Getty Center Opening Has Vips Lining Up

Forget Oscar and Emmy. For the next eight weeks, the most coveted ticket in Los Angeles has a new name: Getty.

To the VIP crowd, the December gala opening of the new $1 billion J. Paul Getty Center will be the scene to be seen at. Among the A-list invitees are the president and first lady of the United States, though so far the White House hasn’t mailed back its R.S.V.P.

Fortune 500 CEOs and image-savvy politicos are jockeying to join the party in Brentwood.

Arts officials from around the world are lining up for sneak peeks at the Getty’s world-class collection of Van Goghs, Goyas and Hockneys, newly installed in architect Richard Meier’s 110-acre modernist campus.

Faxed requests for invitations are pouring in from as far away as Argentina and Israel.

“It could be the event of the year,” said Janet Morgan, editor of Los Angeles Masterplanner, a comprehensive listing of fund-raisers, formal dress balls, testimonial dinners and other gotta-be-there outings of the local glitterati.

But the opening also is stirring interest in far less exalted circles.

For years, L.A. commuters whizzing past the Getty construction site above the San Diego Freeway have wondered just what was going on behind those imposing travertine marble walls. Simple curiosity may be the Getty’s best marketing tool between now and its official Dec. 16 public opening.

“Everybody is calling. It’s a hot ticket,” said Gwen Walden, who as chief assistant to Getty Trust President and CEO Harold Williams is overseeing the inaugural festivities.

Even Hollywood, historically cool to the Getty’s patrician, old-money aura, has caught the scent of a major cultural happening and will be putting in several cameo appearances over the next eight weeks. Actor John Lithgow will give the keynote address at one pre-opening event, a Nov. 14-16 Kids Congress on Art.

“I think we (Hollywood) are extraordinarily interested” in the Getty’s opening, Paramount Studios head Sherry Lansing said recently. “I must say right off the bat that I think it’s the most extraordinary building I’ve ever seen in my life.”

All this breathless buzz seems to have put Getty staffers in something of a bind. While the attention is obviously welcome, the Getty in recent years has been trying to reshape its image as a bastion of exclusivity and profligate good taste. Any impression of black-tied swells clinking champagne glasses and scarfing shrimp canapes could undercut such efforts.

Yet officials concede that the inaugural must serve as a way for the Getty to acknowledge longtime supporters and reward steadfast friends from over the years.

“There’s a tension, in a sense, between acknowleding everyone and being accessible to everyone who already knows and cares about museums, and to be accessible to people who’ve never been to a museum,” said Williams, head of the umbrella Getty Trust that oversees the Getty Museum and five affiliated institutes.

“It’s a struggle,” Williams said. “People are working on the (guest) list, and the list is infinitely longer than what we can accommodate in a single event.”