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NEWS FROM GETTY PUBLICATIONS

DATE: November 26, 2012

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Getty Launches First Online Scholarly Collection Catalogue

on Ancient Amber Holdings

LOS ANGELES—The J. Paul Getty Museum is launching the first of many planned online collection
catalogues with Ancient Carved Ambers in the J. Paul Getty Museum (Getty Publications, 2012,
online publication). These catalogues aim to make the latest research, provenance, and technical
data on a wide range of objects available, free of charge, to scholars around the world. Exquisite
high-definition images with full zooming capability allow the objects to be viewed in great detail.
The catalogue entries will be updated as new information becomes available.
Ancient Carved Ambers in the J. Paul Getty Museum opens with a general introduction to
amber in the ancient world and then presents fifty-six Etruscan, Greek, and Italic carved ambers in
the J. Paul Getty Museum—the second largest collection of this material in the United States and
one of the most important in the world. Each piece is given a full description, including typology,
style, chronology, and iconography, and is beautifully illustrated in color. The catalogue concludes
with technical notes about scientific investigations of these objects and the Baltic amber from which
they are carved, work that resulted from a collaborative partnership between Museum conservators
and conservation scientists from the Getty Conservation Institute, both programs of the J. Paul Getty
Trust.
This catalogue has benefited from research and innovations from the Online Scholarly
Catalogue Initiative (OSCI), a joint effort by the Getty Foundation and J. Paul Getty Museum.
Collaborating with eight other museums, OSCI aims to transform how museums disseminate
scholarly information about their permanent collections by making it available through web-based
digital formats.
-more-
About the Author—Faya Causey is the head of the academic programs department at the National
Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. She has lectured and published on a variety of subjects, but
primarily on amber, antiquity, and contemporary artists and architects whose work has ancient
aspects.

Publication Information:
Ancient Carved Ambers in the J. Paul Getty Museum
Faya Causey
J. Paul Getty Museum
Online Publication, Free
ISBN 978-1-60606-051-3

Available at http://museumcatalogues.getty.edu/

Publication Date: November 26, 2012

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Publications, 1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 500, Los Angeles, CA 90049-1682.