California and the Getty

Spent a few days in LA with my sister Jenn, and had an absolutely great time. We had the chance to go and do a couple of different things, but the highlight of the trip (aside from just getting to see & spend time with her) was the trip we took to the Getty Center.
The Getty Center/Getty Museum is one of the best known, if not the best known museum in LA.

It was founded by J. Paul Getty, a wealthy oilman who bought an extraordinary piece of real estate in the hills above LA and set up a trust to fund it. The museum’s ‘mission’ is to expand exposure to the visual arts, so that includes things like photography and sketch work in addition to the usual things like paintings & sculpture.
Having been to both the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC and to the Louvre in Paris, I wasn’t expecting I would be impressed, but once again, I was surprised. The museum had a very respectable collection of arts and sculpture, thought not very large. (In fairness, most of the sculpture exhibit was offsite that day). And they had some art deco stuff from the French period of Louis the XIV, also known as the Sun King, that reminded me very much of some of the stuff I saw in France.
But the impressive thing about this place was actually the museum itself. It was designed by an architect named Richard Meier, and the place really is a work of art. It’s a number of interconnected buildings built out of this nice whitish stone called travertine. The museum is designed as several smaller buildings around an outdoor courtyard and a number of other open air spaces, like the food court which you see in the picture. So walking around outside the museum and in between the buildings was in many ways as good as seeing the art inside. In addition, there are a couple of rather impressively designed gardens on the grounds, and they’ve done some very cool things with water and with fountains, giving the entire place a manicured yet somehow natural feel.
One of the exhibits that particular struck me was one on Rubens and Brueghel. These two artists who worked in Antwerp actually created paintings together, as a collaborative effort. (Generally what would happen was that one of them would paint the backgrounds & settings, the other would paint the primary figures, then the first guy would come back and touch things up to make sure the figures fit in properly with the backgrounds.) It was fascinating to see, as I had no idea such collaboration even existed.
The weather was beautiful, the time was relaxing, and it was great to see Jenn again for a few days. I’m in Seattle now, and I’ll be here until I return to NYC over Labor Day. I imagine there may be a few noteworthy experiences here too, but given that I’m vacationing, I may just decide not to post again until September …

J. Paul Getty Museum

http://www.getty.edu/museum/