After several years
and $275 million dollars, the Getty Villa has opened again to
the public, the "largest art event" in Los Angeles this year.
Just as we reported, in 1997, on the opening of the new Getty
Center, that great cultural acropolis in the hills of Brentwood,
we visited the "neo" classical Villa for a preview in January,
a few weeks before it opened to the public, and are submitting
the following report.
Rising up out of the parking garage, visitors catch just a glance
of the site, entering quickly into the Entry Pavillion, a rectangular
box of a space, with high walls, evocative indeed, as the architects
intended, of an archeological excavation. Encouraged by a greeter,
we boarded an elevator that took us out of the pit, and into
an open vista which serves as an orientation station for visitors.
It overlooks the main features of the site: the amphitheater,
the main entrance of the museum, the coffee shop, the Ranch House.
In front of us, an interpretive plaque laid it all out.
Descending into the main building, it is immediately clear that
this is a masterpiece of technical museumology. The details feel
as solid as if the whole place were carved out of one megalith.
The classical sculptures seemed renewed in their crisp curatorial
frames. We soon became seduced by the infrastrucure at the Villa:
the door hinges, the dataport covers in the floor, the touchscreen
enclosures, and the fiber optics in the display cases. The objects
in the museum look good because of these things, this enchanting
exhibition of faultless hardware. From the tiniest coin in the
tiniest vitrine to the mock-up of the Herculaneum Villa itself
that houses the galleries, to the lavishly landscaped grounds
that surround the buildings: the Villa is a Russian doll of a
museum, a display case within a display case within a display
case.
Heading past the custom exit signs, out the back door, past
the exposed water and gas shut off valves near the service entrance,
past the loading docks with their open maws, past the magnificent
battery of vents of the Villa’s air plant, we sought the edge,
the back of the backspace, to find the final layer of infrastructure
for this 64 acre meticulous macrocosm. Following electrical cables
strewn on the ground, up a path behind the Ranch House (the building
that J. Paul used to live in) that is now a UCLA Conservation
Research Center, this overgrown path seems forgotten, from another
time - perhaps J. Paul walked up this path during moments of
lone contemplation? The path follows a small dry stream bed,
or is it a drainage rill slope, then peters out in thickets of
eucalyptus litter. Higher and higher we climb until finally:
the perimeter road. The cyclone fence across the road is barbed,
and old, this has been the limit for a while. We look at the
backs of signs that say "No Trespassing Private Property Trained
Service Dogs In Use," facing out. This is the end of the Villa.
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Finally, perspective. The service road reaches the
highest point of land on the property, offering views of the Villa
below, and of the ocean beyond. It echoes, for a moment, San Simeon,
that other private house and dreamscape of a wealthy man, hell
bent on collecting things, built north of Los Angeles, in hills
overlooking the Pacific Ocean, which was opened, over his dead
body, to the public. A place J. Paul Getty visited once, as a guest
of Hearst’s, perhaps laying the seed for this version. But the
Villa’s production value makes it more than a spectacle of one
man’s unfettered accumulations. It is as strong an argument as
has been made yet of the incongruity of the old world’s place in
America. |
