A lively text by the director and associate director of the Museum provides a biography of the Museum's benefactor, a history of the buildings that have housed his collections, and an overview of the collections themselves - first formed by Getty during his life and greatly expanded in the years following his generous and much-publicized bequest. Rarely seen photographs reveal the life that Getty led as he traveled the world building his oil empire and, during the later part of his life, in his great Tudor mansion in England. Documents and photographs from the archives of the Museum take readers through the painstaking construction first of the Villa in Malibu and then of the new Getty Center in Los Angeles. Specially commissioned photographs by noted architectural photographer Tom Bonner offer the first glimpses of the splendid galleries and dramatic exteriors of the new Museum. Finally, reproductions of more than 100 masterpieces show the range and depth of the Getty Museum collections.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
"I don't think there's any glory in being remembered as old moneybags," said oil baron J. Paul Getty in the early l950s, when he was vacillating between amassing all kinds of art and narrowing his focus to ancient sculpture. Getty's fabulous billions have spawned three museums, most recently the "architectural commission of the century," as Richard Meier's hilltop Getty Center, 13 years in creation, is called. In the early '70s, Getty oversaw the previous museum, the fabulous, 48,000-square-foot, pseudo-Roman villa overlooking the Pacific just north of Los Angeles that was greeted with critical jeers and popular accolades when it opened in 1974. As this beautiful book makes clear, Getty's spending has not been in vain. Written by John Walsh, longtime director of the J. Paul Getty Museum, and Deborah Gribbon, associate director, it serves three purposes: it is a biographical sketch of the eccentric, high-living billionaire; it is a selective catalog of the Getty's peerless collections of sculpture, illuminated manuscripts, paintings, drawings, and decorative arts: and it is a history of the three "eras" of the Getty's three locations. The quality of the museum's holdings, from Greek statuary to early-20th-century photographs, is breathtaking, and the 200 color plates here do them justice. Carpaccio's Hunting on the Lagoon, van Gogh's Irises, and Michelangelo's sketch for The Holy Family with the Infant Saint John the Baptist, along with drawings by Titian, Raphael, da Vinci, Rubens, Poussin, Watteau, Cézanne, and Rembrandt are pictured, as is the classical statuary for which the Getty is justly world-renowned. --Peggy Moorman
From Library Journal
The vast resources of the J. Paul Getty Museum?heir to its namesake's oil fortune, and with an endowment exceeding $3 billion the world's richest museum?have rapidly propelled what was once a modest collection into what will be one of the nation's best when the multipurpose Getty Center opens this month. Congruent with this milestone, the museum has published an attractive book, half a history of the young institution and half a guide to its quickly growing collections. In recent years, the museum has concentrated on buying large existing collections. This book showcases some of these big-ticket purchases of ancient sculpture and photography, as well as paintings (by van Gogh, Degas, and Renoir) that came with multimillion-dollar price tags in the notoriously inflated art market of the 1980s. Director Walsh and Chief Curator Gribbon contribute short, lively essays describing their collections and programs, but the bulk of the pages are given to artworks reproduced in large, beautiful illustrations. A major new title; for all collections. [For an account of building the new Getty Museum, see Richard Meier's Building the Getty, reviewed on p. 98.?Ed.]?Douglas F. Smith, Oakland P.L., Cal.
-?Douglas F. Smith, Oakland P.L., Cal.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
-?Douglas F. Smith, Oakland P.L., Cal.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Too much about collecting not enough about art,
By m. brocoum (los angelas, ca) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The J. Paul Getty Museum and Its Collections: A Museum for the New Century (Hardcover)
The author spent far too much time describing how pieces were aquired and not enough time informing the reader about the pieces.
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Just For Looks,
By
This review is from: The J. Paul Getty Museum and Its Collections: A Museum for the New Century (Paperback)
After going to the Museum and reading this book I was struck by how much the fame here is driven by the beautiful building, wonderful location, and the famous benefactors name, and not really the art works that are traditionally the centerpiece of an art museum. Ok there are some very nice pieces here, but just not that many. When purposing a museum book I do so to learn more about the particular art and here the book did an antiquate job, but a lot of page space was taken up with how they got the art. Overall as a coffee table book it is not bad looking, but scratch the surface and it starts to disappoint.
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of the finest museum books of its kind,
By
This review is from: The J. Paul Getty Museum and Its Collections: A Museum for the New Century (Paperback)
The Getty is both superb, small collection --- and a sybaritic and monumental complex of architecture/urban planning/sculpture set in a breathtaking natural site. This book, with exceptionally accurate and well-chosen photographs of the complex, and concise summaries of the major works of art, simply stated --- succeeds on all fronts.
For sophisticated museum goers, this volume is the creme de la creme: an ample but not too cumbersome overview of the Getty, and (if you've been there), a wonderful momento. Those who seek what this book does not purport to be should steer themselves elsewhere.
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