Malibu, CA - This exhibition presents portraits, sculptures, drawings, and rare books that illuminate the first 100 years of the Society of Dilettanti. The society was founded in 1734 in London as a dining club for British gentlemen who had made the Grand Tour, an extended trip to Italy for cultural enrichment. The Dilettanti combined revelry and witty irreverence with serious study of antiquity. They sponsored archaeological expeditions, assembled celebrated antiquities collections, and elevated classical art and architecture as models of refined taste and style. On view at the Getty Villa through 27 October, 2008.

The Society of Dilettanti was dedicated to "encouraging, at home, a taste for those objects which had contributed to their entertainment abroad." The group's name introduced the word dilettante (from the Italian dilettare, "to delight") into English and celebrated the interests of the amateur. From informal gatherings in Italy to ceremonial meetings in London, the Dilettanti cultivated a sense of kinship and conviviality. Seria ludo (Serious Matters in a Playful Vein), one of the group's principal toasts, expressed its blend of the learned and the lively.

George Knapton's portraits of various prominent Dilettanti convey the spirit of Seria ludo. Here, in the cabin of a ship under sail, the Dilettante Bouchier Wray ladles punch from a bowl inscribed with a line from the Roman poet Horace: Dulce est desipere in loco ('Tis sweet at the fitting time to cast serious thoughts aside). George Knapton's strong diagonal composition conveys the tilting motion of the ship and Wray's vivacious offer to fill the viewer's cup—appropriate for a society that honored Bacchus, god of wine.

The rituals of the Dilettanti intertwined sex and religion. Members created cabinets of erotic curiosities, which displayed what the 18th-century poet Alexander Pope satirically described as "statues, dirty gods, and coins." They collected and interpreted these "dirty gods" as specimens of ancient phallic cults. Excavations at Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Stabiae uncovered troves of sexually explicit objects, providing evidence for such cults.

The Dilettanti were avid collectors of antiquities, which they acquired during their extensive Mediterranean travels. Thomas Hope, for example, owned some 1,500 Greek vases. Thomas Bruce, seventh Earl of Elgin, brought to London marble sculptures from the Parthenon in Athens. Controversy over the artistic merits of the Elgin Marbles divided the society, but their acquisition by the British Museum ultimately fulfilled the Dilettanti's core mission—to champion classical antiquity for the improvement of the arts and taste in England.

Many of the works of art collected by the Dilettanti entered American museums when prominent British collections were dispersed. American newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst bought a number of Thomas Hope's vases, for example, later donating them to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. J. Paul Getty acquired the Lansdowne Herakles once owned by William Petty as well as a Mixing Vessel with a Chariot Scene once owned by Hope. Many objects in the J. Paul Getty Museum, in fact, can be traced back to Dilettanti collectors of the 18th and 19th centuries.

In a group caricature from 1761, a detail of which is shown here, artist Thomas Patch presents fanciful versions of the artistic spoils acquired by the Dilettanti, including antiquities, mythological paintings, and chinoiserie. The artist portrays himself astride a gold statue of an ass, an allusion to the satirical poem "L'asino d'oro" by Niccolò Machiavelli. The inscription on the base brands the aristocratic sitters as "asinine" fops.