The West Pavilion, which houses sculpture and decorative arts of the 1700s and 1800s, along with 19th-century paintings and changing exhibitions of drawings and photographs. The collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum on display at the Getty Center includes “pre-20th-century European paintings, drawings, illuminated manuscripts, sculpture, and decorative arts; and 19th- and 20th-century American and European photographs”.
The permanent collection is displayed throughout the four pavilions chronologically: the north houses the oldest art while the west houses the newest. The first-floor galleries in each pavilion house light-sensitive art, such as illuminated manuscripts, furniture, or photography.
Computer-controlled skylights on the second-floor galleries allow paintings to be displayed in natural light. The second floors are connected by a series of glass-enclosed bridges and open terraces, both of which offer views of the surrounding hillsides and central plaza. Sculpture is also on display at various points outside the buildings, including on various terraces and balconies. The lower level (the highest of the floors in the base) includes a public cafeteria, the terrace cafe, and the photography galleries.
1st floor: Sculpture & Decorative Arts
The Department of Sculpture and Decorative Arts oversees a rich collection of nearly 1,700 objects, spanning from the late-12th to mid-20th centuries. The European decorative arts holdings, which J. Paul Getty began acquiring in the 1930s, count among the world’s finest for their quality, rarity, and historical interest. Of particular importance are objects created in France under the reigns of Louis XIV, Louis XV, and Louis XVI. The decorative arts collection also features premier examples of furniture, silver, ceramics, glass, textiles, clocks, and gilt bronzes that date from the Renaissance to the early 1800s, as well as medieval and Renaissance stained glass.
Established in 1984, the European sculpture collection has grown significantly to include rare masterpieces made from the Middle Ages through the early 1900s. This ensemble was enriched in 2004 by a generous donation from Fran and Ray Stark, comprising of 28 pieces by prominent artists of the 20th century.
The department’s holdings can be viewed mostly on the plaza level of the Museum’s permanent galleries, with a few pieces on the second level. The majority of the Fran and Ray Stark Sculpture Collection is exhibited at the lower tram station and at the top of the hill around the Getty Center.
Temporary exhibition: Images of the Artist
Investigating issues of artistic identity and image-making, this exhibition looks at some of the ways in which artists have represented themselves, their fellow artists, their activity, or their surroundings over the past five centuries. Images of the Artist presents varied media: mostly drawings, but also prints, photographs, paintings, and sculptures from the Getty’s collections, complemented by loans from local institutions and private collectors.
Portraits can do more than immortalize the likeness of a sitter. They may also construct, project, or perpetuate a certain perception of the sitter or their position in society. Additionally, they may convey something about the rapport between the portraitist and sitter, display the maker’s skill, or merely experiment with technique or style. In the case of self-portraits, the artist and sitter are one, further complicating attempts to view this kind of representation as an objective account. In addition to their potential for self-presentation, such images have served as a potent means of self-exploration.
Artists have used allegory – or the use of symbolic figures to embody abstract ideas – to represent artists and artistic creation since the Renaissance. The visual vocabulary of allegory, however, has its roots in classical antiquity. Several powerful myths of artistic creation originated in ancient Greece, including the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea. Frequently used to elevate the artist and his work, allegory also leaves room for parody. This was especially the case in the nineteenth century, when society questioned time-honored traditions and ways of thinking about the artist’s role and status.
The Romantic conception of the artist is as an isolated, tortured genius. As a result, we often tend to picture artists toiling alone in sparsely furnished studios. While countless such depictions certainly exist, some images give a more varied view. Social interaction is a significant aspect of their lives, whether with patrons, teachers, fellow artists, or students. Still, the prevalence of images of artists alone in front of an easel or sketchbook suggests that their work is ultimately a lonely pursuit.
This final section of the exhibition displays images in which the artist’s likeness and presence are more elusive than in the other works on view. While the artist’s body may be fragmentary, distorted, or simply absent in these works, they bear tangible traces of the artist and the physical or mental process of image-making – be it in fingerprints or shadows.
2nd floor: Paintings
The Paintings collection encompasses over 400 notable European paintings produced before 1900. The collection is displayed in the skylit second–floor galleries of the Getty Museum and in conjunction with sculpture and decorative art on the plaza level. While its parameters reflect J. Paul Getty’s own interests, in the decades following his death in 1976 the collection expanded considerably beyond his predilection for Italian Renaissance and seventeenth–century Dutch and Flemish painting to include major examples of early Italian and Netherlandish painting, eighteenth– and nineteenth–century French painting, and the Spanish and German schools.
Among the best–known works are Pontormo’s Portrait of a Halberdier, Orazio Gentileschi’s Danaë, Rembrandt’s An Old Man in Military Costume, Turner’s Modern Rome, Manet’s Jeanne (Spring), and Van Gogh’s Irises. Early paintings by Rembrandt (1628–34), as well as works by Rubens, Jacques‑Louis David, Monet, and Degas comprise areas of depth. The Department of Paintings continues to expand its holdings through selective acquisitions and gifts.
Highlights:
Taking a Stroll in Renoir’s The Promenade – The Promenade (“the stroll” in French) is one of the most engaging and approachable of all Impressionist paintings. Step into Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s enticing depiction of a youthful couple on a romantic promenade.
The Artist’s Methods: Degas’s Waiting – In all its visual and artistic complexity, Degas’s Waiting is an image of striking emotional resonance. In this pastel, the French Impressionist used several methods to create various effects. He used colors that appear unnatural up close but make sense to the eye at a distance. Explore how this work reveals Degas’s mastery of pastel in this online exhibition.
The Scandalous Art of James Ensor – In the 1880s, the young James Ensor was an ambitious renegade. Dive into his subversive and eccentric world with an in-depth look at his painting Christ’s Entry into Brussels in 1889.
Édouard Manet’s Jeanne – The chic yet mysterious Jeanne depicted in Manet’s painting, the sitter and the painter’s approach to embodying springtime.
Rembrandt in Southern California – This is a virtual exhibition of 14 paintings by Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn (1606–1669) that are on view in five Southern California museums.
J. Paul Getty Museum
The J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center features works of art dating from the eighth through the twenty-first century, showcased against a backdrop of dramatic architecture, tranquil gardens, and breathtaking views of Los Angeles. The collection includes European paintings, drawings, sculpture, illuminated manuscripts, decorative arts, and European, Asian, and American photographs.
The J. Paul Getty Museum, commonly referred to as the Getty, is an art museum in California housed on two campuses: the Getty Center and Getty Villa. The Getty Center is in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles and is the primary location of the museum. The collection features Western art from the Middle Ages to the present. Its estimated 1.3 million visitors annually make it one of the most visited museums in the United States. The museum’s second location, the Getty Villa, is in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood (though self-claims in the city of Malibu) and displays art from ancient Greece, Rome, and Etruria.
In 1974, J. Paul Getty opened a museum in a re-creation of the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum on his property in Pacific Palisades, California. In 1982, the museum became the richest in the world when it inherited US$1.2 billion. In 1983, after an economic downturn in what was then West Germany, the Getty Museum acquired 144 illuminated medieval manuscripts from the financially struggling Ludwig Collection in Aachen; John Russell, writing in The New York Times, said of the collection, “One of the finest holdings of its kind ever assembled, it is quite certainly the most important that was in private hands.” In 1997, the museum moved to its current location in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles; the Pacific Palisades museum, renamed the “Getty Villa”, was renovated and reopened in 2006.
In the Getty Villa about 44,000 pieces are housed from a period of 6,500 BC. The collection includes sculptures, reliefs, mosaics, panel paintings and frescoes, vases, bottles, goblets and amforae, candles and oil lamps, jewelry, pins, bracelets, mirrors, combs, buckles and various ornaments, coins, monuments and votiefgiften and a collection of Most diverse items.