Craig worked in Santa Monica in the 80's and 90's and watched the building
of the Getty Museum - a real Los
Angeles
landmark - between 1988 and 1997. However, neither of us had visited the
museum in the 10 years it has been open. It is worth more than one trip
and we spend most of our first visit touring the architecture, saving most
of the exhibits and a lot of the remaining grounds for multiple future visits.
After parking your car you take a tram up the spine of the hill to the top. The site is laid out along two diverging ridges and parallel to the 405 freeway. The Central Garden occupies a place in the ravine between the two ridges. On the map the red colored buildings are offices and not open to the public, but most of the rest of the areas can be visited. Multiple exhibit halls are shown in blue, radiating around a central atrium; with green representing the garden areas (naturally) and the research building is shown in yellow. Major presentation and theater shows are presented in the auditorium (orange).
The arrival plaza is your first view upon disembarking the tram from the parking lot.
Upon
entering the main courtyard, you will find the Exhibition Hall on your right,
with a cafe underneath looking out over the Central Garden.
Continuing down the courtyard the South and West exhibit wings are visible
beyond the fountain.
At
the southernmost end of the property is the Cactus Garden - representing
the desert growth native to much of Southern California terrain. You
can view this area, but cannot walk through it.
Walking back from the Cactus Garden, you pass between the West and
South exhibition wings and look down the central courtyard from the
south. Turning west you enter the Central Garden and the design feel
abruptly changes.
Richard
Meier designed the site and the buildings, but Robert Irwin created
the gardens and open area.
While very different, the two are complimentary and Irwin went out of his way to extend some of Meier's concepts into the edges of his garden.
To get a more complete description of the architectural
aspects of this museum please visit the official website:
http://www.getty.edu/visit/see_do/architecture.html
More pictures will be added as we return to this beautiful site, both from an architectural experience and as we become familiar with the art galleries.