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In 1945
J. Paul Getty bought 64 acres of hillside overlooking
Malibu. He built a house and filled it with his
stuff. When he had
too much stuff for the house, he built a museum down the hill in
1954 and opened it to the public. When that filled up with more
stuff, he re-created the
Villa dei Papiri, in
Herculaneum, which was
buried by the eruption of
Vesuvius in 79 AD, and opened that in
1974. Then he died.
By then he had so much stuff the trustees of his estate built the
Getty Center, probably three times the size of the Villa, and moved
most of the stuff over there, and began renovations on the Villa.
That went on for nine years. The Villa reopened in January of this
year, with only a small amount of Getty's stuff. Small compared to
the Getty Center collection, anyway.
So it's all about having
too much stuff. You and I, we get too much
stuff, we rent a garage at Public Storage or U-Haul and fill it with
old weedeaters and lawn furniture and boxes of Christmas decorations
and busted-up chiffarobes and maybe a boat we seldom use. Getty's
stuff was a bit different. His broken crockery was 2000 to 6000
years old. His lawn gnomes were made of marble and dated to 100 BC.
Where we had pictures of old Aunt Betsey with no space to hang them,
he had
Rembrandts and
Monets and
Turners and
Van Goghs. His unused
furniture was
Louis XIV, or one of them Roman numerals.
Having been closed for 9 years, the Getty Villa is now a must-see
attraction in the LA area. And believe me, it's a tough
see, too. Like the Getty Center, admission is free, but unlike the
GC, it is small enough that they can't let just anyone arrive at
just any time. You have to make reservations, not only for the day
but for the hour. If you go to the
Villa website right now, chances
are excellent that you'll see there are no tickets available. When
they open up a block of time, the tickets are snapped up in a day.
Shortly after we got here in January, I got lucky, found an open
date in May, and was sent two tickets over the Internet, which I
printed out. We'd been waiting eagerly ever since, and finally the
day came around. They were for 2 PM. We went to
Santa Monica quite
early, had a nice Greek lunch on the Third Street Promenade (which I
want to go back to, it looks quite nice), and the it was off to the
Villa.
You drive up a replica Roman road and park in a big 3-level
structure. Then you take a series of elevators and walks up to the
Villa itself. This consists of a large 2-story building and a huge
open courtyard called the outer
peristyle. In the center is a long
fountain with black metal statues here and there, all of them with
white eyes and black irises. Lee found this creepy. I thought it was
interesting, and apparently historically accurate, though these were
modern replicas, as was the entire building. The walls of the peristyle were cleverly painted. Looked like a nice place to come
and relax, which is exactly what it was for, in 78 AD. In 80 AD, it
was entirely buried.
Since the place had only been open a few months, the plantings were
quite young. There was a gardener training the grape vines, and he
told Lee it would be two or three years before they covered the
arbors. It was the same everywhere else. In time, the bare rock
walls will be covered with ivy.
The inner peristyle and atrium contain the museum, in the rooms that
would have been used for living space in the original villa. The
decision was made to display only
Etruscan, Greek, Roman, and some
even earlier items from Getty's vast collection of stuff here at the
Villa. Everything else went to the Center up on the hill. On the way
out we talked to some local women who were making their first return
visit to the Villa after the renovation. They didn't like it as well
as they had the old one, because the rooms had formerly been filled
with a broader mix, with furniture and paintings. I couldn't
disagree with them, because I hadn't seen the original, but I myself
am satisfied with the new arrangement. It doesn't really make sense
to me to put 16th Century French antiques into a Roman villa, nor to
hang 19th Century Impressionists. The bronze, iron, and marble items
here fit in perfectly.
The stuff is arranged with some imagination. The very oldest stuff
is together (and some of it is amazingly like
Inca,
Maya,
Aztec, and
even North American Indian pottery from much, much later). Then,
instead of grouping the rest by period, much of it is themed.
Mythological characters, the
Trojan War, the Theater, Gods and
Goddesses, Monsters and Deities, Greco-Roman Egypt, Women and
Children in Antiquity, many others.
If you're planning a visit ... we got through the whole thing in 2
hours, though obviously you could spend much, much more time there
if you were inclined. For ourselves, we've found that between 2 and
4 hours is about right to see a museum. After that my eyes begin to
glaze over and I know I'm not appreciating things as well as I
might. With most places, you can always go back, but you can't count
on that with the Villa, given how hard it is to get in. So see
everything you can. You can save some time by eating there. They
have what looks to be a fine restaurant, and if it's anything like
the one at the Getty Center, the food will be good and not even
that overpriced!
June 7, 2006