Visit to Getty Villa hot ticket in L.A.
J. Paul Getty's former villa outside Los Angeles reopened as a museum Saturday after a $275 million US facelift. And although it houses only a small collection, tickets are already sold out until late July.
Timed entrances to the new museum are booked up until July 31, in part because of scandals swirling around the Getty's collecting practices.
The villa, with a stunning view of the Malibu coastline, was the original home of the Getty Museum, before the larger Getty Center opened 21 kilometres away. Now it has reopened as a museum for antiquities, including sculpture, silverworks, jewelry and coins.
Award-winning architect Jorge Silvetti has redesigned the villa — built in 1974 to resemble a first century Roman country home — to allow more natural light and air into the building.
He installed 60 new windows in the main museum complex and created darkened galleries for the more sensitive exhibits. Among the 1,200 exhibits, dating back to 6500 BC, is the larger-than-life Roman statue of Greek hero Hercules, called the Lansdowne Herakles (about 125 AD).
The main building is set in a plaza with a new 450-seat outdoor amphitheatre. The architects wrapped a concrete wall around part of the grounds to make it resemble an archeological dig.
"I would hope there is a sense of wonder that really surprises in a very, very happy and positive way," Silvetti said in an interview with Associated Press. "Our vision of the project was very deliberate – to create surprises."
The old ranch house that J. Paul Getty originally began filling with art in 1945 still stands on the property, but now houses the villa's research and educational centres.
Although the setting is stunning and the renovation has been deemed a success, it's the Getty Museum's recent notoriety that has made a visit to the villa the hottest ticket in Los Angeles.
Former curator Marion True is standing trial in Rome on charges that she conspired with shady art dealers to gain access to looted artifacts.
Last week, a member of the Getty board, wealthy art collector Barbara Fleischman, resigned amid probes into the Fleischmans' financial dealings with True. There are also questions about the collecting history of some sculptures in a collection of ancient artifacts donated to the Getty by her husband, the late Lawrence Fleischman.
The Italian government has accused the Getty of having dozens of stolen artifacts and had discussions last Friday with Michael Brand, the museum's new director.
Brand said he believes the status of about 52 of the approximately 44,000 pieces in the museum's antiquities collection is being reviewed in light of evidence brought forward by Italian investigators.
"Like any other museum, we've always returned works of art when they've come into question," he said. "One of the objects we returned recently turned out to be stolen from a private collector. We returned that as soon as that information came out, actually, during the course of our own research."