Seeing the Ancients Anew

When it reopens this Saturday after eight years of renovation, the Getty Villa can boast of being the only museum entirely devoted to Greek, Etruscan and Roman art. The world-class collection of antiquities is now the sole occupant and star of the gloriously renewed museum, the centerpiece of an entirely reimagined campus dedicated to the study of ancient life that includes a 450-seat outdoor classical theater where Greek dramas will be performed. Although derided by some critics as a theme park and an affront to modernism when it first opened in 1974, the Villa, based on the Villa dei Papiri, a first-century Roman country house, quickly won status as a well-loved Los Angeles landmark. The public embraced it from the start. “Traffic was blocked all the way into Santa Monica; it was a huge mess in both directions on Pacific Coast Highway,” says Burton Fredericksen, one of the museum’s first curators, of the original opening. The reservation system was born of this instant popularity and is still intact. In fact, openings to gain entry to the new complex are scarce until fall. Fredericksen was appointed curator of the J. Paul Getty Museum in 1965 when the collection was still relatively small and housed in the original Ranch House. “At that time, we were only open twice a week, two hours a day, and had room for just 24 cars,” Fredericksen recalled during a recent interview in his Brentwood home. “There was no way of knowing in 1965 that anything was going to come of the place.” It was in the late 1960s that J. Paul Getty’directing everything from afar at his home in England’decided to expand his cultural operation by stepping up acquisitions, hiring more staff and making plans for a new structure. Fredericksen, who remained one of three main curators until the late 1970s, didn’t even meet his boss until 1969 (Getty never returned to the U.S. after 1951). “One had to go there [to England] to see him,” he says. “I always thought people might have viewed him as an authoritarian-type person, which he was not. He was actually very personable. He was tightfisted, that’s well documented, but aside from wanting to keep expenses to a minimum, he was an easy man to work for.” Getty’s early collecting was mostly focused on decorative arts and paintings. His love affair with the ancient world and its objects began in 1939 with his first purchase and continued until his death in 1976. According to Fredericksen, Getty’s collecting style was distinguished by how often he trusted his own instincts rather than seeking others’ advice and the way in which the billionaire connoisseur was ever-conscious of cost, never wanting to set record prices. “This had its benefits and problems,” he says with a laugh, adding, “There were many things we should have bought.” “He always liked big things,” says Fredericksen. “It was characteristic of his collecting throughout. He enjoyed big pieces of furniture, big statues and big paintings. It was hard to sell him a small painting, small statue or even a chair.” Getty’s taste for the monumental is evident with the Lansdowne Herakles, a life-size marble figure of the young Herakles found near Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli. One of Getty’s most prized possessions, the statue, purchased in 1951, was one of the inspirations for building his museum in the style of an ancient Roman villa. Many significant purchases were made with the new museum in mind, including the entire contents of a Madison Avenue antiquities gallery in 1971. One thing Getty had little interest in were Greek vases, purportedly because of their use as funerary urns. “He didn’t want to collect objects that had an association with death,” says Karol Wight, the Getty Villa’s acting curator. This is a part of the antiquities collection, along with Cycladic art and funerary objects, that has notably grown since Getty’s day, aided, of course, by his enormous bequest. Of the 44,000 artworks that make up the collection, 1,200 of the 2,000 displayable objects are now exhibited in thematically arranged galleries. Wight, a long-standing member of the curatorial staff whose specialty is ancient glass, is sensitive to the great nostalgia people have for the original museum. She feels the essence has been preserved, while now complemented by such striking enhancements as opening the galleries to floods of natural light and bringing bright, vivid color to the walls. “Choosing wall colors was one of the hardest decision-making processes of all,” notes Wight of the reinstallation, an overall experience she describes as a breathtaking opportunity. The original Villa cost $17 million and took three years to build. “It was done as cheaply as we could do it on instruction,” Fredericksen recounts. By contrast, the revamped Villa, costing $275 million and following the winning design of architects Rodolfo Machado and Jorge Silvetti, is perhaps the most carefully done building of its kind ever built, with a state-of-the-art systems installed throughout to ensure the safety of the works of art. Every inch of the complex has been thoughtfully considered, right down to the smart new labeling system that allows objects to be cleanly displayed while a single panel handsomely mounted under each case has an easily identifiable icon of each piece and its information. Even museum fatigue has been addressed, with bars installed on the cases to allow hands to rest while studying an object. Wight recommends that visitors refresh their knowledge of Greek, Roman and Etruscan art in the new Timescape room, where interactive exhibits focus on time, place and artistic style in the ancient Mediterranean. Given the exacting and meticulous nature of the renovation, does Wight wish anything had been done differently with the installation? “I only wish the galleries were a little larger,” she says. “We were working on paper for years and when the exhibition furniture was delivered and installed, we realized there was too much in each room. We had to make some tough decisions, with some objects ending up in the storeroom.” Still, she says, the goal was to allow each object to breathe, not to overwhelm or make things overcrowded. “Less is truly more in this case.” Although he never personally visited his original Villa museum, nor could he have imagined the transformations to come, J. Paul Getty and his desire to create an intimate oasis in which to contemplate the ancient world has a timeless resonance. He wrote: ” I would like every visitor at Malibu to feel as if I had invited him to come and look about and feel at home… I hope that it will prove to be as beautiful as I imagined it and that everyone who wants will have a chance to see it.” The Getty Villa is located at 17985 Pacific Coast Hwy., Pacific Palisades. Admission is free. Advance, timed tickets are required and can be obtained online at www.getty.edu or by calling 440-7300. Hours are Thursday through Monday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Parking is $7 per car, cash only.