The (Magnificent!) Getty Center

Katie had tickets and invited lucky me. We met for lunch first. What a view on the way to the café..

..looking up. A little bit of our own Fall in LA.

The View, and in the upper far distance..

..my favorites, Walking Flower Fernand Léger (French, 1881-1955) , and The Jousters Alexander Calder (American, 1898-1976), telephoto from the same spot as the picture above.

Wait though, Hip Girl and Frog Boy are my favorites. And That Profile, also my favorite. And the Rebar Trees…

Looking back to the Entry Hall. More lounging opportunities. It’s all just too fine.

The Getty Center, look anywhere and it’s awesome.

My special sculpture is in the distance, but actually everything up here at the Getty Center is special.

There are a number of wonderful exhibits at the moment so if you are thinking about going you might as well go now.

The garden was winter-thin but the azalea maze was already happening.

There’s a lovely sculpture garden there including
George Rickey’s mobile…

Because I Just Can’t Stop.

January 13

This afternoon I went to The Big Getty for a couple hours with ND. How many times have I been up there? So many times. And yet still there are photos left to be taken. It is awesome.

Click here for a link to a collection of my favorite shots from the Getty.

The Getty Center Museum. It’s a gift to Our Town, funded by the The Getty Trust whose mission extends far beyond this museum to include education, research, conservation institutes, and of course the Getty Villa in Malibu.

Admission is always free. Parking is $15 per car but you are welcome to walk in from the bus stop.

When the Getty Center opened in December 1997 the parking fee was $5 which made coming to the Getty feel positively free. Year by year the rates went up and up and now, especially for one person, it doesn’t feel so free anymore, that you’d not give a second thought to pop up just to enjoy a cup of coffee. But still SO worth it.

I have to leave this picture here because it’s from the beginning.

From the plaza at the tram station. The statue came many years after the opening and is an excellent addition. With her arrival came a guard who now patrols the area.

She’s Aristide Maillol’s Air.

Check her out. She is balanced entirely on her hip and she’s doing really really hard leg lifts.

Something new is on the scene – a naked little boy holding a frog by its leg, made of painted fiberglass, by Charles Ray and called ‘Boy with Frog’. Hi cutie.

I just read that he’s going to be leaving in January 2012, just in time for me to have gotten used to having him around.

Oh goodie, it’s August 2012 and Frog Boy is still here. Maybe he’s going to be ours.

Air is still here too, you just can’t see her in this picture.

These bowls are filled with aromatics and face down into the tram area. When the tram doors open you are immediately met with the unique combination of sights and smells, transported really, such that you are not in daily life anymore but are at The Getty.

The plaza before the trams kick into full gear.

Frog Boy still here New Year 2015. It’s as though this was the way it was always meant to be.

You know that funky sculpture prominently featured as you get off the tram? The one that everyone hates?

I like it. Because it seems somehow brave, standing there all huge and a-kimbo and the object of such scorn. It makes nice shapes, and the engineering is cool, and it’s been there from the beginning and we’d miss it if it was gone.

Martin Puryear “That Profile,” commissioned for the site in 1999. You can see it this way if you are walking up instead of taking the tram.

From the tram station on a winter’s afternoon.

The architect Richard Meier chose this lilac color, according to the same tour guide, on a whim. This is the only colored surface I can think of now. The umbrellas shade one of the many concession stands located around the grounds.

Sorry, two too many…

From standing in virtually the same spot as the picture above a few degrees different in orientation, from a different day, and showing a different view altogether. So far, in the numberless visits that make up this collection no two photos have turned out the same.

The quality of the permanent art collection at the Getty Center is a point of some contention. There are those who find it overpriced, unfocused and pedestrian. And even, say some, boring.

But you can walk up any time and go in for free or pay five bucks for a car load of people and have an entirely splendid day. Any time you want to, just go on up. What’s to complain?

2011 UPDATE: it’s been many years now and no one is saying boring anymore. Also parking is up to fifteen bucks!

2019 UPDATE: Twenty Dollars to park. Not so free. I could probably get a lyft ride back and forth for less than that.

What they themselves have to say about the collection. There’s a lot of explanatory/educational material in their website about the items and artists in the museum.

The Getty Center Museum offers many public education opportunity. The Trust funds formal academic programs for research and conservation.

Scandalous, no?

Everywhere you look, photo photo.

This is the same view further back, from inside the West gallery.

Absolutely no end to photophoto.

Fall at the Getty. We get all the seasons!

Inside one of the gallery spaces.

Check out these two faces. It’s fantastic!

There are many free tours available throughout the day and all are well worth the time if you’re in the mood to shuffle along with a group. The guides, all volunteers, have a lot of freedom to choose their own program so you can go again and again and always get a different perspective.

Here’s a link to the Tours and Gallery Talks.

Another gallery shot.

A lovely quiet spot for a rest in the shade. It’s hard to find so if you know it from this picture you qualify as a true Getty Center aficionado.

The J. Paul Getty Trust commissioned Robert Irwin’s Central Garden as a work of art, which Irwin himself described as “a sculpture in the form of a garden aspiring to be art.”

Here’s the link about The Garden. This is just a promotional pitch from the Getty’s own website and doesn’t have any of the flavor of the actual drama of the garden’s concept and construction.

The building of the museum and the garden was the longest running soap opera in Hollywood. These men, architect Richard Meier and artist Robert Irwin, in different times, would have killed each other in a duel. Of this there is no one with a shred of doubt.

Here’s a shot from a nearby place in February. We don’t have many scenes that change so much by the seasons. Around here it’s usually evergreens and palm trees.

A view from the West Gallery looking onto the garden and the ocean views beyond.

The garden path in winter.

My favorite garden story is about how this path came to be as it is, and you won’t be finding this story on their website!

Somewhere along the line, well into the process I understand, some government inspector told Robert Irwin his design was not ADA compliant and he would have to provide wheelchair ramps from the museum into the garden.

Our Mr Irwin was not about to disfigure his art project to lay down some extraneous ramps so he decided construction could just jolly well wait, he would redo the whole concept of the access thing altogether. His design was going to be his design and he was not going to just stick a ramp in it.

From this display of arrogant stubbornness came one of my favorite reasons to return often.

In winter you can see the garden path through the bare trees.

Go early, before they open even. Then as you stand between the rebar trees and the entrance to the garden path, close your eyes and just listen and breathe and do some zen-ish mind calming exercise and then you are ready to walk down the garden path.

The walk is really I think more about listening than about looking and that’s why crowds are so disruptive to the experience. You’ll want to hear your footsteps sound on the various surfaces and how the sound of the water reflects the changing shape of the rocks and hear the plants shimmering in relation to each other. Even the difference in sound as you move in and out of the trees is quite purposeful.

Entering from a different direction and a first sighting of the iconic rebar bougainvillea trees.

All these fabulous lawns are there for the using. You can enjoy a picnic, watch the kids roll themselves stupid, or just sit and take the sun.

One of the evening events taking advantage of Rebar Trees for a glorious backdrop.

Rebar bougainvillea trees. Who wouldn’t want a rebar bougainvillea tree?!

Another season, another view.

On a clear day.

I’ve been complaining about this guy ever since she first appeared a while back. Now they’ve got the grasses growing around her, and flowers, and I’ve entirely softened. She looks like she’s at home there now and I welcome her to stay. Funny how that is.

Walking Flower from Fernand Leger.