Classical rejuvenation

At the bottom of the list of things one might do with hundreds
of millions of dollars would be to bury it, or to leave it
virtually out of sight. Yet a large portion of the $275 million
used to renovate J. Paul Getty’s replica of an ancient Roman
villa will remain unseen ““ or at least unnoticed ““ by
the thousands of visitors to the Malibu villa in the next six
months, as it was used to fund a groundbreaking anchor-and-art
support system to ensure that most of the 1,200 antiquities on
display would remain unharmed in the case of an earthquake or other
natural disaster.

And the rest of the large renovation sum ““ which,
incidentally, is comparable to the amount spent to build
downtown’s Walt Disney Concert Hall from scratch ““ has
been spent to amplify and improve a stunning visual and
architectural statement from its inception into one of L.A.’s
prime landmarks. But unlike Frank Gehry’s design for Disney
Hall, which essentially ushered modernism into the city’s
skyline, the Getty Villa, redesigned by Machado and Silvetti
Associates, takes visitors back in time to the classical empires of
Greece, Rome and Etruria. Consequently, the
“renovation” actually becomes a
“reimagination,” designed to evoke a
“restoration.”

Oil tycoon and businessman J. Paul Getty originally conceived
the idea for a replicated Roman villa to house his considerable
collection of art, which was primarily based in Greek and Roman
antiquities but also consisted of European paintings and furniture.
The original architectural firm, Langdon Wilson, based its design
on the floor plan of a Roman country house in Herculaneum, Villa
dei Papiri, and completed the work in 1974. But years after
Getty’s death in 1976 and his bequeathal of the majority of
his estate to the J. Paul Getty Trust, the museum’s board of
directors agreed that a more substantial museum needed to be built
to showcase a larger part of the Getty collection as well as new
pieces they were rapidly acquiring. The Getty Center, completed in
1997 and located in Brentwood Hills, served this purpose well.

With the opening of the substantially larger Getty Center, the
board of directors needed to rethink the niche of the Getty Villa,
and eventually decided to return its collection focus to that of
its architecture ““ antiquity.

“They’re two distinctly different museums, but at
the same time they’re very similar. The concept is one Getty
but two locations,” said villa curator Karol Wight.
“It’s true that the campus of the Getty Center is
certainly much larger than that of the villa, which is a much more
out-of-the-way, quiet, solitary place rather than having a huge
urban view of the city of Los Angeles. But within both museum
environments, these are very intimate spaces.”

The Getty board selected Rodolfo Machado and Jorge Silvetti to
shift the focus of the villa’s galleries to antiquity,
creating spaces that are in visual and historical harmony with the
pieces that they display. Machado and Silvetti brought natural
light into the galleries with the addition of 58 windows and
additional skylights, which also give museum-goers a better sense
of orientation within the building.

“You can see the landscape; you can see across; you can
see people, and you can see where you came from and where
you’re going, which you couldn’t do before,”
Silvetti said. “It’s a very close relationship here
between content and form.”

Machado and Silvetti’s work extends far beyond the villa
itself. They designed an entirely new outdoor theater, cafe and
conservation buildings for the villa grounds. The architecture of
these buildings is original, not based on the classical influences
that inspire the villa. Yet Machado and Silvetti skillfully
integrate these diverse styles, resulting in a site that is
cohesive and balanced.

The entry pavilion serves as the link between times and
cultures, designed to complement the natural topography of the
Malibu Hills, and creates the illusion of entering an excavation
site not unlike the one surrounding the original Villa dei Papiri,
upon which the Getty Villa’s floor plan was based.

“It is surreal in the sense that you walk into a hill, and
you’re in a room that gives you the sense of being inside, in
the earth, and the ceiling is the sky,” Silvetti said.
“It sort of lifts you up and you just go up the
stairs.”

Upon reaching the top of the stairs, visitors come to an
open-air theater intended to continue the Getty’s long
tradition of performing classical drama.

“We studied classical theaters; we visited them. We
didn’t design one exactly like them, but we have the same
geometry, sidelines and acoustics,” Silvetti said. “We
had to create those conditions ““ the visual lines and the
acoustics that would recreate the way these works were performed in
antiquity.”

From the entrance alone, the villa grounds give visitors the
impression of stepping back in time, from the cobblestoned roads at
the entrance to the excavation-like descent to the villa itself.
And this postrenovation villa actually doesn’t so much update
itself as recreate itself in a more historically accurate
context.

“We are working with a building that has its footprint in
antiquity. This is a building that’s modeled after the Villa
dei Papiri, and the room plans are based on domestic architecture
from various other buildings and villas,” Wight said.
“That house was not designed as a museum, so it’s very
challenging to move from one room to another, and the rooms are of
varying sizes, and none of them is really large.”

To make the villa’s design more accessible to its
visitors, Wight and Getty leadership made the unconventional
decision to organize the collection thematically, rather than by
culture. Instead of galleries labeled as Greek, Roman or Etruscan
art, the pieces are grouped together by content, resulting in
galleries with titles such as “Gods and Goddesses,”
“Mythological Heroes,” “The Trojan War,”
and “Athletes in Competition.” Each piece’s label
contains a time line revealing where the object fits into
history.

“By organizing it thematically, we were able to rethink
the collection, combine pieces that would otherwise never have the
opportunity to be displayed next to each other because
they’re Greek, Roman or Etruscan, and really to create an
experience for visitors that doesn’t have a preordained
path,” Wight said. “You don’t have to start in
gallery A and end in gallery Z. You can look at your brochure, and
look at the thematic galleries and really visit the parts of the
collection that appeal to you the most.”

Part of the villa’s renovation included the art itself.
Many of the antiquities with missing fragments were restored to
resemble their original form as closely as could be determined.

“The trend now in museums around the world, not just at
the Getty, is to put those restorations back on because we find the
lack of body parts disorienting and disfiguring,” Wight said.
“It’s hard for visitors to know what to look at when
you’ve got a leg that stops here and a pole in between.
It’s just not the kind of presentation that we want to make.
In fact, we see previous restorations from earlier centuries as
part of the modern history of the piece. Many of them are just as
important as the ancient form. They were carved by leading
sculptors of the day; they’re beautiful pieces.”

The beauty of individual sculptures or vases on display is
occasionally matched by the beauty of the gallery space itself, as
in the Basilica, where statues are arranged between classically
designed columns; the Room of Colored Marbles, which contains 14
different varieties of marble in intricate designs across its walls
and floor; and the spectacular Temple of Herakles, which houses the
piece that was Getty’s favorite of his entire collection, the
Lansdowne Herakles statue, surrounded by an elaborate,
illusionistic circular marble floor modeled after a room in Villa
dei Papiri.

The Mediterranean influence extends through the villa’s
grounds in the classical Roman inner-and-outer peristyle gardens,
traditional herb garden, and vegetation of olive trees, laurels and
pomegranate trees among others.

All of these elements work together to create an entirely unique
museum-going experience; the intimacy and design of the renovated
Getty Villa infuse new life into the art itself, and allow visitors
to imagine what it would have been like to view the pieces in their
original displays.

“It’s not by any means the best museum building that
you can think of, but it has the charm that it’s something
else,” Silvetti said. “Visiting this museum brings to
you the ambience of what the house of a very rich family in
antiquity might have been like, and the environment where art was
actually exhibited, because these houses were full of
art.”

The Getty Villa officially reopened its doors to the public
on Saturday, Jan. 28. Already, tickets (which are free, but need to
be reserved in advance) are booked through July. For more
information, visit www.getty.edu or call (310) 440-7300.

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