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Sunday, September 15, 2002

By Bruce Keidan

"If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars."
-- J. Paul Getty

MALIBU, Calif. -- Jean Paul Getty, the wealthiest American of his time, could not count his money. It multiplied faster than he could add.

	The Getty Museum's entrance facade is shown from the tram arrival plaza at the Getty Center. The museum's collection of paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, drawings, illuminated manuscripts and photographs is exhibited in five gallery pavilions around a central courtyard. Designed by Richard Meier & Partners, the Getty Center opened to the public on Dec. 16, 1997. (Bill Wade, Post-Gazette)

Getty (1892-1976) was a billionaire several times over -- a self-made billionaire by his own account. He had started in the oil business as a roustabout on someone else's rigs in Oklahoma before striking it rich as a "wildcatter" -- an independent oil producer -- and lease broker in Oklahoma before World War I. But the "someone else" was his father, George Franklin Getty. The elder Getty owned the Minnehoma Oil Company, which loaned young Jean Paul the money to get his start.

What? You thought the Rigas family invented this business of taking a little loan out of the corporate cash drawer?

Papa also paid for J. Paul to study abroad. The simple, self-made billionaire received a degree in economics from Oxford University in 1914.

He was a millionaire at 28, at a time when being a millionaire meant you were wealthy. He was 38 when his father died, and J. Paul became the president of Minnehoma's successor firm, a little outfit known as Getty Oil.

He was a strange dude, even by the standards of billionaires. Not quite Howard Hughes strange, perhaps, but big-league strange nonetheless.

He dressed like a pauper. He lived for years in hotel rooms before moving to Sutton Place, a 700-acre manor outside London, in 1959. If you were a guest at Sutton Place, you had to avoid not merely the watchdogs, but also Nero and Teresa, who happened to be African lions. If you wanted to make a phone call, you used the pay telephone.

	If you go ... Don't plan on seeing the place on a Monday, when it's closed. It is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sundays and Tuesdays through Thursdays. Hours are 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. You won't need reservations, except for parking, unless your group includes 15 or more. Take sunglasses; there is a good chance you will need them. Wear comfortable walking shoes, or you'll be limping by the time you depart. Make sure you browse the Getty's Web site (www.getty.edu/museum) before you go. It will help you map out a strategy for seeing the things you most want to see at the Getty Center. Find out what special exhibits will be on display -- in addition to the permanent exhibitions -- when you are there. For example: "Greuze the Draftsman." On display through the end of November 2002, a sequence of three exhibits featuring a total of 70 drawings by France's Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805). "Orazio Gentileschi in Genoa: Paintings for the Palazzio Sauli." Italian art critics consider Gentileschi (1563-1639) the most talented of the followers of Caravaggio. Decide for yourself. Scheduled Oct. 1 through Jan. 12, 2003. "About Life: The photographs of Dorothea Lange" and "The Grapes of Wrath: Horace Bristol." Side-by-side shows of the work of two of California's most noteworthy photographers, much of it from the Great Depression. Scheduled from Oct. 15 through Feb. 9, 2003. Information: 310-440-7300. -- Bruce Keidan

Getty was a notorious skinflint even when it came to his art collection. He spent millions on it, but not enough millions to acquire the sort of world-class collection befitting a man of his means.

He understood, though, that he could not take his money with him to the next life. So late in his life, he decided to give it away.

He did not want to be remembered for being a rich man, he said, because anyone can make a fortune. "Money is like manure," he said famously. "You have to spread it around or it smells."

The residue of that pronouncement now occupies a 110-acre estate in Malibu, Calif., outside Los Angeles. It overlooks Brentwood and the Pacific Palisades. On a clear day, you can see the Pacific Ocean beyond the hills in the distance. It is the Getty Center, home of the Getty Museum. It is Jean Paul's enduring legacy.

Amazing, isn't it, what you can do with the combination of perspicacity, perspiration, dedication and all the money in the world?

OK, not all the money in the world. In fact, it was only $700 million when J. Paul put it in trust in 1974 to build the art museum that bears his name. But by the time the museum opened in December 1997, that endowment had grown -- to $4 billion and change.

People who bequeath fortunes to foundations generally do so with conditions attached. The bigger the sum, the more stipulations. They want you to have their money and do with it as they would have wished.

But in philanthropy, as in most things, Getty chose not to conform. His will gave new meaning to the word "trust." It left the Getty Museum's board of directors free to buy what they wanted and display it as they wished, so long as they furthered the "diffusion of artistic and general knowledge."

Well, what doesn't? Other than Ozzy Osbourne, I mean.

Jean Paul himself collected beautiful furniture, Green and Roman sculptures, 18th-century tapestries, 16th-century Persian carpets and paintings by European masters (not to mention five wives, one at a time).

The Getty Museum is part of the Getty Center. One of the hazards of writing about the place is the inevitability of saying "center" at some point when you mean "museum," or vice versa. From the standpoint of the casual visitor, it is largely a distinction without a difference. I'll refer to the whole thing as "the Getty" from this point forward and leave it at that. I'm pretty sure Jean Paul won't object.

To begin with, a few general observations:

On my list of great and underrated destinations, the Getty ranks somewhere in the Top 10.

It may not have quite as many great paintings as the Louvre or the Prado or New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, but the Getty deserves to be mentioned in the same breath with all of them.

Some of the sculpture you see in the Louvre and the British Museum you would not pick up if your neighbor had set it out with his trash. It may be worth a fortune, but it looks like pure junk. Everything in the Getty -- every painting, desk and candlestick -- looks as though it just arrived from a king's palace in a time machine.

If there is another art museum on this planet in a setting as beautiful, I haven't seen it yet. Even before you enter one of the five pavilions that make up the museum, you will be dazzled. Figuratively and literally.

The campus is a masterpiece unto itself. The buildings and walkways are covered with a stone called travertine, imported from Italy. A spokesman for the Getty insists that it's "off white." I don't know about "off." It's white. It's bright. Blindingly so when the sun is out.

When your eyes adjust, you notice the gardens. There are two of them, one more beautiful than the other. There are thousands of flowers altogether, an explosion of pink and purple and yellow on a bright green canvas -- the best-manicured lawn west of Augusta National.

I know what you're thinking: Walls, walkways and gardens do not an art museum make.

The treasures displayed inside those five pavilions are no less exquisite than the Getty's grounds. Like most men, I'm a furniture philistine. If can sit in it without sticking to it, that's pretty much all I ask. But it's obvious even to me that the cabinets, coffers and desks in the Getty decorative arts collection are magnificent.

There is a permanent collection of illuminated manuscripts, some of them illustrated by the greatest European artists of the 15th century, such as Italy's Pisanello and France's Simon Marmion. There are photographs by (among others) Mathew Brady, the fastest shutter in the American West.

There is sculpture from Renaissance artists, including Benvenuto Cellini's famed Satyr, half man and half goat, and a display of antiquities, preserved and polished, such as the set of silver drinking goblets from the empire of Alexander the Great.

Have I mentioned the paintings? Can't have a great art museum without great paintings. And unlike its benefactor, the Getty's board purchased the best. Rembrandt and Rubens are just two of the scores of masters whose great works hang here.

Some of these treasures have been known to find their way to the Getty through the back door, if certain spoil-sport art critics are to be believed. These things happen in museum circles. The British Museum, for notorious example, displays artifacts pilfered from every nation where British soldiers and sailors ever set foot. At least when the Getty gets caught with a stolen statue or a hot Cellini, it pays the postage and sends it back.

"If you have to ask how much it costs, you can't afford it."
--J. P. Morgan

With a little scrimping, the average family of four can do a movie and popcorn without having to float a bank loan, but seats to a hockey game require a second mortgage. So what is the price of admission to one of the world's foremost art museums? In the case of the Getty, nothing at all.

Which isn't to say that you won't need to bring your wallet. Parking is $5 (cash only), and it's reserved until 4 p.m. on weekdays. Reservations are available by calling 1-310-440-7300.

From the parking garage, it's a quick elevator ride to the tramway (not fast, but free, futuristic and utterly silent) that transports you to the museum's proximate grounds.

There is a bookstore worth browsing if you still have the energy once you finish gawking at the museum's exhibitions. And there are eateries ranging from self-serve to The Restaurant at the Getty Center, where the view and the service are grand and the chef is imaginative, even if the name of the establishment is not. Unlike the parking garage, the bookstore and restaurants do accept credit cards.

Oh, and there's this: Should you need to make a call from the Getty, there are pay phones available.

Jean Paul, wherever he is, must be tickled puce.

Bruce Keidan is a free-lance writer.