Since being named Artist in Residence at the Getty Research Institute (GRI) in 2012, Matthew Ritchie has been collaborating with the GRI on an ambitious exploration of the diagram throughout human history.

Ritchie will unveil the results of his research, a 27-foot-long work titled “The Temptation of the Diagram,” as part of the upcoming exhibition Noemaa term derived from a Greek word meaning “the content of a thought” or “thought-object.” The show will also feature an immersive room-sized version of the work, as well as a selection of 15 rare books lent by the GRI — including Sir Isaac Newton’s Optics (1704) and Marcel Duchamp’s A l’infinitif (1966) — that illustrate the diagram’s multifarious forms.