An art acropolis in the West - buildings comprising the J. Paul Getty Trust - Current and Coming

Magazine Antiques, Dec, 1997 by Allison Eckardt Ledes

News of the death of J. Paul Getty in 1976 was followed by the astonishing announcement that he had bequeathed some four million shares of Getty Oil Company stock worth approximately $700 million to establish the J. Paul Getty Trust, a foundation dedicated to the visual arts and the humanities. Lawsuits prevented the distribution of all the funds until 1982, and the following year the Getty Trust acquired 710 acres of prime real estate overlooking Los Angeles. The Trusts visionary architect, Richard Meier and Partners of New York City, began to build six sculptural buildings sheathed in Italian travertine and joined by a series of walkways that capitalize on expansive views of the mountains, the Pacific Ocean, and the city of Los Angeles. The buildings total 945,000 square feet and cost approximately $1 billion. They house the various institutions that comprise the Trust: the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities, the Getty Conservation Institute, the Getty Education Institute for the Arts, the Getty Information Institute, and the Getty Grant Program. A number of exhibitions drawn from the collections have been organized to celebrate the opening of this complex on December 16.

While Meier was creating his buildings, the curators of the museum were acquiring some of the most remarkable works of art to come on the international market over the past fifteen years. These works were purchased in order to amplify the quite idiosyncratic and personal collection that J. Paul Getty had installed first in his residence and then in a Roman-style villa in Malibu that opened to the public in 1974.

While Getty was long identified with his appetite for classical antiquities, French decorative arts, and to a lesser extent European paintings, it is the more recent accessions that have made headlines for the record-setting prices the Trust has been able to pay. Now visitors will have the opportunity to see the result of these curatorial efforts, chronologically installed. The antiquities will remain at the Getty Villa, which is currently closed and undergoing renovation. It is scheduled to reopen in 2001.

The paintings are installed in twenty-two top-lit galleries whose contents outline the history of European painting from the fourteenth to the end of the nineteenth century. Among the highly publicized and noteworthy accessions are works by Fra Bartolommeo, Pontormo, Monet, Renoir, Cezanne, and van Gogh. The strengths of the collection are works of the Italian, Dutch, and French schools.

The Getty has also been actively collecting in areas that were not of interest to its founder. Among these are photography, now represented by some sixty thousand examples from the 1830s through the 1960s. The same can be said for the eight sculpture galleries, which feature a strong collection installed, where possible, on marble pedestals contemporary with the statues placed upon them. The drawings collection, begun in 1981 when the museum purchased a chalk drawing by Rembrandt, now numbers some five hundred sheets and includes works by Michelangelo, Raphael, Durer, Bernini, Veronese, Poussin, Rubens, Ingres, David, and Cezanne. The latest technology in lighting has been used to show these works (which will be rotated) to best advantage while adhering to conservation requirements for works on paper.

The collection of French decorative arts, regarded as one of the best in America, may now be seen in greater depth in the fifo teen galleries devoted to it. Four of these galleries are eighteenth-century paneled period rooms (two of which were not on view in the Getty Villa). The suite of galleries devoted to furniture, docks, ceramics, tapestries, and the like were designed by the office of Thierry W. Despont, Limited in New York City, which also designed the interiors of the galleries throughout the museum.

The Center requires reservations for parking, which is limited to twelve hundred cars. Visitors who arrive by public transportation need not reserve in advance. For information about the inaugural exhibitions and symposiums as well as making reservations, readers should telephone 310-440-7300.