High in the hills overlooking Los Angeles, The Getty
Centre offers a commanding view.
“Yeah, on a clear day you can see smog forever,” says a
droll Angelino as he stares into the blue-grey gauze which lies lightly over
his city on this typically perfect, dry day.
That said the Getty, as it is commonly known and which
opened 18 months ago, is beautifully appointed on a 46ha site above the San
Diego Freeway in Brentwood. It looks from the Pacific Ocean and across the
greater Los Angeles area in one direction, and to the Santa Monica Mountains in
another.
Little wonder Angelinos sometimes come here to simply
wander through the gardens -- designed by Robert Irwin -- and have lunch in the
sun with the busy world far beneath their sight-lines. Up here it’s sky above
and world below -- and art all around.
Built for about $NZ1.75 billion, the Getty art museum has
seen more that two million visitors since its opening in December 1997. And
oddly in this city of the automobile, the carpark allows for only 700 vehicles so
it pays to book ahead. The many visitors who arrive by bus or taxi -- or on
skateboards or in-line skates, because this is Los Angeles after all -- don’t
need reservations.
The Getty certainly rewards any effort made to get to it.
Designed by Richard Meier, the centre effects the
marriage of handsome design and functionalism. Meier’s vision and the Southern
Californian climate has allowed for that rarity in art museums, an effortless
union of interior and exterior space.
Paintings on the top floors are exhibited under natural
light.
The Getty is considered one of the great museums and
locations -- but Meier’s bull-headed vision to realise his dream, and the
museum’s future direction, have been the stuff of protracted controversy.
Of current concern is the Getty’s acquisitions policy
most recently under fire from Los Angeles Times’ art critic Christopher Knight,
who berated the museum for letting Georges Seurat’s 1884 Landscape, Island of
Grande Jatte slip through its fingers.
Knight rightly noted that Seurat is internationally
regarded as one of the finest by the French pointillist Impressionist. This
painting was the perfect and necessary counterpoint to the Getty’s Entry of
Christ into Brussels in 1889 by James Ensor, a powerful Expressionist work the museum
snapped up a little over l0 years ago.
The Seurat, however, is now in Steve Wynn’s collection in
his Las Vegas casino, Bellagio. He picked it up for a tidy $NZ70 million.
The Getty says it considered bidding for it, but
determined it wasn’t a good enough example of the artist’s work -- a
breathtaking assertion. Knight suggests the museum’s running costs (“a
voracious money pit") meant it simply didn’t have the readies for such a
major purchase.
In a front-page Times article Knight noted that while the
museum was bolstered by a trust with an annual endowment of $NZ10 billion,
there were enormous outgoings.
The Getty has six principal buildings which collectively
house the J. Paul Getty Museum, offices, an auditorium, conservation institute,
the Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities, an
education institute for the arts, the Getty Information Institute, the Getty
Grant Programme, and a restaurant and cafe.
lt is impressively large, as befits what has been
described as the most expensive and extravagant museum in the United States.
With facades of rough travertine stone chosen to evoke
traditionalism and endurance (though a substitute for the architect's original
concept of white enameled aluminium after complaints from the neighbours), the
place has a cool, assured ambience and sits comfortably within the topography
of the sometimes arid Californian hills.
The Getty is expansive enough to accommodate large
exhibitions.
Running at present are extensive exhibitions by the
photographer Brassai, the intelligent and informative pairing of the Italian
renaissance painters Ercole de Roberti and Dosso Dossi (complete with x-ray
analysis of one of Dossi’s larger works), an impressive display of medieval
illustrated manuscripts with educative displays on book illustration and
construction, sculpture exhibits, and more. Already this year there have been
acclaimed exhibitions of Dance and Photography, the seldom seen photography of
Edgar Degas, some small Van Goghs, and changing displays from the museum's
extensive archives and collections. And most of these exhibits come with
explanatory notes and tie-in education programmes.
But the Getty did not arrive at this point without its
shortcomings or critics.
Meier, a visionary Modernist architect, drove his
particular vision of the museum for 14 years and clashed repeatedly with almost
everyone eise involved, notably Irwin and museum director John Walsh.
A behind-the-scenes documentary about this titanic
struggle of ideas, ideologies and egos, Concert of Wills: Making the Getty
Centre, captures the drama.
But despite Meier’s genius being largely realised -- and
the finished complex greeted with critical and public acclaim -- attention has
turned to what is in the galleries. And, as Knight pointed out, what is not.
Some say the feast of art can quickly turn into a
smorgasbord, and the slightly chaotic permanent exhibition largely reflects the
idiosyncratic taste of its benefactor, the late oil tycoon J. Paul Getty.
The gardens -- a source of a lengthy dispute between
Meier and Irwin -- may be impressive in Los Angeles, a city not known for its
proud domestic gardens, but to outsiders it can look little more than a
well-designed, constrained collection. Plants which line the zig-zag path that
crosses over a trickling stream and leads to a concentric display are regularly
changed. But when lined up against the great museum gardens of the world, it
can look meagre.
And despite its size, the Getty is already cramped and
the trust has had to lease additional, expensive space in nearby Santa Monica.
It is also having to look at adding more parking spaces, there are continuing
renovations to Getty’s original villa in Malibu which is scheduled to open in
2001, the numerous research and conservation programmes are draining money and
it demands a large staff.
The year before the Getty Centre opened the museum’s
acquisitions budget was slashed from $NZ92 million to $NZ50 million and the
figure is even lower today.
As a result, since its opening the museum's acquisitions
have been unimpressive. Knight listed only two major paintings, four
sculptures, three plaques, a Byzantine manuscript, 123 photographs and other
smaller works.
Certainly there have been generous gifts and endowments,
but the Getty itself appears to letting acquisition opportunities go by while
it struggles with its day-to-day running costs and problems.
So impressive though the Getty Centre may be -- and it is
certainly that -- there is also disquiet as to its future direction. Whether
what's inside continues to match its impressive exterior is the question.
