Getty Villa

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Outer peristyle , large garden courtyard of the villa

The Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades is one of the two locations of the J. Paul Getty Museum . The building, modeled on the Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum , now houses the museum's collection of antiquities .

prehistory

In 1945 the oil magnate J. Paul Getty bought 26 hectares of land directly on the Pacific coast . In 1954 he built a gallery next to a house for his rapidly growing art collection. When this presentation option became too narrow due to the growing collection, he planned his own exhibition building.

The building

He had a replica of the Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum built on the back of the property . However, since this has not been completely excavated, it is a free re-creation that also took architectural borrowings from other ancient buildings from Pompeii , Herculaneum and Stabiae . Compromises have also been made - especially with regard to the requirements of a modern museum, for example to achieve accessibility for visitors. In contrast to the original, the entire villa has a cellar. There is an underground car park there .

The museum was opened to the public in 1974. J. Paul Getty died in 1976 and left the museum with a rich inheritance. Since there was resistance from the neighbors to an expansion of the museum at this location, a second museum building, "The Getty Center ", was built further east and inland on Interstate 405 in the 1990s according to plans by Richard Meier . Subsequently, the Getty Villa underwent a major renovation from 1997 and reopened on January 28, 2006.

The collection

Contrary to the original concept, which showed paintings on the first floor of the villa, only Greek , Etruscan and Roman antiquities are shown in the entire complex , whereas the collection of paintings is now presented in the Getty Center. The antique collection exhibited in the Getty Villa comprises around 44,000 objects. Its most valuable objects include the young winner , a life-size Greek bronze statue, and the Lansdowne Hercules . With the collection, the American oil billionaire J. Paul Getty tried to catch up with the cultural behavior of the old European elites. In order to build up the collection, he bought objects on the antique market around the world, mostly objects without proof of provenance that came from robbery excavations . Only very few of the items collected here can therefore be assigned to an archaeological find context.

In addition, special and changing exhibitions relating to the main theme of the museum, the classical antiquity of the Mediterranean , are shown in the Getty Villa .

Visitor service

"Greek" vase for self-painting in the family forum of the museum

The museum is equipped with the full range of facilities for visitor care, including the museum shop and cafeteria. Entry to the Getty Villa is free. But need tickets in earlier Internet be ordered. This regulates the flow of visitors in the facility. It is not possible to move freely on the site. Visitors who arrive with their own car are allowed to drive to the (chargeable) underground car park under the villa. Visitors without their own vehicle will be picked up at the entrance and driven to the villa.

The museum offers educational offers for visitors, lectures, guided tours and group-specific training courses on a daily basis . This also includes the “Family Forum”, a room in which vase painting from ancient Greece is presented and explained in a child-friendly manner.

Trivia

  • The Getty Villa is now also home to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) course for the restoration of archaeological and ethnographic objects (UCLA / Getty Master's Program in Archaeological and Ethnographic Conservation).
  • Next to the villa there is a small open-air stage in the style of an ancient Greek theater . Ancient dramas are performed here.

literature

Web links

Commons : Getty Villa  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 34 ° 2 ′ 43.3 "  N , 118 ° 33 ′ 53.6"  W.