New Getty Center Shouts Strong Message From Mountaintop

To an outsider, the Getty Center's $800 million new mountaintop complex may seem quintessential L.A. - huge, obviously expensive, with a great view of both sides of the hill.

But to those who've followed the center's 12-year arrival, it has become a veritable Rorschach test on the role of high culture in today's urban settings.

To some local arts groups, environmentalists, and neighbors, the 24-acre, six-building, arts-and-humanities community atop 110 acres of prime mountaintop wilderness in the middle of Los Angeles represents an elitist, Euro-centric institution, more interested in building monuments to a dominantly Western past than in cultivating and protecting the culture of today.

Getty scholar Pratapaditya Pal, also retired senior curator of Indian and Southeastern Asian art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, says the "intimidating image of a medieval castle" looking down on a feudal village will be hard to overcome and that a "downtown site" would have been better.

But to retiring Getty president Harold Williams, the mountaintop project represents the fulfillment of benefactor J. Paul Getty's vision for "the diffusion of artistic and general knowledge."

"It will be a cultural resource for the whole city," muses Mr. Williams, adding that the goal is to be a highly visible reminder of "the role the arts can play in our lives," one that will draw scholars as well as the general public from home and abroad.

The Getty Trust was set up in 1982, using the proceeds of the eccentric oil man's estate, now valued at nearly $4 billion. The various Getty institutions - a museum, a grant program, and five institutes: for conservation, education, information, research, and museum management - have been housed for years in and around Los Angeles, in varying degrees of elegance. While the museum was installed in a re-created Roman villa nestled in the Malibu Hills, the Conservation Institute has languished in a warehouse in the Marina.

Now, says Williams, as all these parts move into their new headquarters, "this center is a coming together of programs of the trust as a whole, creating a unique organization unlike anything, anywhere in the world."

Says architect Richard Meier, the center's location high above a freeway connecting the Los Angeles basin to the city's other population center, the San Fernando Valley, gives it the visibility and accessibility it needs. He adds that "it will have far more impact here than if it were jammed onto a small site in the middle of downtown."

But Mr. Meier says the resistance from neighbors during numerous zoning hearings was eye-opening. "I'd never used stone before, but the local residents screamed, 'We don't want a white Richard Meier building in our mountains!' " So, he says, "I tried something new," an off-white cleft travertine, chock full of fossils and natural variations.

The dramatic texture of the stones, stretching the full perimeter of the site, is visible from the freeway, several hundred feet below.

Now, this champion of the stark white and obviously man-made look says he has a much greater appreciation for natural materials and plans to use them more.

Says Williams, the very process of giving birth to the new center represents the sort of interaction between the arts and the community the Getty Center wants to encourage.

California's state librarian and noted author, Kevin Starr, says discussion about the Getty lacks the proper historical perspective. "Los Angeles is in the process of re-defining itself in the world," he observes, explaining that "cities like Boston and New York are finished. Los Angeles is not."

Mr. Starr says the Getty will become the world center of arts scholarship in the next century. It "will make Los Angeles what Alexandria was to the ancient world," he explains, a crossroads of world arts and culture, with scholars and artists gathering in a university-like setting for the arts and humanities.

The 21st century notwithstanding, officials at the Getty Trust are acutely sensitive to the trust's image today, of being the "800-pound gorilla," with nothing but money to throw around. Every group in the complex is involved in significant grass-roots cultural and artistic projects aimed at combating that image. Even the museum, which has been accused of inflating the art market with the high prices it has paid for new acquisitions, will maintain weekday morning hours of 9 to 11 for local school groups only.

"Los Angeles is our scholarly theme for 1997," notes Salvatore Settis, director of the Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities. "We hope to see unexpected connections between all kinds of people and ideas," he adds.

A quick glance at the various institutions shows the range of the Getty's commitment to contemporary arts and culture:

*"Public Space/Culture Wars" is a series of public programs exploring the importance of art and culture in American public life, sponsored by the Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities. Planned sites include public libraries in Flint, Mich., Santa Fe, N.M., and Chicago.

*The Conservation Institute is involved in preserving a California Chumash Indian rock art site and an Olvera Street mural in Los Angeles, as well as 5th- and 13th-century mosaics in Rome's Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, an 8th-century Mayan mural in Mexico, and a royal tomb in Egypt's Valley of the Queens.

*The Grant Program is funding summer internships for 95 undergraduates from diverse cultural backgrounds at various Los Angeles museums and arts groups.

*L.A. Culture Net is the Getty on-line. More than 500 local cultural groups, artists, and others trade views on whether technology can be used to build greater community awareness of local culture. The project is a collaboration of the Information Institute with the Research and Education Institutes.

*In conjunction with the Los Angeles Public Library and the L.A. Poverty Department, the Research Institute is sponsoring a symposium at the Mark Taper Forum, entitled, "Creating Responsibility: the Interaction of Art and Civic Life."

*The Education Institute has developed a discipline-based art-education curriculum, complete with a series of multicultural posters, that has been adopted in 36 states. The institute also has its own Web site (ArtsEdNet), through which it communicates with more than 5,000 teachers and students monthly.

In contrast to many money-hungry arts groups today, the trust has long-term resources to support its commitments. It has only one parameter: It is required to spend 4.25 percent of the average market value of the trust's endowment every 3 out of 4 years.

With resources like that, says Andrea Rich, president of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, every arts organization in town should be delighted to have the Getty in L.A. "Los Angeles doesn't get acknowledged for the contributions it makes to the art world. The Getty will help us get that acknowledgment."

Observes Ms. Rich, when the Getty gets into full swing, "Los Angeles will be the envy of the world."

A monumental undertaking in and of itself, some might say.

* The Web site for L.A. Culture Net is: www.ahip.getty.edu/ laconcept/lacn.htm

For ArtsEdNet: www.artsednet.getty.edu/