Getty Center A New Jewel In L.A.’S Crown

The car lights on Highway 405 glitter like an impossibly long necklace of precious rubies and pearls. From a hilltop stance too high to hear the roar of the freeway traffic, the red and white strands seem to embellish the throat of one of the latest gifts bestowed on this already well-endowed city.

The gift is the new Getty Center in the Santa Monica Mountains, overlooking tony Bel-Air, the San Gabriel Mountains and Los Angeles. But the views are only part of the present. This $800 million-plus gift, scheduled to open Dec. 6, is a theme park of Herculean dimensions that can be seen from miles away. It’s a testament to what money can buy and imagination can conceive. And it’s all about art.

In six distinct buildings designed by renowned architect Richard Meier on a 110-acre site, the Getty Center celebrates some of humankind’s highest art achievements and possibilities.

The J. Paul Getty Museum itself will be a gathering of five two-story pavilions radiating off a central, 6,000-square-foot garden planned to have three waterfalls and a forest of trees.

The museum’s collection of pre-20th century European paintings, drawings, sculptures, illuminated manuscripts and decorative arts - plus 20th-century American and European photographs - will be exhibited in four of the museum buildings in permanent and changing shows.

Among the spectacular artworks that visitors will see when the museum opens are van Gogh’s “Irises,” Michelangelo’s drawing of “The Holy Family With the Infant St. John the Baptist,” as well as work by Monet, Cezanne, Turner, Rembrandt, Degas, Goya and Titian.

Museum officials say the first two shows after the official opening will focus on antiquities and on how the new Getty Center was built as a collaborative effort.

The center complex will be home to other Getty institutions, too. The Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities now has a place for its 750,000 volumes of art history and more than a million photographs of artworks. The Getty Conservation Institute will have a building, too. Its work over the years has included a six-year project to conserve the paintings on Queen Nefertari’s tomb in Egypt, and preservation of the fossilized footprint of humanity’s earliest upright-walking relative found in Tanzania.

A center for art education and art history research via computer also will be located at the center. And the Getty Trust - the entity that funds the museum and numerous art grants - will get a proper headquarters.

The million-dollar view, complete with seriously spectacular sunsets over the Pacific, can be seen from a 725-acre plot of mountainside that has been enhanced by architecture, gardens and fountains.

The electric tram ride up the side of the mountain from the parking lot may be the best attraction for some younger patrons. And the cost of admission will make everyone happy: It’s free.

The only possible costs that may be incurred include a $5 parking fee if you drive to the center. (For the first year, automobile parking will be by reservation only. After Sept. 28, call 310-440-7300 to make a reservation.) Take a Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority bus to the center and there is no parking fee.

A daylong trip to the Getty Center with all of its attractions may mean buying a meal or two, but administrators have considered everything, even families on a budget. Sure, there will be smart restaurants and a cafeteria with smashing views and food, but also a pushcart vendor on the grounds who will offer simple fare such as hot dogs to make even the smallest art lover happy.

Also there will be a museum store where one might buy postcards of art, replicas of the museum’s sculpture or copies of books that various Getty institutes have published.

The large largess of the late John Paul Getty has created a stunning legacy in the Los Angeles area. Getty set down roots in Malibu and built a house there. In 1953, the museum was established to hold his laudable collection of Greek and Roman art and artifacts, plus 18th century French furniture and European paintings. Later, as the collections expanded, a villa based on a first century design from ancient Rome was constructed next door in 1974.

(The Getty villa museum at Malibu, now closed, is being refurbished and will reopen in 2001 as a study and research center.)

When J. Paul Getty died in 1976, after spending untold millions on art and five marriages, he still left enough money so that in 1982, when his estate was settled, the J. Paul Getty Trust received $1.2 billion to continue the art and history-oriented work he had initiated. All of it emanated from a $5 investment in Oklahoma oil wells that an 11-year-old J. Paul had made, at his father’s urging, in 1904.

In an attempt (and a pretty good one at that) to appeal to people who wouldn’t consider themselves art lovers, the new Getty Center is designed to be attractive in other ways. The natural surroundings and the views have an obvious allure; few other sites in Los Angeles can offer anything like the panorama of this famous basin and the natural wonders that surround it.

The architecture of the complex should also be a draw. It will have a little something for every architectural taste, from a dramatic circular building to an L-shaped, California-style structure with covered walkways and expanses of glass to accentuate the building’s relationship to the out-of-doors.

The familiar square-grid facia, pipe railings, strong horizontal lines and curved glass are all there. The Getty Center is unmistakably the work of architect Richard Meier.

One Getty Center staff member described Meier as a “very detail-obsessed architect.” That included his wanting the stone wall surfaces to have a special appearance. The stone is attached with a four-point bolting system Meier engineered so no mortar had to be used and the pieces would appear to float on the walls.

He also had the stone masons cleave, instead of saw, the cubes of travertine open so the surfaces would be uneven. The fossils in the stone, including leaves, plants, fish and insects - have been strategically placed for easy viewing.

“I wanted to involve kids here,” said Meier noting the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City as one of his early inspirations. “I wanted them to see the fossils and say, ‘Hey, this is not like a museum!’

The center will also be a destination for gardeners. More than 125 acres will be landscaped with more than 500 varieties of plants in gardens designed by Los Angeles artist Robert Irwin and the Olin Partnership of Philadelphia. The man-made landscape will include a 134,000-square-foot central garden with a fountain and an azalea maze, plus waterfalls, terrace gardens, bougainvillea on huge terrace bowers and a meadow.

With all this to offer, the staff estimates that more than 4,000 visitors per day or 1.3 million each year will come to the museum on the hill near Sepulveda Pass.