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museum tourist: getty center
Tagged Under : museum, photo, travel
I stuck around in Los Angeles for an extra night to see the Getty Center. It’s an art museum. It’s on a hill. It didn’t rock my world, maybe because of the sporadic rain, or maybe because nothing could measure up to the La Brea tar pits. I was also vaguely irritated that the introductory film didn’t tell you anything about Mr. Getty, other than that he liked art and thought everybody should be able to see it for free. I was interested in such questions as: Who was he? Why did he put his museum here? Was he alive when the museum opened? How did he make his money? (Oil, which I was probably supposed to know already, but still.)
Anyway. It’s got a heck of a location. You pay $15 to park in a garage by the freeway and take a tram up the hill. It’s a nice effect – transporting you up and out of the world, as the cars on the freeway below get smaller and smaller.
Then you wander around, marveling at the giant white buildings. It’s a very white complex. It was very bright on a cloudy day – I can’t imagine what it would be like when the sun is out. The buildings are mostly covered in travertine, the kind of rock in the Colisseum. It’s the stuff that forms the terraces of Mammoth Hot Springs, in Yellowstone.
The museum has lovely gardens. This cactus garden even comes with a view of Los Angeles.
My lunch was both tasty and surprisingly affordable for a museum cafe. This ridiculous quantity of local vegetables (beets and a kale & kohlrabi dish) and a cup of cauliflower-potato curry soup were well under $10.
There were lots of school groups….ok, maybe you can’t tell in this picture, but those people are kids:
The highlight of the museum for me was a temporary exhibit of drawings by Rembrandt and his students. The drawings were displayed in pairs, with a Rembrandt drawing on the left and a student drawing on the right – often with the same or similar subjects. Then for each one, there was an explanation of why the Rembrandt drawing was better. They pointed out how he used the heaviness of the line, or how specific he was about the light, or how he used hatching. It was really helpful for figuring out what made him so good.
But the drawings were borrowed from all over and photography wasn’t allowed, so you’ll just have to go to Los Angeles by the end of February to see it yourself…or check out the online exhibit here.
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Helen, you should have gone up the coast to his house for the answers to all of your questions about J. Paul Getty. He never saw the new big white hillside museum, nor did he ever get to live in his mansion that he originally had built to show his art collection. But wow, what a collection, and what a gorgeous villa!
http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/videoDetails?cat=4&segid=3729
The reputation of the Getty is that it is a perfect reflection of Los Angeles (and Angelinos) — beautiful on the outside, empty on the inside.
I like like the Getty, but almost more for the destination than its contents. I love that little cafe’ too.
I was sorry to miss your San Diego posts — I have been downtown on jury duty and would have loved to have a chance to buy you a coffee and say hi!
I love the Getty — have only been to the new location once — but more as a place to walk around and gawk than as a place to see art. (Though I recall there is a pretty cool James Ensor — and of course I’m curious about him because of TMBG.) Isn’t the building pretty cool, too? I’m trying to remember…
For some reason the buildings didn’t really inspire me, either. I don’t know, maybe I was too tired.
If I had known you were going, I would have hooked you up with my friend who works in the research section of the Getty! She loves in there.
Too bad! Of course, I didn’t know I was going until the night before. I’ll have to go look at it again sometime.