a puzzle solvable visually or by ducks.
What is the azalea maze in the Central Garden?
The docent discount at the Getty bookstore.
What is 25%?
Thalia, the mythological muse of comedy is often identified by either of these attributes.
What is the mask or trumpet?
The Getty owns three paintings by this artist-dandy-provocateur, who never exhibited with the Impressionists but is considered one of the greats of modern Paris.
Who is Édouard Manet?
The very powerful gas-blast phase of a volcano’s eruption is named after this famous Roman.
Who is Pliny the Younger? They are called Plinian eruptions, and Vesuvius eruption had killed his uncle.
Hundreds of this local tree, an effective fire retardant material, blanket the slopes of the Getty Center.
What is California (or Coast) live oak?
A 2005 CT Scan revealed this mummified with mummy Herakleides.
What is an ibis?
This Titan goddess became mother to the nine muses following nine consecutive nights of knowing the Olympian god Zeus.
Who is Mnemosyne? She is the goddess of memory.
In John Deare’s marble relief Venus with a Sea Monster, the goddess displays affection of this sort, considered scandalous in the 19th century, even with a Capricorn.
What is a chin chucking?
Gems of this material are said to have magical properties. The modern word “electricity” derives from its Greek name.
What is amber?
Landscape architect Dan Kiley designed the cactus garden at the Getty Center. Coopers or vintners might know the first word of this type of cacti, which he humorously referred to as “mother in law chair.”
What is barrel cactus?
This Renaissance artist had an appetizer named after him in 1950 at Harry's Bar in Venice.
Who is Vittore Carpaccio?
Calliope, whose name means "beautifully voiced," was mother to Orpheus, a gifted player of this musical instrument.
What is a lyre?
Gallery owner Mssr Durand-Ruel sustained this loosely associated group of artists.
Who are the Impressionists?
Carried by Mercury in Johann Gregor van der Schardt’s bronze sculpture on view in the North Pavilion, this staff is entwined by two serpents and is surmounted by wings.
What is the caduceus?
A graffitied rock in the Central Garden is a tribute from artist Robert Irwin to these two dear ones.
Who are his wife and daughter?
It’s hard to pin this multi-hyphenate, 15th- and 16th-century German artist-painter-draftsman-printmaker-writer, but John Baldessari did.
Who is Albrecht Dürer?
"The 10th Muse," a moniker originating with Plato, and still used to pay tribute to outstanding female poets. It first belonged to this enigmatic woman.
Who is Sapho of Lesbos?
Critics thought this artist’s color schemes were so unusual that they proffered that he might have "yellow fever."
Who is Joseph Mallord William Turner?
The word “perfume” derives from treatment given to this common Roman herb.
What is rosemary?
This ancient method of pruning is at work at both the Villa and the Getty Center, and is done to the sycamores in the restaurant coffee cart grove.
What is pollarding?
Bernardo Belotto’s painting features the Dogana, which is a building used for this purpose. Like if you were flying back from Venice to LA today, and were carrying home souvenir vedute paintings, you'd stop here.
What is customs?