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Recently, I was asked to curate an exhibition in the SVA Photography Department organized by several members of the Veterans Coalition of Arts (VCA), a club at SVA made up of currently enrolled student veterans. Titled “Declassified: A Portrait of the Veteran as a Young Artist,” the show will feature work by four students in the VCA and three well-known former members of the SVA faculty who also served in the United States Armed Forces. In addition to presenting a wide range of works in various mediums, “Declassified” commemorates the many past and present members of the SVA community who have served in the U.S. military, going all the way back to the school’s co-founders Silas Rhodes and Burne Hogarth.

During the lead up to the show, BFA Photo Major Hector Rene drafted a statement that tells the story behind it and provides a little information about its participants. I’ve…

Last year the Getty and LACMA jointly acquired the art and archives of Robert Mapplethorpe, including more than 2,000 works of art as well extensive documentation of this important artist’s celebrated career and working methods. Now both museums are presenting Mapplethorpe exhibitions for the first time since this historic acquisition, in anticipation of a larger, jointly organized retrospective planned for 2016. On view now at LACMA is Robert Mapplethorpe: XYZ, while In Focus: Robert Mapplethorpe opens at the Getty tomorrow. In collaboration with the Getty Iris, I sat down with Getty curator Paul Martineau to discuss the two exhibitions and what the acquisition means to both institutions.

Britt Salvesen: What appealed to you about acquiring the Mapplethorpe collection?

Paul Martineau: One of the things that Curator Emeritus Weston Naef set as a goal when he established the Getty Museum’s photographs collection was to collect an artist’s work…