The Getty Centre, LA. Image by Bernardo Ferrari via Unsplash
Soak up priceless masterpieces and sweeping views at The Getty Center, a soaring, see-it-to-believe-it must-see for anyone exploring LA.
One moment, I’m stuck on a bus, our driver battling the Los Angeles traffic like a gladiator, and the next, I’m quietly gliding up a hill in a tram, the LA smog painting the morning sky in dusty streaks of pink as I drink in the serene views of Hollywood.
Getty Center Tram. Image by Zac Ferris on Unsplash
Alighting the tram, I am met with my first sight of the Getty Center, a sprawling tribute to human creativity that rises like a modern-day acropolis high above the City of Angels. Designed by Richard Meier, the Getty isn’t your typical museum. It’s part temple to art and part fortress of solitude, all wrapped in 1.2 million square feet (112,000 square metres) of pale Italian travertine stone that glows like gold beneath California’s morning sun, lending a quiet theatre to the scene.
In a city where dreams are pitched over coffee and rewritten by dinner, the Getty Center dares to be still. It hovers above the relentless ambition below, a marble meditation on permanence. Richard Meier’s pale stone pavilions catch the same light that fuels Hollywood, but here the spectacle is quiet. Inside, ancient marble and modern masters speak to a deeper ambition, one that trades the quick sell for the long view.
The man behind the musuem
Its billionaire benefactor, J. Paul Getty, was eccentric even by billionaire standards. Frugal to an almost comical degree, he was the kind of guy who’d spend millions on art but installed a coin-operated payphone in his mansion to prevent guests from running up the bill. His approach to family was equally… interesting. When his grandson was kidnapped by an organised crime group in Italy, Getty’s response to a $17 million ransom request wasn’t to rush to action. Instead, he haggled for five months with kidnappers, despite receiving an envelope containing a lock of hair and a human ear (his grandson was eventually released alive, but the trauma left him deeply scarred).
Despite being a world-class miser (and a questionable grandparent), he spent hundreds of millions amassing one of the greatest private art collections in the world. From Roman antiquities to Old Masters, he valued art immensely, famously saying, “The beauty one can find in art is one of the pitifully few real and lasting products of human endeavour.”
But he amassed it with the same razor-sharp calculation he applied to everything in life… splashing cash on an old master without flinching, but only if he thought he was getting a great deal.
Believing art should be preserved, studied, and, most importantly, shared – under his terms – he left the bulk of his estate, including nearly $660 million of stock in Getty Oil, to the J. Paul Getty Trust, now the largest world’s wealthiest art institution. The result is the Getty Foundation, the Getty Villa, and, of course, the Getty Center, which opened in Brentwood, in 1997, 21 years after Getty’s death.
Art that stops time
Irises by Vincent van Gogh (1889). Image courtesy of Getty Museum
Inside The Getty Centre’s galleries is a collection that is nothing short of extraordinary. You’ve got the heavy hitters – Van Gogh’s swirling skies, Rembrandt’s brooding shadows, Monet’s dreamy gardens – works so staggeringly valuable they have their own climate, security, and a collective worth that could bankroll a small country. Then there’s Titian, Rubens, and Cézanne, each canvas demanding your undivided attention … and that you politely scrape your jaw up off the floor.
Standing inches from Irises, Van Gogh’s cobalt blues and grass greens almost vibrate with energy. Created during Van Gogh’s stay at the asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, it is so alive that if a breeze blew through I suspect its 135-year-old painted petals would shudder.
A personal favourite is Monet’s Portal of Rouen Cathedral in Morning Light, and its gentle quietness. The way Monet has painted the light playing across the stone of the cathedral and dancing with the shadows is exquisite.
The Portal of Rouen Cathedral in Morning Light, Claude Monet (1894). Image courtesy of the Getty Museum.
Another painting that catches my eye, and my heart, is Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s Spring, an invitation into a celebration of the season in a warm, ancient Roman garden. A procession of young women and children winds through a marble dreamscape, draped in gauzy gowns and crowned with garlands that practically carry the scent of blooming flowers. Indeed, the attention to the delicate details of architecture and human form makes the scene feel so immediate you can almost hear the swish of fabric and feel the sun-warmed stone beneath the feet.
Around the corner, I spy Rembrandt Laughing in all his mischievous, side-eyed and secretive- smiled glory. It’s a self-portrait that feels like it knows something you don’t, and might just start spilling the tea on what the other paintings in the gallery have been up to. He might even have the goss on Titian’s Portrait of Alfonso d’Avalos, and I want to hear it, ’cause dude has some swagger.
Rembrandt Laughing by Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn. (c. 1628). Image courtesy of the Getty Museum.
Of course, the immaculate masterpieces are the main draw at The Getty Center, but the kicker is the atmosphere. Unlike the elbow-jostling hustle of some galleries, this place breathes. It’s spacious, almost meditative, like the art’s been given room to speak. So much so that I occasionally feel like it’s just me and a painting, engaged in a quiet, contemplative conversation.
Blood: Medieval/Modern at The Getty Center
Ecce Homo from Poncher Hours by Jean Pichore (c. 1500). Image courtesy of the Getty Museum.
As I explore The Getty Center, I’m lucky to catch the tale end of the extraordinary temporary exhibition, Blood: Medieval/Modern – a beautifully macabre, visceral exploration of humanity’s complex relationship with blood … in all its devotional, medical, genealogical, and violent forms.
Blood, the liquid lifeline coursing through us all, is more than biology.. It’s a charged symbol of divinity, danger, and deviance. To the medieval mind, it was everything: salvation and sin, healing and pain, life and death. Nowhere is this more stunningly illustrated than in Jean Pichore’s Ecce Homo from the Poncher Hours (c. 1500), an image that practically bleeds violence. The flayed, battered Christ, blood dripping from his crown of thorns, is a confrontation with suffering so raw it feels almost cinematic.
Modern pieces hit just as hard, reinterpreting blood’s symbolism through the lenses of feminist resistance, the harrowing history of HIV/AIDS, and the marvel of DNA science. In these works, blood becomes both battleground and breakthrough, a stark reminder of both humanity’s darkest moments and our most groundbreaking discoveries.
Queer Blood America by Jordan Eagles (2021). 1982 Captain America. © Jordan Eagles. Image courtesy of the artist and the Getty Museum.
Queer Blood America, by Jordan Eagles is a jarring collision of a queer man’s blood preserved in a vial, layered over an image of Captain America battling Baron Blood. Created during the AIDS crisis, the piece defied outdated stigma and transformed blood from taboo to triumph. While Andres Serrano’s Bloodscape X (1987) blurs biology and abstraction, a reminder that it is blood – messy, mysterious, and utterly human– that still binds us all.
Inside out
The Getty Centre Gardens and maze © Aleney de Winter
A masterpiece that’s never finished, it is always growing, always whispering something new. The Central Garden snakes and swoons down the hillside, a botanical ballet of manicured hedges and wild bursts of colour that flirt with the breeze. A gentle creek murmurs secrets to the stones as it winds through the landscape, inviting visitors to lean in, listen, and lose track of time. Sculptural elements, from reflective pools and winding mazes to carefully placed stones and unexpected installations, punctuate the garden, engaging the senses in quiet, surprising ways.
The Getty Centre Gardens © Aleney de Winter
As I wander, the garden shifts with the light, offering new perspectives, inviting me to pause, reflect, and appreciate. This garden is the kind of place where you could lose hours without realising it. I know this because I do.
There’s an audacity in Iits design, a boldness in creating something so immersive, so meticulously crafted, and yet so welcoming. It’s a reminder that art doesn’t need to shout, it can simply invite you in and trust you’ll understand.
But the Getty Centre’s most audacious move? Creating something this grand and making it accessible to everyone. The admission? It’s free. Parking? Well, that’ll cost you 25 bucks, but considering you’re paying for a front-row seat to a cultural phenomenon, I think it’s a fair price to touch something so timeless.
The Getty Center
1200 Getty Center Dr,
Los Angeles, California, USA
(Open Seven Days. Check website for hours)
For more California inspiration, tips and travel guides, try these…
30 reasons why California is America’s ultimate family playground
48 hours in Joshua Tree, California
How to spend 7 days in Anaheim
An award-winning travel writer and photographer, Aleney de Winter was fresh from school when she first set off to explore the far reaches of Australia with a two-man tent and a beaten-up Kingswood for company. Three decades, and two kids later, and she's still on the go, with her itchy-footed offspring in tow. 