The Getty Center in Los Angeles has opened a small, pointed exhibition that sets a contemporary painter against the Old Masters he studies. Reggie Burrows Hodges: A Theater of Passions, on view in the Museum East Pavilion from 20 October 2026 to 28 February 2027, presents five new paintings by the Los Angeles-born artist, each responding to works by the father-and-daughter painters Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi held in the Getty's collection.

Hodges began each painting from the same compositions as his sources, then pushed them toward his own language of atmosphere, ambiguity and psychological presence. The three Italian anchors are Orazio Gentileschi's Lot and His Daughters and Danaë and the Shower of Gold, together with Artemisia Gentileschi's Lucretia. All three turn on biblical and mythological narratives charged with violence, drama and theatricality, qualities Hodges draws out rather than softens.

The Getty's senior curator of paintings, Davide Gasparotto, has described Hodges as shifting emphasis away from descriptive naturalism, privileging mood and presence over literal storytelling. That approach suits the source material: the Gentileschi paintings stage bodies in moments of coercion, revelation and resistance, and Hodges answers them with silhouetted figures and richly textured surfaces that keep the emotional charge while refusing to illustrate it plainly.

The show is presented in English and Spanish, and it is part of a wider season for the artist. A companion presentation at the California African American Museum, A Theater of Miracles, runs on the same dates with additional works reflecting the influence of Old Master painting on his practice. A public conversation with Hodges and curators at the Getty on 27 October extends the dialogue, connecting the new paintings to the centuries-old works that prompted them.