final thoughts on the getty

The gar­dens of the Getty Museum for sure are among the most pho­tographed botan­i­cal spots in Los Ange­les. After the first of my recent Getty notes Cousin Jenny in South Car­olina sent me some of the pic­ture she’d taken there on her last trip out in June. I liked them and thought I’d share some with you.

Succulent Abstrations

Suc­cu­lent Abstrations

Here’s an abstrac­tion of plants that she did.

Succulents at the Getty Center

Suc­cu­lents at the Getty Center

And here are some suc­cu­lents she cov­eted. Since she lives where it’s wet­ter than South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, grow­ing many suc­cu­lents out­doors would be a real stunt. We’ve e-mailed back and forth a lit­tle about how it’s always the plants that you can’t grow eas­ily that are the ones you often drool over. These are easy plants here where you don’t have to worry about them rot­ting in the wet ground. But South Car­olina? A lit­tle trickier.

Boulders in Getty Center watercourse

Boul­ders in Getty Cen­ter watercourse

And she also was inter­ested in some of the hard­scape details. The Cen­tral Gar­den has these big boul­ders cemented into the water­course that descends into the lower pool. They can help to break the force of run­ning water dur­ing our occa­sional storms. But, hey, they look cool.

Getty Center Central Garden overview

Getty Cen­ter Cen­tral Gar­den overview

And here’s her shot of the lower Cen­tral Gar­den with its clipped aza­leas. I’ve never seen the plants in bloom but I’m sure it’s quite the sight as this abstract top­i­ary doo­dle goes from green leaves to rosy red flowers.

“Always chang­ing, never twice the same” is the phrase that the Getty uses on their web­site to describe the Robert Irwin-designed Cen­tral Gar­den. But any­one who’s at all a half-observant gar­dener could tell you that that’s a char­ac­ter­is­tic of any gar­den that isn’t made out of astro­turf and concrete.

In this gar­den the aza­leas bloom and the plane trees drop their leaves, but it really isn’t the place you go to see the sub­tle shifts of a sea­son. Most of the other plant­i­ngs are heav­ily man­aged. To me it’s more about human-managed change than about the sea­sons and cycles of life and regen­er­a­tion. Things are as care­fully staged as the store win­dows at Bloomingdale’s. Once a plant starts look­ing scrappy, it’s outta there like summer’s deck shoes. It’s a beau­ti­ful gar­den, for sure, but it’s try­ing to do dif­fer­ent things than many other gardens.

Peo­ple often talk about how a typ­i­cal vis­i­tor arrives at the Getty. You park you car down on the flats, in a garage or more remote lot, depend­ing on the vol­ume of vis­i­tors. Then you have the option the walk up the hill about a mile or take the tram. (I’ve never seen any­one on foot.) The archi­tect, Richard Meier intended the visit to be a spe­cial pil­grim­age. Ascend­ing slowly up the hill, your visit takes you from the com­mon world to the shin­ing acrop­o­lis on the hill.

That hill­side that you ascend has been replanted with the head-high native plants that pop­u­late the nearby area. Once you get to the top, most of the plant­i­ngs shift to more “dec­o­ra­tive” plants from around the world. To me it could eas­ily be inter­preted that the local veg­e­ta­tion isn’t wor­thy of a place like the Getty, just as most of the “cul­ture” con­tained in the museum walls comes from dis­tant times and dis­tant places.

But the Getty, despite being estab­lished to enshrine ancient to early mod­ern art­works, has an active pho­tog­ra­phy pro­gram, and they also show a num­ber of estab­lished liv­ing artists, even some from South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. While most of these artists get their show­ings mainly out­side of their main gal­leries, there’s the occa­sional breach of the hal­lowed walls. For instance, last week­end, a video piece by South­ern Cal­i­forn­ian Bill Viola was run­ning in the North Gallery along­side Euro­pean sculp­ture that was cen­turies older.

And, sim­i­larly, while most of the plant­i­ngs at the Getty come from places beyond South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, I was pleased to see that the plant­i­ngs of trees right at the front entrance was made up of local sycamores. With their beau­ti­fully cut leaves and won­der­fully mot­tled trunks, these trees can stand up to any­thing else that was planted on the grounds. It’s a state­ment of local pride, just like show­ing the work of some of our great local artists. Good going, Getty!

August 30 2008 07:34 pm | Categories: art • gardening • landscape design | Tags: • • •

One Response to “final thoughts on the getty”

  1. Greg on 03 Sep 2008 at 8:07 am #

    I can’t imag­ine an art museum of any cal­i­bre, much less one on the scale of the Getty, let­ting their gar­den go au nat­u­rale.

    I’m glad to hear they’ve at least sur­rounded the place with native plant­i­ngs and included the sycamores (are they vis­i­ble in that shot of the for­mal gar­den?) on the imme­di­ate grounds.

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