ReCurrent

Getty’s podcast for kids and their families, If Objects Could Talk, is back for season 2! Listen as art leaves the museum vault and comes alive to share its own story. In this season, featuring objects from Getty's sculpture and decorative arts collection, each episode introduces listeners to the history, creation, and everyday use of incredible items like a rococo microscope, an inventive clock, and a majestic horse sculpture. Today, we’re sharing our episode on Franz Xaver Messerschmidt’s sculpture, The Vexed Man. Learn about sculpting alabaster, the Viennese Prater amusement park, and how to relax when you’re feeling particularly vexed. To hear the rest of the series and learn more, visit us at www.getty.edu/ioct or look for If Objects Could Talk on your favorite podcast app. Subscribe to catch new episodes and bonus content. And if you enjoy the show, leave us a rating and review to help others find it!

Today, we're sharing the first episode of OMMM, Getty's newest podcast and first video podcast.This series encourages you to engage with works of art mindfully, wherever you are. Part art history, part mindfulness meditation, each episode focuses on one work of art and uses it as an inspiration for meditation and reflection. Long-time museum educator and meditation practitioner Lilit Sadoyan translates her work leading mindfulness meditation tours at the Getty Museum into a podcast that fits into your daily routine. Between episodes, catch Lilit’s interviews with fascinating guests like a sleep historian, a mountain climber, and an art conservator, who shed new light on familiar works of art.Today's episode features a sensory awareness meditation inspired by Vincent van Gogh's Irises (1889). Van Gogh’s Irises is one of the best known works in the Getty collection. This was one of the first paintings the artist began after entering an asylum following his mental breakdown in Arles. Van Gogh found respite and recovery in the garden—and in his art.With irises shown in full bloom erupting directly from the damp soil, this painting makes it easy to imagine the experience of being down on the ground in a garden on a spring day. Being outside in a garden engages all of our senses—the feeling of the wind, the sound of birds, the scent of warm earth. This experience inspires the episode’s sensory meditation.Subscribe to OMMM wherever you get your podcasts and at getty.edu/ommm, where you can also find additional images and transcripts.Subscribe on YouTube for the video version: https://gty.art/4wZysOS

This episode is an invitation to slow down, find meaning in the quiet moments, and celebrate the fullness of our identities. To learn more about Immigrantly, visit our website http://immigrantlypod.com and follow the host Saadia Khan @itssaadiak You can also subscribe to the Immigrantly Channel on Apple at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/channel/immigrantly/id6473736795?hasPaidContent=true

In this episode, we go back to 1980s Los Angeles, when civil wars in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua sent hundreds of thousands of people north and helped turn LA into “Little Central America.” With professor and longtime participant Rubén Martínez as our guide—someone who lived through this moment firsthand—we follow the Sanctuary Movement as churches quietly, and then publicly, open their doors to refugees the U.S. refused to recognize. Sanctuary meant food and a place to sleep, but it also meant music, theater, poetry, and posters that challenged U.S. policy while helping people process their grief.From there, we step inside Echo Park United Methodist Church, where artist and performer Elia Arce and a circle of Central American poets, musicians, and organizers transform the basement into a cultural home. We also sit with Rev. David Farley, pastor emeritus of Echo Park United Methodist, who was there to witness it all. Upstairs, families try to stay invisible on classroom floors; downstairs, performances inspired by banned writers, songs from back home, and handmade banners turn fear and exile into shared story.Our last stop is the Getty Research Institute, where researcher Jasmine Magaña—a Salvadoran Angeleno herself—is helping build a new, expansive record of this era. Through in-depth oral histories with artists and organizers, she and her colleagues work to preserve stories that were never formally recorded but continue to shape Los Angeles today.Together, Rubén, Elia, and Jasmine show how the art around the Sanctuary Movement didn’t just document a moment—it held people together, reshaped Los Angeles, and still offers a blueprint for solidarity in our own tense times.Special thanks to Rubén Martínez, Elia Arce, and Jasmine Magaña. Deep gratitude to Lindsey Gant and Diana Carroll for their generous support in publishing and creating the web pages and Gina White for her work on rights and clearances.

Before the Supremes, before Berry Gordy, a Los Angeles record label run out of a garage was shaping the future of American music.Founded by Dootsie Williams in the early 1950s, Dootone Records became a hub of innovation—recording doo-wop, jazz, and the first Black comedy albums that would influence generations. But while the physical site of Dootone has nearly vanished, its intangible heritage—the voices, rhythms, and entrepreneurial spirit it carried—still reverberates through today’s culture. Through interviews with historian Robert Petersen and Getty preservationist Rita Cofield, this episode explores what it means to preserve sound as history: how a song like “Earth Angel” can outlast the walls that once contained it, and why the legacy of Dootone still matters today.Join Jaime as he retraces Dootone’s path with Robert Petersen and Rita Cofield—following the threads from a Central Avenue porch to playlists today and uncovering how keeping these sounds in circulation keeps Dootone’s legacy alive.Special thanks to Rita Cofield and Robert Petersen.