The J. Paul Getty Museum and Its Collections: A Museum for the New Century - Softcover

Walsh, John; Gribbon, Deborah

9780892364763: The J. Paul Getty Museum and Its Collections: A Museum for the New Century

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0892364769 ISBN 13: 9780892364763

Publisher: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1997

In December 1997 the J. Paul Getty Museum will open its new home in the spectacular Getty Center, designed by the renowned architect Richard Meier, and dramatically sited in the Santa Monica Mountains above Los Angeles. This will constitute the third home for the Getty Museum collections, which were first displayed in J. Paul Getty's ranch house in Malibu and later were housed in the splendid reconstruction of an ancient Roman villa that Getty had built on the grounds of his Malibu estate.

This book contains a lively text by the Director and Associate Director of the Museum along with archival and recently commissioned photographs to provide a biography of the Museum's benefactor. In addition, the book presents a history of the buildings that have housed his collections and of the collections themselves--first formed by Getty in his lifetime and greatly expanded following his generous and much-heralded bequest.

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Review:

"I don't think there's any glory in being remembered as old moneybags," said oil baron J. Paul Getty in the early l950s, when he was vacillating between amassing all kinds of art and narrowing his focus to ancient sculpture. Getty's fabulous billions have spawned three museums, most recently the "architectural commission of the century," as Richard Meier's hilltop Getty Center, 13 years in creation, is called. In the early '70s, Getty oversaw the previous museum, the fabulous, 48,000-square-foot, pseudo-Roman villa overlooking the Pacific just north of Los Angeles that was greeted with critical jeers and popular accolades when it opened in 1974. As this beautiful book makes clear, Getty's spending has not been in vain. Written by John Walsh, longtime director of the J. Paul Getty Museum, and Deborah Gribbon, associate director, it serves three purposes: it is a biographical sketch of the eccentric, high-living billionaire; it is a selective catalog of the Getty's peerless collections of sculpture, illuminated manuscripts, paintings, drawings, and decorative arts: and it is a history of the three "eras" of the Getty's three locations. The quality of the museum's holdings, from Greek statuary to early-20th-century photographs, is breathtaking, and the 200 color plates here do them justice. Carpaccio's Hunting on the Lagoon, van Gogh's Irises, and Michelangelo's sketch for The Holy Family with the Infant Saint John the Baptist, along with drawings by Titian, Raphael, da Vinci, Rubens, Poussin, Watteau, C�zanne, and Rembrandt are pictured, as is the classical statuary for which the Getty is justly world-renowned. --Peggy Moorman

About the Author:

ThesCRA was developed by the eminent group of scholars who published the eight double-volumes of LIMC (Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae). Among the many contributors to the ThesCRA volumes are Jean Ch. Balty, Sir John Boardman, Walter Burkert, Giovannangelo Camporeale, Tonio Holscher,
Anneliese Kossatz, Vassilis Lambrinoudakis, Francois Lissarrague, John H. Oakley, Ricardo Olmos, H. A. Shapiro, Erika Simon, and Marion True.
Gribbon is Director of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.

John Walsh has been Director of the J. Paul Getty Museum since 1983. Previously, he was curator of paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. In addition to articles in such publications as The Connoisseur and Burlington Magazine, he is the author of several exhibition catalogues including A
Mirror of Nature with Cynthia P. Schneider.

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