GETTY VILLA

Description

Essentials about the Getty Villa in brief

Located on a hillside in the suburb of Pacific Palisades, the Getty Villa is one of the two sites of the world-famous Getty Museum. The building is modeled after the Roman villa complex Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum and now houses the museum’s collection of antiquities. If you’re a fan of Greek and Roman sculptures, vases and other objects, you should pay a visit to the Getty Villa.

The history and architecture of the Getty Villa

Historically, the villa goes back to the oil magnate J. Paul Getty, who acquired a 26-hectare plot of land directly on the Pacific coast in 1945. In addition to a residential building, he subsequently constructed a gallery for his rapidly growing art collection in 1954. When this presentation facility became too small due to the further growth of the collection, he planned his own exhibition building. To this end, he had a replica of the Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum built at the rear of the property. However, since this has not been completely excavated, it is a free re-creation that also incorporated architectural borrowings from other ancient buildings in various Roman cities.

The museum was opened to the public in 1974. After his death in 1976, J. Paul Getty endowed the museum with a rich inheritance. Due to opposition from local residents to expanding the museum at this location, the impsant museum complex The Getty Center was built further east in the Santa Monica Mountains in the 1990s.

The collection of the Getty Villa

Contrary to the original concept, which showed paintings on the second floor of the villa, today the Getty Villa exclusively displays Greek, Etruscan and Roman antiquities. The collection of paintings and other artifacts are presented in the Getty Center. Of the antiquities collection of approximately 44,000 objects, approximately 1,400 are on continuous display at the Getty Villa.

The antiquities date from a period from 6,500 B.C. to 400 A.D. With his collection, oil billionaire J. Paul Getty sought to connect with the cultural practices of ancient European elites. To build up the collection, he therefore purchased objects on the worldwide antiquities market, most of which were items without proof of provenance that came from looted excavations. Only very few objects in the collection can therefore be assigned to an archaeological find context.

Among their most valuable objects are the Youth Victor, a life-size Greek bronze statue, and the Lansdowne Hercules. In addition, the Getty Villa hosts special and temporary exhibitions related to the museum’s main theme, the classical antiquity of the Mediterranean.