David Brafman, Getty Research Institute

Althea Viafora-Kress in conversation with David Brafman, Curator of the Rare Books Collection for the Getty Research Institute, who recently visited the Grolier Club exhibition of Past Presence, Objects of Study at The Getty Research Institute. The wide-ranging display looks at how artists, writers, and architects responded to the ephemeral quality of time and the urge to capture a moment, recreate the past, record the present, or imagine the future. Among many fine objects on display, an 18th-century etching by Francesco Piranesi recreates a long-destroyed monument from the 1st century B.C. The exhibition also features the earliest known copperplate engraving of a curiosity cabinet from 1622 alongside Marcel Duchamp's Box, produced three centuries later in 1958, inviting comparison.

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