The Getty Experience

When is a visit to a museum an “experience”? For me it is time spent and remembered with pleasure. For that to happen, the museum need not be the most famous or wealthiest. I remember as a student, long ago, visiting the Louvre and finding many galleries where paintings were hung vertically, often with four in a row. I did not return for many years. Quite the opposite can be said for a first visit to the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, an impressive transformation of a large railway station into a fine museum. Last year I visited a relatively small regional museum,the Peabody Essex Museum, in Salem, Massachusetts, and had a memorable time.

However, an all-time favourite museum of mine is the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. In 1974 the original museum, in the form of a Roman villa was opened in Malibu, a northern and very expensive suburb of L.A. I saw it in the early eighties, and what I still remember more than any of the works shown was the view of the Pacific and the human scale of the establishment. Low-rise pavilions were arranged around a large, rectangular pool – in a very dry part of the world. The Villa was recently re-opened, enlarged, and modified and has become part of the larger museum, specializing in art of the ancient world.

The principal museum and the offices of the Research, Conservation, and Education Institutes are all located within the City of Los Angeles and in one of the choicest neighborhoods to boot. How was this done? The Getty Foundation and its architect Richard Meier literally moved a mountain. Where the museum complex now stands was a large, steep hill without any vegetation to speak of. This was one of two of such geological features in that neighborhood. No building permit would ever be issued for housing there – houses would slide off. However, the top of one of the hills was lopped off for the Museum and the rest was contoured and stabilized. Meier wrote a book on the process entitled Building the Getty (Alfred A. Knopf, N.Y., 1997) and in addition to the many pages devoted to the various structures he designed, it contains a number of photographs showing the earth-moving equipment. In two instances, his children posed in front of the monsters to show the enormous size of the vehicles. Obviously, the ex-hill even if recreated, could not hold the cars of the visiting Angelinos. An underground parking lot now accommodates many of the automobiles for $ 8.00. Other visitors arrive by public transport on a bus that makes a stop at the Museum. Then comes the first surprise: All visitors get into a tramway which snakes up and around the premises and terminates in the reception hall of the Museum where the visitors are welcomed as a group by members of the staff. I visited the Museum twice and the Villa in its former incarnation once. On both of my visits, entrance to the Museum was free, and it still is. I believe the cost of admission is a significant aspect of any museum, since one of its most important functions is to reach out to the community and to bring art to as many people as possible.

The entrance fee to the Museum of Modern Art in New York is $20 for adults. That will surely deter countless visitors from enjoying its treasures.

As for the Getty collections, the Getty Foundation some time ago was the wealthiest as far as acquisitions were concerned, and as a consequence it has many important works of art, including paintings by Cezanne, Leonardo da Vinci, Turner, Hals, Cuyp, Degas, Canaletto, Ingres, Daumier, Van Gogh, El Greco, Goya, Monet, Manet, Corot and Rembrandt.

Although Meier had to accommodate not only galleries but many offices on the site, the human scale was preserved for all of it. In addition, the plans allowed relatively little repetition, primarily because of the shape of the land which is only flat in certain areas. He says in his book:
“On every level of the museum, from the courtyard to the elevated terraces, there are places to sit and relax in the open after visiting the various galleries.”
This is true, but owes a little something to the L.A. climate that allows outdoor relaxation for nine months of the year. The use of diverse materials for structures and a number of fountains that make economical use of water, add to the pleasing impression of the whole. But there is another aspect entirely which was reflected in newspaper articles during construction: The landscape architects (Robert Irwin and others) created another masterpiece, while on a very much smaller scale than the Museum, and there was some friction between them and Meier. He does a little grousing about this in his book but nothing unseemly.

Except during the short L.A. winter, a visit to the Getty by gardeners to look at the landscape architecture alone, would be justified. For example, there is a central pond into which a gentle and “tuned” waterfall empties. The tuning is not achieved by a computer which would, like all computers, occasionally go on the blink, but by varying the size of the rocks over which the water flows. There are relatively unobtrusive structures to hold masses of bougainvillea. I looked down from one of the terraces next to a gallery and saw a flowerbed with only “Birds of Paradise.” A little later, from another terrace, I saw a flowerbed with only round parodia cactuses. A stairway from one level to the other is bordered on one side by a succession of very small lawns, each having a slow-growing tree in its centre, and on and on. There are other worthwhile museums and attractions in Los Angeles, but if you have time for only one, it has to be the Getty Museum. You will not find any other public place where you are treated better and more thoughtfully. Meier’s architectural masterpiece, the art collection, and the gardening may all be enjoyed in the context of the Getty Foundation’s hospitality.

For other museum descriptions in RiposteJournal, link to:

A Tale of Two Museums 1

A Tale of Two Museums 2

A Tale of Two Museums 3