Theresa And Michael’s Cultural Tour Of Los Angeles: The Getty Center

In 2021, Theresa and I decided to visit every museum in Los Angeles. We got off to a slow start, seeing only one museum that year, and then none in 2022. Last year we visited three. But this year we got off to an excellent start with the Getty. I had been there before (I saw a couple of excellent concerts there many years ago – Greg Brown and Fur Dixon & Steve Werner), but Theresa hadn’t ever visited this museum. The museum is free, but you have to pay twenty dollars to park, and you have to make reservations. We scheduled our visit for 2:30 p.m., and as the tram took us up the hill, I noticed that the 405 freeway is a lot less stressful from that higher vantage point.

Currently, there is a special exhibit of William Blake’s art at the Getty, an exhibit that is only up for another week, and that was the main purpose of our visit. So when we arrived, that is where we headed first. Here are some photos from that exhibit.

As always, I was excited to see work based on Shakespeare’s plays, such as this piece based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream:

And this one:

 And this one, based on the first scene from The Tempest:

After that, we got a drink, and went to the North Pavilion, which houses pieces from before 1700. There are lots of pieces of Italian origin in this section, and Theresa deemed them all excellent.

From there, we went to the garden, wanting to see it before it got dark. And yes, we had seen some incredible art, but none of it really matched the spectacular and dramatic sunset. Most of the sky was taking part in it. I took a few photos, but had only my cell phone with me, and the photos don’t capture it at all.

From there, we went to the West Pavilion to check out the photo exhibits. I was particularly taken with some of the work of Arthur Tress, especially images from his Dream Collector series. That exhibit runs through February 18th.

 

We had been at the museum for nearly four hours, and there were still entire buildings we hadn’t visited. But we were getting tired and rather than continue, we decided we’d have to visit again to see the rest of the place, and check out whatever new exhibit takes the place of the William Blake exhibit.