Getty Museum
Getty Museum, museum and research center established by oil tycoon J. Paul Getty as a home for his collection of artworks. It comprises two locations in Los Angeles: the Getty Villa and the Getty Center. The former houses a collection of antiquities, while the latter exhibits European art and international photography.
History and opening of the Getty Villa
In 1954 Getty converted a part of his ranch house in the Pacific Palisades section of Los Angeles into a museum, offering the public the opportunity to view his art collection. As the collection grew, he began to plan a new, larger building on his property. This museum, known as the Getty Villa, was a lavish re-creation of the Villa of the Papyri, an ancient Roman home uncovered at Herculaneum, and was opened in 1974.
Getty died two years later, bequeathing the bulk of his fortune—about $700 million worth of stock in the Getty Oil Company—to the Getty Trust. In subsequent decades, the funds were used to incorporate into the museum centers for conservation, research, and education.
Getty Center
The trust also allowed for the funding of the Getty Center (commonly called the Getty), a six-building complex designed by American architect Richard Meier in the Brentwood neighborhood. After years of planning, the Getty opened with great publicity in 1997.
The Getty is home to the Getty Research Institute, the Getty Conservation Institute, the Getty Foundation, the Getty Library, and a museum exhibiting J. Paul Getty’s collection of European paintings, sculpture, drawings, illuminated manuscripts, and decorative arts from the Middle Ages to the 20th century. The collections reflect the oil baron’s preference for paintings of the Renaissance and Baroque periods and for French furniture. It also has an extensive collection of international photographs that date from the late 1830s to the present.
- Areas Of Involvement:
- painting
- Renaissance art
- Baroque art and architecture
- art
- decorative art
- Related People:
- J. Paul Getty
Renovation of the Getty Villa
With the opening of the Getty Center, the Getty Villa was closed for renovation in 1997. It reopened in 2006 with a design by the Boston-based architects Rodolfo Machado and Jorge Silvetti. In addition to housing a research center for the study of art and culture of antiquity, the Getty Villa displays J. Paul Getty’s collection of ancient Greek, Roman, and Etruscan art. In 2018 the collection was reinstalled chronologically after decades of being displayed thematically. The grounds of the Villa were damaged by the Palisades Fire that devastated areas of the Santa Monica Mountains in early 2025, but the collection remained unscathed.