Yesterday I took the chance to see more of LA. I went the the Getty Center. Housing the art collection of oil magnate Jean Paul Getty, the museum was founded by Director of the J. Paul Getty trust Harold Williams.
The introduction film at the museum will tell you how eager Getty was to bring art to the attention of all people. However, the museum was also built to get rid of millions of spare dollars to keep the trust's tax exemption status.
The museum covers pretty much every art from and every period, focusing on European art. The collection does not quite measure up with other great museums of the world, since the Getty Museum is really a latecomer. Nevertheless, the trust's war chest, valued at more than 4 billion USD, made some nice purchases. Among them 'The Entry of Christ in Brussels' by James Ensor and Vincent van Gogh's 'Irises'. I was excited to see the Entry of Christ, the work is so critical of Ensor's contemporary (Belgian) society and at the same time the composition is so movie-like, with different frames telling the disconnectedness of different people to truth/Christ/religion/themselves... (fill it out).
The other impressive piece of art must be the museum premises itself. Perched on a mountain, the buildings by American top architect Richard Meier overlook the LA area. The blinding white architecture hurts the eye under the Californian sun. Take some time to adjust to the lights when inside the buildings to see the collections.
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