The Getty Villa

If you've ever been to LA, you've no doubt seen the Getty Museum on its mountain top while you're driving on the 405. The Getty apparently has over 5 billion in assets and to keep their tax benefits they must spend at least 5% of it, or something like that. Basically they are required to spend a crap load of money every year. Hence the Getty Museum on top of a mountain (they literally just chopped off the top of a mountain to build their facility and spent over 10 years building the museum/school. They also have a great internship program where they pay students to work at non-profits) and the renovation of the villa in Malibu. The original Getty Museum was actually in Malibu, it was J. Paul Getty's old house. After closing down for renovations the villa has recently re-opened and is spectacularly beautiful. It has a gorgeous view of the ocean and the museum building is modeled after a first-century Roman country house, the Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum, Italy. When you first get there it might seem a little gaudy with all its bright colors, but then you realize that an ancient Roman/Greek house would have actually looked like that. All the ruins and sculptures we see were originally brightly painted, not the natural stone color we see today. I especially love this museum because I am very interested in antiquities (the only type of art the museum has) and I've always enjoyed learning about ancient Roman, Egyptian, and Greek history. This post does involve fashion a bit, but we'll get back to that later.

Here is a birdseye view of the Villa.


This is the Greek theatre they have where for one month during the year they have live performances every night. They also have random live performances throughout the year.


The gardens in both Gettys are beautiful. This is the prettiest part of the Villa to me and it's calming to just walk along the pool and look at your surroundings.


The inner area (i believe it's called the Peristyle) has a water fountain and a small garden.


Also, the food at the Getty Villa cafe is AMAZING. It's reasonably priced, $8.00-$12.00 an entree, and tastes like gourmet food. I forgot to take pictures I was so anxious to start eating. I would suggest the Roma Burger and the Tuscan Soup (yummy soup with lots of seafood, big enough to be an entree). I had the ahi tuna salad with white beans, grapefruit and oranges which was awesome.

Their current exhibition (going on until April 2007) is called Stories in Stone and is a bunch of mosaics from Tunisia. The Getty website says: "This exhibition presents a selection of mosaics from the national museums of Tunisia. They are among the finest of the thousands of mosaics produced between the second and the sixth centuries A.D. in the Roman province of Africa Proconsularis, a portion of which is known today as Tunisia." In person they're pretty amazing.


The Getty is also giving back many pieces (I think over 26) to Greece whose ownership has been contested for years. So you should visit the museum and look at them before they go back to Greece forever. Apparently the former Getty curator Marion True bought several items either illegally or with knowledge that the ownership is disputed. She's currently awaiting trial in Italy on other charges relating to smuggling and buying illegal antiquities. The LA Times wrote this interesting article on what's going on here.One of the pieces going back is this beautiful golden funeral wreath which i saw at the museum yesterday.

A Greek prosecutor wants to file charges against Marion True for her role in the purchase of this wreath. I had no idea there was so much drama and intrigue in the art world.

Now to fashion. I LOVE museum gift shops, especially their jewelry. The jewelery usually has something to do with the type of art carried in the museum and is often made by artists so they're very unique. The Getty Villa store is no exception. They have really cool necklaces and earring with pieces modeled after old Greek and Roman coins, just to name a couple things. I ended up buying this necklace.

It says "I love you" in hieroglyphics (I have always been fascinated by Egyptian art and history). I wish I had a better picture but oh well.

While the bigger Getty museum on the mountain does not require tickets and you can go up whenever, the Getty Villa is much smaller so you have to reserve tickets, but the tickets are free, you only have to reserve a time and pay for parking. You can reserve you tickets here. If you go let me know what you think!

Oh yeah, and Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays!!