Getty Museum launches mindfulness podcast inspired by artworks

The Getty Museum in Los Angeles has turned one of its strongest collection pieces into a meditation session you can stream at home. Its new podcast, OMMM, short for Our Museum Mindfulness Meditation, is the museum’s first video podcast and its first podcast built around mindfulness practice.

Hosted by Getty gallery educator Lilit Sadoyan, a longtime meditation practitioner who has worked at the museum since 2008, the first season will run 12 episodes and release twice a week. Getty said the format blends art history, breathing exercises and guided mindfulness, with each episode opening with a short breath practice before moving into the work’s history and a closing meditation listeners can use on their own.

The debut episode centers on Vincent van Gogh’s Irises, and that choice gives the project a clear thesis. Van Gogh painted the work in 1889 after entering the asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France, and the Getty’s episode page described the segment as a sensory-awareness meditation tied to the painting. The museum acquired Irises in 1990; Alan Bond had bought it in 1987 for a then-record $54 million.

Sadoyan’s approach is not about treating the painting like a static image on a screen. She invites viewers to imagine the garden, feel the sun and slow down with the composition through the senses, using the artwork as an anchor for attention rather than a backdrop for passive viewing. That is exactly where the Getty is pushing the medium: not just art appreciation, but a deliberate practice of noticing.

The museum has been building toward this for years. Its Education Department began exploring mindfulness-based approaches in 2016 with Mindfulness with a Masterpiece, a program that led visitors through guided meditation with a selected object from the permanent collection. Getty also held a Mindfulness in the Museum convening that examined mindfulness evaluation and practice, part of a broader effort to make the museum a space of well-being and connection.

OMMM extends that experiment into a regular audio-video format, and it does so with a point that lands cleanly for meditators who struggle to sit still in silence: art can hold attention for you. Start with the breath, stay with the color and shape, and let the painting do part of the work.