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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Art Buyers Spent A Pile Of Money Wisely, Tastefully

Janet Kutner The Dallas Morning News

It’s a story worthy of Hollywood: a $1 billion cultural complex housing the world’s richest art museum, built on 110 acres high above Sunset Boulevard, with a sweeping view from the Pacific Ocean to downtown. Access, via a sleek tram that winds its way up the hill, is equally dramatic.

Extraordinary is the word most often used to describe the new Getty Center, which opened Tuesday. Thirteen years in the making, the six-building campus is a tribute to money and power.

It’s also a testimony to taste. Funded by the Getty Trust, the umbrella for the J. Paul Getty Museum and its sibling institutes, the center is a harmonious blend of new and old, the spectacular and the serene.

So is the museum that forms the center’s core. It sets a standard that others would do well to follow. Quality, not quantity, was the goal. Art, not architecture, is the focus.

Visitors who frequented the museum at its former location, a Roman-style villa in Malibu, are in for a big surprise. It’s not just that everything looks better here, in sensitively proportioned galleries with soaring skylights that show the art to best advantage. There’s much that’s new or hasn’t been seen for lack of space.

The Getty has astounding resources - the trust’s $4.3 billion endowment exceeds that of any U.S. arts and humanities foundation. Museum director John Walsh acknowledges spending $65 million a year on art alone recently.

The list of purchases since his 1983 arrival is staggering - $10 million for Mantegna’s “Adoration of the Magi,” $35 million for a Pontormo portrait, a reported $54 million for van Gogh’s “Irises,” $13.4 million for Titian’s “Venus and Adonis,” $7.9 million for a bullfight picture by Goya and, just last June, $6.1 million for a bust-length portrait by the French neoclassicist Jacques-Louis David.

The Getty has bought well. Its director is one of the few art historians left in the business. A specialist in 17th-century Dutch painting, Walsh was previously curator of European paintings at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.

There’s no sign of extravagance here - just respect for the way objects should be viewed and attention to providing useful information (labels, interactive audio tours, resource rooms) to make them meaningful to the larger audience the Getty seeks.

The new museum has 64,000 square feet of gallery space, more than twice what it had before. Annual attendance is expected to triple from 400,000 to 1.3 million.

A variety of experiences await visitors as they tour four permanent collection pavilions and one for temporary exhibitions - all separated by elegant landscaped plazas, walkways and terraces with breathtaking vistas.

European paintings are hung on fabric walls that set them off dramatically. Decorative arts are displayed in period rooms that transport us back to the lavish era of the French king Louis. Sculpture appears in compatible groupings, and one room shows terra-cottas and bronzes in a setting that resembles an 18th-century atelier.

The Getty collection isn’t great, like that of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. But it has significant pockets of strength, including antiquities and French furniture, the passion of oil tycoon and benefactor J. Paul Getty.

“We didn’t want a smattering,” Walsh says. “We thought we would do best to do some things really well … to make a really distinguished and focused collection by developing the museum in certain areas.”

Paintings are what most people expect to see in museums, and visitors could spend hours in these 22 galleries alone. Aside from photographs, the Getty restricts its focus to European art and does not go beyond the late 19th century. Thus paintings start in the 14th century and end with two very different works from 1893 - the brooding “Starry Night” by Edvard Munch and a beautifully orchestrated “Still Life With Apples” by Paul Cezanne.

Getty paintings in general speak out - Millet’s exhausted peasant leaning on his hoe, Pontormo’s riveting portrait of an anxious young soldier, Rembrandt’s theatrical “Abduction of Europa.” Sometimes it’s not with story but by altering perceptions, as in Monet’s winter view of wheat stacks, where the snow is anything but white.

Eccentricity alone makes the Getty collection interesting - it owns James Ensor’s monumental masterpiece, “Christ’s Entry Into Brussels in 1889,” a horrifying caricature of a wild pre-Lenten crowd. The museum has often taken risks, which accounts for more subtle oddities such as a disarmingly disconcerting portrait of a girl by Fernand Khnopff, a Belgian whose name is not a household word.

The collection has grown by astonishing proportions since Walsh arrived - 400 paintings, up from 75; 500 drawings instead of three; 300 antiquities from the esteemed Fleischman collection alone; 160 illuminated manuscripts; lots more sculpture; and a 65,000-piece photography collection (one of the world’s largest) that was built from scratch.

The Getty’s mission doesn’t include contemporary art, but along with landmark works from Eadweard Muybridge to Ansel Adams, the photography collection includes incisive social commentary by African-American artist Carrie Mae Weems, photo-booth self-portraits by Andy Warhol and a huge photo-montage of a littered desert highway by David Hockney.

The presence of L.A. artists is strongly felt. The central garden, a project of astounding scope, is by Robert Irwin. Sizable works by Ed Ruscha and Alexis Smith hang in the auditorium foyer and restaurant, respectively.

The Getty is changing - as indeed it must to avoid being called a castle on the hill. It will now do large loan shows. Community outreach efforts are intense.

Given its high visibility and the advance hype, it’s sure to attract curiosity seekers. That’s fine with Walsh, who recognizes the importance of “getting people through the door.” One important factor is free admission, now rare in museums. The only charge is a $5 parking fee.

There’s much to do here - easily enough to fill a day. And it is an experience not to be believed.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: GETTY CENTER INFORMATION Free admission. Parking is $5. Hours are Tuesday and Wednesday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., Thursday and Friday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Closed Mondays and major holidays. Parking reservations are required (and already booked into February). For information, call (310) 440-7300.

This sidebar appeared with the story: GETTY CENTER INFORMATION Free admission. Parking is $5. Hours are Tuesday and Wednesday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., Thursday and Friday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Closed Mondays and major holidays. Parking reservations are required (and already booked into February). For information, call (310) 440-7300.