Emiflor Gabriel

The J. Paul Getty Museum Photo by Jelson25 (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. http://blog.art.com/artwiki/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Aerial-photo-of-Getty-Museum.jpg Short Overview: Jean Paul Getty, a businessman, and art collector, established the J. Paul Getty Museum Trust in 1953. It was through with his legacy and view that the art is a civilizing influence in society. In 1954, he reopened his museum in his ranch house in Malibu (which is known today the Pacific Palisades), named J. Paul Getty Museum. J. Paul Getty was born on December 15, 1892, in Minneapolis, only child of George F. Getty and Sarah C. Macpherson Risher. They had moved to Oklahoma in 1904 and later settled in Los Angeles after two years. J. Paul Getty started his collecting habit since his childhood, along with his education in the oil business. Liberally by nature, he thought out risks in both business and art collecting when he was started to do both of his habits at the same time. However, his desire to increase the public’s access to art lead him to turn the museum he started in his ranch house into the world’s largest cultural and philanthropic institution which dedicated to the visual arts. J. Paul Getty at Jerash (ancient Gerasa) in Jordan, 1954. Institutional Archives, The Getty Research Institute. Getty exhibited the collecting bug as early as 1904. This collection was started with his marble and stamp collections noted in his diary which also his lifelong habit. He died on June 6, 1976, at the age of 83 because of prostate cancer. He was buried at a private gravesite on his Malibu property. The Progress of the Getty Museum Getty revised his will 21 times from September 22, 1958 (the time it was originally signed) to the year 1976 (the year he died). The codicil made three months before his death, reaffirmed his enormous gift to the Trust. The time his will was opened in Los Angeles, it stunned the art world. The amount of Getty’s endowment-worth nearly $700 million-posed an immediate challenge to the Board and staff. Increasing the endowment from $50 million to $700 million meant increasing expenditures from roughly $2 million to nearly $30 million in a very short time. The businessmen on the Board worried that such a sudden increase would lead to profligate spending. Legal and tax took several years to resolve the issues regarding the settlement of the estate. But when it became certain that the said issues would soon be settled in favor of the museum, the Board faced another challenge in determining what the institution would do with the money earned by the increased endowment. The Board and trustees had begun to visualize the institution’s imminent within days of their certainty. They hardly encountered questions like, how they will organize to come up expansion, and what kind of expertise they would need to exert in carrying out a better way of doing things. These struggled questions are just to give tribute to J. Paul Getty’s objective and enthusiasm for what he was started. From then, the Board began to seek for a president for the Trust with the background to manage the Getty’s substantial endowment as well as to implement the new vision. The New Getty Center and Getty Villa The J. Paul Getty Museum serves a wide variety of audiences through its expanded range of exhibitions and programming in the visual arts with two locations, one is in Malibu which is the Getty Villa and the other one is the Getty Center which is located in Los Angeles. The former was opened on January 28, 2006, after the completion of a major renovation project which serves a varied audience through exhibitions, conservation, scholarship, research, and public programs. Also, it houses European paintings, drawings, sculpture, illuminated manuscripts, decorative arts, and photography, gathered globally from its beginnings to the present. The latter one houses approximately 44,000 works of art from the Museum’s extensive collection of Greek, Roman, and Etruscan antiquities. Main entrance, the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center Outer Peristyle, The J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Villa The preparation of the site for the Getty Center began in 1987 in the Santa Monica Mountains and construction continued for the next 10 years. Almost a million square feet of buildings spread across the site upon completion. Getty staff and programs began to move into the Getty Center in 1996 and opened to the public on December 16, 1997. The Getty Villa closed on July 26, 1997 for renovations. While the museum building retained its original design, architects made various changes to the site. It became home to a new Master’s program on the Conservation of Ethnographic and Archaeological Materials. The Villa was reopened to the public on January 28, 2006. J. Paul Getty Museum: Mission Statement ‘The Museum seeks to inspire curiosity about, and enjoyment and understanding of, the visual arts by collecting, conserving, exhibiting and interpreting works of art of outstanding quality and historical importance.’ To effectuate this mission, the Museum pursues to build its collections and develops programs of events that interconnect our audiences, globally. Getty Programs: Through Getty360 Getty360 is a dynamic range of events and programs at the Getty Center and Getty Villa. Its year-round schedule includes free talks with leading artists, thinkers, and scholars; courses, including artist demonstrations and classes based around discussion in the galleries; and performances and films featuring classical, contemporary, and world music, film series inspired by current exhibitions, and experimental theater engages with the classical tradition. The free talks and tours of the Museum’s collection and of the gardens and architecture are scheduled daily at the Getty Center and the Getty Villa. You can experience art and culture and have a fresh look at Getty events and programs through Getty360. References: -http://www.getty.edu/museum/about.html - http://www.getty.edu/about/whoweare/history.html - http://www.getty.edu/museum/programs/ - http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/