At the Getty, a focus on Asian photographs

The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art are also serious collectors of Asian photography, she says, but the Getty's approach is different. Instead of assembling a broad view of the field, the Getty is maintaining its practice of collecting selected artists' work in depth. Every Asian artist added to the Getty's holding is represented by several images, with others likely to follow.

In China, photography as a major art form is a relatively new development, Keller says. Japan, however, has a tradition that parallels much of photography's evolution in the West, and that's where Keller started her Asian venture.

"We had a head start with that because Sam Wagstaff's collection contained work by a few important Japanese photographers of the 1970s," Keller says, referring to a trove that was part of the museum's original purchase. Thanks to the museum's acquisition funds and gifts from its Photographs Council and other supporters, the Getty has acquired 20th and 21st century works by artists such as Kansuke Yamamoto, Hiroshi Hamaya, Issei Suda and Daido Moriyama.

A varied Impression

Most of the photographs are black-and-white images in conventional sizes, depicting Japan and its people. In sharp contrast, two vividly colored 1989 works by Yasumasa Morimura are roughly 6-by-8-foot interpretations of French Impressionist Edouard Manet's painting "A Bar at the Folies-Bergere." Morimura's splashy creations are part of his elaborately staged "Daughter of Art History" series, in which he casts himself as women in Western masterpieces.

As Getty watchers may recall, the museum exhibited the Manet, which belongs to London's Courtauld Institute of Art, in 2007. The subsequent Morimura acquisition is a coincidence, Keller says.

All the Asian works will remain in storage for a while, as Keller builds the collection and explores other Asian countries. But she is planning the first exhibition, featuring Chinese photographs, to open in December 2010.

"It will certainly include some of what we have acquired and I intend to continue looking," she says. "At the moment, I expect to include loans from other collections, but one can always hope."

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suzanne.muchnic @latimes.com