The Getty Center

With Corrie's mom visiting the Southland on her west coast tour, we decided it was a good time to head to the Getty Center for the first time. The Getty is like LA's Louvre, and, frankly, is one of this country's preeminent museums. The museum could possibly be my favorite institution, but that's not germane to this discussion.

Getty, the man, made his fortune in oil, and has left for society two museums: the center, on a mountain overlooking Santa Monica and the LA basin; and the Getty Villa, a smaller place closer to Malibu. I'm not sure how much the Villa charges, but the Center, where we went, is free. If you have bike and are near the base, it would be free. For most of the visitors, those who drive, parking is fifteen bucks, and there is a tram that takes you to the top of the hill, and the complex of architect Richard Meier's buildings unfolds from there, in its blinding whiteness:

Above is the approach from the tram, and below is one of the views on the hazy day we went. The day cleared up as it got later, but early on it was this hazy:

Here's our crew, Carol, Corrie, Victor and myself:

This post is going to be more of a location stuff, and a separate post will have some discussion of some of the pieces there.

The lines of sight created from the geometric white shapes are interesting:

And here's a courtyard in between some of the pavilions (this is where we snacked):

West LA's downtown is cutoff in this picture as I attempted to frame downtown LA:

Here's a shot of the cactus garden with West LA visible in the distance:

This is a hedge design at the bottom of the waterfall:

Richard Meier loves his white geometric shapes:

Here's the waterfall above the hedge design at the rest of the Center in the background:

The bulk of the artwork is from the Renaissance, or maybe 1300s-1700s, which  encompasses the Renaissance.

All in all it was a beautiful Saturday on the mountain: