Getty Villa
Encyclopedia
The Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades
, California
, USA, is one of two locations of the J. Paul Getty Museum
. The Getty Villa is an educational center and museum dedicated to the study of the arts and cultures of ancient Greece
, Rome
, and Etruria
. The collection has 44,000 Greek, Roman, and Etruscan antiquities dating from 6,500 BC to 400 AD, including the Lansdowne Heracles
and the Victorious Youth
. The UCLA/Getty Master’s Program in Archaeological and Ethnographic Conservation is housed on this campus. The collection is documented and presented through the online GettyGuide as well as through audio tours.
originally opened a gallery adjacent to his home in Pacific Palisades. Finding that he quickly ran out of room, he built a second museum, the Getty Villa, on the property down the hill from his original home. The villa design was inspired by the Villa of the Papyri
at Herculaneum
and incorporated additional details from several other ancient sites. It was opened in 1974, but was never visited by Getty, who died in 1976. Following his death, the museum inherited $661 million and began planning a much larger campus, the Getty Center
, in nearby Brentwood
. The museum overcame neighborhood opposition to its new campus plan by agreeing to limit the total size of the development on the Getty Center site. To meet the museum's total space needs, the museum decided to split between the two locations with the Getty Villa housing the Greek, Roman
, and Etruscan
antiquities. In 1993, the Getty Trust selected Rodolpho Muchado and Jorge Silvetti to design the renovation of the Getty Villa and its campus. In 1997, portions of the museum's collection of Greek, Roman and Etruscan antiquities were moved to the Getty Center
for display, and the Getty Villa was closed for renovation. The collection was also restored during the renovation.
Starting in 2004, the museum and the University of California, Los Angeles
(UCLA) hold summer institutes in Turkey, studying the conservation of Middle Eastern Art.
Reopened on January 28, 2006, the Getty Villa now shows Greek, Roman, and Etruscan
antiquities within Roman-inspired architecture and surrounded by Roman-style gardens. The art is arranged by themes, e.g., Gods and Goddesses, Dionysos and the Theater, and Stories of the Trojan War
. The new architectural plan
surrounding the Villa - which was conceived by Machado and Silvetti Associates
, Boston architects, (who were also responsible for the plans for the renovated museum) - is designed to simulate an archaeological dig. Architectural Record has praised their work on the Getty Villa as "a near miracle — a museum that elicits no smirks from the art world.... a masterful job... crafting a sophisticated ensemble of buildings, plazas, and landscaping that finally provides a real home for a relic of another time and place."
There has been controversy surrounding the Greek
and Italian
governments' claim that objects in the collection were looted
and should be repatriated
. In 2006, the Getty returned or promised to return four looted objects to Greece: a stele
(grave marker), a marble relief, a gold funerary wreath, and a marble statue. In 2007, the Getty signed an agreement to return 40 looted items to Italy.
The Villa is frequently and erroneously said to be in the city of Malibu, but the site is in the City of Los Angeles in the community of Pacific Palisades and has a Pacific Palisades mailing address. In fact, the Malibu city border begins a mile west of the Villa. The museum itself perpetuates this error, to the irritation of Palisades residents.
(January 1), July 4
, Thanksgiving
and Christmas
(December 25).
The Getty Villa hosts live performances in both its indoor auditorium and its outdoor theatre. Indoor play-readings included The Trojan Women, Aristophanes' The Frogs, and Euripides' Helen. Indoor musical performances, which typically relate to art exhibits, included: Musica Angelica, De Organographia, and Songs from the Fifth Age: Sones de México in Concert. The auditorium also held a public reading of Homer's Iliad. Outdoor performances included Aristophanes' Peace, Aeschylus's Agamemnon, and Sophocles' Elektra. The Getty Villa also hosts visiting exhibitions beyond its own collections. For example, in March 2011 "In Search of Biblical Lands" is a photographic exhibition which includes scenes of the Middle East dating back to the 1840s.
The Getty Villa offers special educational programs for children. A special Family Forum gallery offers activities including decorating Greek vases and projecting shawdows onto a screen that represents a Greek urn. The room also has polystyrene props from Greek and Roman culture for children to handle and use to cast shadows. The Getty Villa also offers children's guides to the other exhibits.
The 64 acres (25.9 ha) museum complex sits on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean, which is about 100 feet (30.5 m) from the entrance to the property. Most visitors park in the new 248-car South Parking Garage, which is four stories high and set into a hillside. An outdoor 2500 square feet (232.3 m²) entry pavilion is also built into the hill near the South Parking garage at the southern end of the Outer Peristyle
. The Outer Peristyle is a formal garden with roses and English Ivy that includes a number of Roman sculptures. To the west of the Outer Peristyle is an herb garden. Beneath the Outer Peristyle is the Central Parking Garage. To the west of the Museum is a 450-seat outdoor Greek theater where evening performances are staged, named in honor of Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman. The theater faces the west side of the Villa and uses its entrance as a stage. To the northwest of the theatre is a three-story, 15500 square feet (1,440 m²) building built into the hill that contains the museum store on the lower level, a cafe on the second level, and a private dining room on the top level. North of the Villa is a 10000 sq ft (929 m²) indoor 250 seat auditorium. On the hill above the museum are Getty's original private ranch house and the museum wing that Getty added to his home in 1954. They are now used for curatorial offices, meeting rooms and as a library. Behind it is the 200-car North Parking Garage. The 105500 square feet (9,801.3 m²) museum building is arranged in a square opening into the Inner Peristyle courtyard. The 2006 museum renovation added 58 windows facing the Inner Peristyle and a retractable skylight over the atrium. It also replaced the terrazzo
floors in the galleries and added seismic protection with new steel reinforcing beams and new isolators in the bases of statues and display cases. The museum has 48000 sq ft (4,459.3 m²) of gallery space.
The museum wing off the Getty ranch house is home to the UCLA/Getty Master’s Program in Archaeological and Ethnographic Conservation, the first program of its kind in the United States. The degree program is a partnership between the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA and the Getty Conservation Institute, and participates in research activities at the Villa.
Architectural critic Calum Storrie describes the overall effect:
Although not open to the public, the campus includes J. Paul Getty's grave on the hill behind his ranch house.
, which the museum lists as "Greek, about 530 B.C., or modern forgery" because scientific analysis is inconclusive as to whether the marble statue can be dated back to Greek times. If genuine, the Getty kouros is one of only twelve remaining intact kouroi. The Marbury Hall Zeus is a 81 in (2.1 m) tall marble statue that was recovered from the ruins at Tivoli near Rome.
Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California
Pacific Palisades is an affluent neighborhood and district within the U.S. city of Los Angeles, California, located among Brentwood to the east, Malibu and Topanga to the west, Santa Monica to the southeast, the Santa Monica Bay to the southwest, and the Santa Monica Mountains to the north. The...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, USA, is one of two locations of the J. Paul Getty Museum
J. Paul Getty Museum
The J. Paul Getty Museum, a program of the J. Paul Getty Trust, is an art museum. It has two locations, one at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California, and one at the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California...
. The Getty Villa is an educational center and museum dedicated to the study of the arts and cultures of ancient Greece
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
, Rome
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
, and Etruria
Etruria
Etruria—usually referred to in Greek and Latin source texts as Tyrrhenia—was a region of Central Italy, an area that covered part of what now are Tuscany, Latium, Emilia-Romagna, and Umbria. A particularly noteworthy work dealing with Etruscan locations is D. H...
. The collection has 44,000 Greek, Roman, and Etruscan antiquities dating from 6,500 BC to 400 AD, including the Lansdowne Heracles
Lansdowne Heracles
The Lansdowne Heracles is a Roman marble sculpture of about 125 CE. Today it is in the collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum's "Getty Villa" in Malibu, California...
and the Victorious Youth
Victorious Youth
The Victorious Youth, referred to in Italian sources as the Atleta di Fano, is a Greek bronze sculpture, made between 300 and 100 BCE, in the collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, California...
. The UCLA/Getty Master’s Program in Archaeological and Ethnographic Conservation is housed on this campus. The collection is documented and presented through the online GettyGuide as well as through audio tours.
History
In 1954, Oil tycoon J. Paul GettyJ. Paul Getty
Jean Paul Getty was an American industrialist. He founded the Getty Oil Company, and in 1957 Fortune magazine named him the richest living American, whilst the 1966 Guinness Book of Records named him as the world's richest private citizen, worth an estimated $1,200 million. At his death, he was...
originally opened a gallery adjacent to his home in Pacific Palisades. Finding that he quickly ran out of room, he built a second museum, the Getty Villa, on the property down the hill from his original home. The villa design was inspired by the Villa of the Papyri
Villa of the Papyri
The Villa of the Papyri is a private house in the ancient Roman city of Herculaneum . Situated north-west of the township, the residence sits halfway up the slope of the volcano Vesuvius without other buildings to obstruct the view. The villa suburbana was owned by Julius Caesar's father-in-law,...
at Herculaneum
Herculaneum
Herculaneum was an ancient Roman town destroyed by volcanic pyroclastic flows in AD 79, located in the territory of the current commune of Ercolano, in the Italian region of Campania in the shadow of Mt...
and incorporated additional details from several other ancient sites. It was opened in 1974, but was never visited by Getty, who died in 1976. Following his death, the museum inherited $661 million and began planning a much larger campus, the Getty Center
Getty Center
The Getty Center, in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California, is a campus for cultural institutions founded by oilman J. Paul Getty. The $1.3 billion center, which opened on December 16, 1997, is also well known for its architecture, gardens, and views overlooking Los Angeles...
, in nearby Brentwood
Brentwood, California
Brentwood is a city in Contra Costa County, California, United States. It is located in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. The population is 51,481 as of 2010....
. The museum overcame neighborhood opposition to its new campus plan by agreeing to limit the total size of the development on the Getty Center site. To meet the museum's total space needs, the museum decided to split between the two locations with the Getty Villa housing the Greek, Roman
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
, and Etruscan
Etruscan civilization
Etruscan civilization is the modern English name given to a civilization of ancient Italy in the area corresponding roughly to Tuscany. The ancient Romans called its creators the Tusci or Etrusci...
antiquities. In 1993, the Getty Trust selected Rodolpho Muchado and Jorge Silvetti to design the renovation of the Getty Villa and its campus. In 1997, portions of the museum's collection of Greek, Roman and Etruscan antiquities were moved to the Getty Center
Getty Center
The Getty Center, in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California, is a campus for cultural institutions founded by oilman J. Paul Getty. The $1.3 billion center, which opened on December 16, 1997, is also well known for its architecture, gardens, and views overlooking Los Angeles...
for display, and the Getty Villa was closed for renovation. The collection was also restored during the renovation.
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...
(UCLA) hold summer institutes in Turkey, studying the conservation of Middle Eastern Art.
Reopened on January 28, 2006, the Getty Villa now shows Greek, Roman, and Etruscan
Etruscan civilization
Etruscan civilization is the modern English name given to a civilization of ancient Italy in the area corresponding roughly to Tuscany. The ancient Romans called its creators the Tusci or Etrusci...
antiquities within Roman-inspired architecture and surrounded by Roman-style gardens. The art is arranged by themes, e.g., Gods and Goddesses, Dionysos and the Theater, and Stories of the Trojan War
Trojan War
In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, the king of Sparta. The war is among the most important events in Greek mythology and was narrated in many works of Greek literature, including the Iliad...
. The new architectural plan
Architectural plan
An architectural plan is a plan for architecture, and the documentation of written and graphic descriptions of the architectural elements of a building project including sketches, drawings and details.- Overview :...
surrounding the Villa - which was conceived by Machado and Silvetti Associates
Machado and Silvetti Associates
Machado and Silvetti Associates is an architecture and urban design firm headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. Incorporated in 1985, the firm's principals Rodolfo Machado and Jorge Silvetti have been in association since 1974...
, Boston architects, (who were also responsible for the plans for the renovated museum) - is designed to simulate an archaeological dig. Architectural Record has praised their work on the Getty Villa as "a near miracle — a museum that elicits no smirks from the art world.... a masterful job... crafting a sophisticated ensemble of buildings, plazas, and landscaping that finally provides a real home for a relic of another time and place."
There has been controversy surrounding the Greek
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
and Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
governments' claim that objects in the collection were looted
Looted art
Looted art has been a consequence of looting during war, natural disaster and riot for centuries. Looting of art, archaeology and other cultural property may be an opportunistic criminal act, or may be a more organized case of unlawful or unethical pillage by the victor of a conflict."Looted art"...
and should be repatriated
Art repatriation
Art repatriation is the return of art or cultural objects, usually referring to ancient or looted art, to their country of origin or former owners . The disputed cultural property items are physical artifacts of a group or society that were taken from another group usually in an act of looting,...
. In 2006, the Getty returned or promised to return four looted objects to Greece: a stele
Stele
A stele , also stela , is a stone or wooden slab, generally taller than it is wide, erected for funerals or commemorative purposes, most usually decorated with the names and titles of the deceased or living — inscribed, carved in relief , or painted onto the slab...
(grave marker), a marble relief, a gold funerary wreath, and a marble statue. In 2007, the Getty signed an agreement to return 40 looted items to Italy.
The Villa is frequently and erroneously said to be in the city of Malibu, but the site is in the City of Los Angeles in the community of Pacific Palisades and has a Pacific Palisades mailing address. In fact, the Malibu city border begins a mile west of the Villa. The museum itself perpetuates this error, to the irritation of Palisades residents.
Facility and programs
Admission to the Getty Villa is free, but timed tickets must be obtained in advance via phone or the museum's website. As of June 2010, there is a $15.00 charge for parking during the day, but parking is free for evening performances. The museum is open Wednesday to Monday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. It is closed Tuesday and on New Year's DayNew Year's Day
New Year's Day is observed on January 1, the first day of the year on the modern Gregorian calendar as well as the Julian calendar used in ancient Rome...
(January 1), July 4
Independence Day (United States)
Independence Day, commonly known as the Fourth of July, is a federal holiday in the United States commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, declaring independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain...
, Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving (United States)
Thanksgiving, or Thanksgiving Day, is a holiday celebrated in the United States on the fourth Thursday in November. It has officially been an annual tradition since 1863, when, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving to be celebrated on Thursday,...
and Christmas
Christmas
Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...
(December 25).
The Getty Villa hosts live performances in both its indoor auditorium and its outdoor theatre. Indoor play-readings included The Trojan Women, Aristophanes' The Frogs, and Euripides' Helen. Indoor musical performances, which typically relate to art exhibits, included: Musica Angelica, De Organographia, and Songs from the Fifth Age: Sones de México in Concert. The auditorium also held a public reading of Homer's Iliad. Outdoor performances included Aristophanes' Peace, Aeschylus's Agamemnon, and Sophocles' Elektra. The Getty Villa also hosts visiting exhibitions beyond its own collections. For example, in March 2011 "In Search of Biblical Lands" is a photographic exhibition which includes scenes of the Middle East dating back to the 1840s.
The Getty Villa offers special educational programs for children. A special Family Forum gallery offers activities including decorating Greek vases and projecting shawdows onto a screen that represents a Greek urn. The room also has polystyrene props from Greek and Roman culture for children to handle and use to cast shadows. The Getty Villa also offers children's guides to the other exhibits.
Campus
Peristyle
In Hellenistic Greek and Roman architecture a peristyle is a columned porch or open colonnade in a building surrounding a court that may contain an internal garden. Tetrastoon is another name for this feature...
. The Outer Peristyle is a formal garden with roses and English Ivy that includes a number of Roman sculptures. To the west of the Outer Peristyle is an herb garden. Beneath the Outer Peristyle is the Central Parking Garage. To the west of the Museum is a 450-seat outdoor Greek theater where evening performances are staged, named in honor of Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman. The theater faces the west side of the Villa and uses its entrance as a stage. To the northwest of the theatre is a three-story, 15500 square feet (1,440 m²) building built into the hill that contains the museum store on the lower level, a cafe on the second level, and a private dining room on the top level. North of the Villa is a 10000 sq ft (929 m²) indoor 250 seat auditorium. On the hill above the museum are Getty's original private ranch house and the museum wing that Getty added to his home in 1954. They are now used for curatorial offices, meeting rooms and as a library. Behind it is the 200-car North Parking Garage. The 105500 square feet (9,801.3 m²) museum building is arranged in a square opening into the Inner Peristyle courtyard. The 2006 museum renovation added 58 windows facing the Inner Peristyle and a retractable skylight over the atrium. It also replaced the terrazzo
Terrazzo
Terrazzo is a composite material poured in place or precast, which is used for floor and wall treatments. It consists of marble, quartz, granite, glass or other suitable chips, sprinkled or unsprinkled, and poured with a binder that is cementitious, chemical or a combination of both...
floors in the galleries and added seismic protection with new steel reinforcing beams and new isolators in the bases of statues and display cases. The museum has 48000 sq ft (4,459.3 m²) of gallery space.
The museum wing off the Getty ranch house is home to the UCLA/Getty Master’s Program in Archaeological and Ethnographic Conservation, the first program of its kind in the United States. The degree program is a partnership between the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA and the Getty Conservation Institute, and participates in research activities at the Villa.
Architectural critic Calum Storrie describes the overall effect:
What the Getty Villa achieves, first by seclusion, then by control of access, and ultimately through the architecture, is a sense of detachment from its immediate environment.
Although not open to the public, the campus includes J. Paul Getty's grave on the hill behind his ranch house.
Collection
The collection has 44,000 Greek, Roman, and Etruscan antiquities dating from 6,500 BC to 400 AD. Among the outstanding items is Victorious Youth, one of few life-size Greek bronze statues to have survived to modern times. The Lansdowne Heracles is a Roman sculpture that was probably copied from an older Greek statue. The Villa also has jewelry and coin collections and an extensive 20,000 volume library of books covering art from these periods. The Villa also displays the Getty kourosGetty kouros
The Getty kouros is an over-life-sized statue in the form of a late archaic Greek kouros. The dolomitic marble sculpture was bought by the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, California, in 1985 for $7 million and first exhibited there in October 1986....
, which the museum lists as "Greek, about 530 B.C., or modern forgery" because scientific analysis is inconclusive as to whether the marble statue can be dated back to Greek times. If genuine, the Getty kouros is one of only twelve remaining intact kouroi. The Marbury Hall Zeus is a 81 in (2.1 m) tall marble statue that was recovered from the ruins at Tivoli near Rome.