J. Paul Getty Museum ~ A “Must-See” Museum With A Stunning Collections in Los Angeles

Written by Nelson Rohrbaugh Monday, 02 April 2012 22:38

The J. Paul Getty Museum is located within the Getty Center, in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California, a campus for cultural institutions founded by oilman J. Paul Getty. The Center sits atop a hill, connected to a visitor's parking garage at the bottom by a three-car, cable-pulled tram. With more than 1.3 million visitors annually, the Getty Museum is one of the most visited art museums in the USA. It is one of two locations of the J. Paul Getty Museum, the second being the ‘J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Villa in Malibu’, dedicated to the study of the arts and cultures of ancient Greece, Rome, and Etruria. The ‘J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Centre’ is the branch of the museum specializing in "pre-20th-century European paintings, drawings, illuminated manuscripts, sculpture, and decorative arts; and 19th- and 20th-century American and European photographs". Besides the Museum, the Center's buildings house the Getty Research Institute (GRI), the Getty Conservation Institute, the Getty Foundation, and the administrative offices of the J. Paul Getty Trust, which owns and operates the Center. The Center was designed by Pritzker Prize winning architect Richard Meier and includes a central garden designed by artist Robert Irwin. GRI's separate building contains a research library with over 900,000 volumes and two million photographs of art and architecture. Originally, the Getty Museum started in J. Paul Getty's house located in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California, when in 1954, he expanded the house with a museum wing. In the 1970's, Getty built a replica of an Italian villa on his property to better house his collection, which opened in 1974. After Getty's death in 1976, the entire property was turned over to the Getty Trust for museum purposes. However, the collection outgrew the site, which has since been renamed the Getty Villa, and management sought a location more accessible to Los Angeles. The purchase of the land upon which the Center is located (a campus of 24 acres on a site in the Santa Monica Mountains, surrounded by 600 acres kept in a natural state) was announced in 1983. The top of the hill is 900 feet (270 m) above Interstate 405, high enough that on a clear day it is possible to see not only the Los Angeles skyline but also the San Bernardino Mountains to the east as well as the Pacific Ocean to the west. The Center opened to the public on December 16, 1997. After the Center opened, the villa closed for extensive renovations, and reopened on January 28, 2006. The Center museum building consists of a three-level base building that is mostly closed to the public and provides staff workspace and storage areas. Five public, two-story towers on the base are called the North, East, South, West and the Exhibitions Pavilions. The Exhibitions Pavilion acts as the temporary residence for traveling art collections and the Foundation's artwork for which the permanent pavilions have no room. The permanent collection is displayed throughout the other four pavilions chronologically. The first-floor galleries in each pavilion house light-sensitive art, such as illuminated manuscripts, furniture, or photography. Computer-controlled skylights on the second floor galleries allow paintings to be displayed in natural light. The second floors are connected by a series of glass-enclosed bridges and open terraces, both of which offer views of the surrounding hillsides and central plaza. Sculpture is also on display at various points outside the buildings, including on various terraces and balconies. The lower level (the highest of the floors in the base) includes a public cafeteria, the terrace cafe, and the photography galleries. Visit The J. Paul Getty Museum at : www.getty.edu/museum/

It all started with the museum's namesake, J. Paul Getty, an oil executive and art collector who lived from 1892 until 1976. He founded the famous Getty Oil Company which eventually became Texaco. Getty began collecting art in 1930 and, upon his death, left his entire estate to the J. Paul Getty Museum Trust. Eventually, the trust grew to over $4.5 billion, a sum which has allowed the Trust to continue updating the Getty Museum art collection with some of the finest, most sought-after pieces of art in the world. One publication noted that the Getty Museum has about 25 times the budget of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Getty Museum specializes in Greek and Roman antiquities, European paintings, drawings, sculpture, manuscripts, furniture and photographs, split between the two California locations. Whilst the collection may lack the breadth of some longer-established museums, the depth and quality of the collection in those artistic areas that interested its founder more than compensate for any possible omissions. The works of European sculpture are a particular strength, and these are located throughout the museum's pavilions (and outside spaces) and include work from the Renaissance through to 1900. The oldest painting at the Getty dates from 1295 and the collection continues up to the early 1900s, including paintings by Masaccio, Andrea Mantegna, Pieter Breughel (both the elder and the younger), Rembrandt, Jan van Goyen, Jean-Baptiste Raguenet , Jean-Étienne Liotard, Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Claude Monet and Paul Cezanne. Amongst the highlights of the collection are Van Gogh’s “Irises”, “Rue Mosnier With Flags” by Manet and “La Promenade” by Renoir, Jacopo da Pontormo's “Portrait of Cosimo I de Medici" and a rare bronze sculpture of a male figure by the 16th-century Dutch artist Adriaen de Vries. J.M.W. Turner’s “Modern Rome - Campo Vaccino”, which the Getty Museum purchased at auction in 2010, should be joining these other masterpieces on display later in 2011.

With extensive exhibition spaces available, the Getty Museum hosts a constantly changing series of temporary exhibitions. Currently (until 24th April 2011) the Getty Museum are presenting “Felice Beato: A Photographer on the Eastern Road”. In a career that spanned five decades, the photographer Felice Beato (1832–1909) covered a wide swath of East Asia. Following in the wake of Britain's vast colonial empire, he was among the primary photographers to provide images of newly opened countries such as India, China, Japan, Korea, and Burma. A pioneer war photographer, Beato recorded several conflicts: the Crimean War in 1855–56, the aftermath of the Indian Mutiny in 1858–59, the Second Opium War in 1860, and the American expedition to Korea in 1871. His photographs of battlefields, the first to show images of the dead, provided a new direction for that genre. Catering to a Western audience, Beato produced an exceptionally diverse oeuvre: topographical and architectural views, including panoramas, as well as portraits and costume studies of the countries he visited or in which he resided. Beato spent more than 20 years in Japan (1863–84), his longest residency in one country and the most prolific period of his career. Despite restrictions on foreigners, Beato was able to take numerous photographs, including the monumental sculpture of the Dai Bouts (Great Buddha), which had been the centerpiece of a temple that was destroyed by a typhoon. In 1871 Beato was the first to make photographic images of Korea. He was hired to document an American punitive expedition to Korea, Beato’s images helped perpetuate the illusion of victory for this unsuccessful military campaign. After speculative ventures in Japan ruined him financially, Beato set off for new lands once more. He went first to Sudan to record the Anglo-Sudan War and finally settled in Burma in 1887. Beato quickly established himself as a photographer by traveling throughout Upper Burma documenting sites of interest. His landscapes, architectural views, and portrait studies offer a glimpse into Burmese life at the end of the 19th century. After a life of wandering, Beato returned to Italy, his birthplace, where he died in 1909. “Felice Beato: A Photographer on the Eastern Road”, is showing concurrently with “Photography From the New China”, an exhibition featuring a selection of Chinese photographs produced since the 1990s, when People's Republic leader Deng Xiaoping introduced the current period of opening and reform. These two exhibitions create a powerful contrast between the nineteenth-century views of China and other parts of East Asia and the contemporary works. 8 other exhibitions can currently be seen at the Getty Centre, with a further 3 at the Getty Villa.

Coming to the Getty "Spirit of an Age: Drawings from the Germanic World", 1770–1900 on exhibition March 29–June 19, 2011 Unveiling recent acquisitions that reflect a new area of the Museum's collection, this exhibition features about forty German and Austrian drawings and watercolors. The works reflect the profound changes—intellectual, social, and political—that the Germanic world underwent from about 1770 to 1900. Events such as the publication of the writings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and the formal unification of Germany contributed to shaping the artist's world. Drawing captured the spirit of the age and evolved quite dramatically over the course of this period, which is rarely showcased by North American museums. The J. Paul Getty Museum seeks to further knowledge of the visual arts and to nurture critical seeing by collecting, preserving, exhibiting and interpreting works of art of the highest quality. To fulfill its mission, the Museum continues to develop its collection through purchase and gifts, complementing its impact through special exhibitions, publications, educational programs developed for a wide range of audiences, and a related performing arts program. The Museum strives to provide its visitors with access to the most innovative research in the visual arts while they enjoy a unique experience in viewing works of art at our Getty Center and Getty Villa sites. While benefiting from the broader context of the Getty Trust, the Museum also extends the reach of its mission via the internet and through the regular exchange of works of art, staff, and expertise. The J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center in Los Angeles houses European paintings, drawings, sculpture, illuminated manuscripts, decorative arts, and European and American photographs.