We FINALLY made it to one of the two Getty Museums in Los Angeles. On Day 23 we took a short trip down the 405 and found our favorite museum so far (well, it's a close race between the Huntington and Getty). The Getty Center (not to be confused with the Getty Villa) is split into four different wings, North, South, East, and you get the picture.
The museum itself is free, but you can't avoid the 10 dollar parking, no matter how hard you try, and trust me, we tried. There is no place to park near the museum, and there's no reasonable way to walk to it without tearing up and saying to yourself "we should have just parked in the parking lot and paid the ten dollars!" So you'll find yourself parking in the lot, and taking the trolley up the hill to the center, and hopefully you'll have split the bill among you and your stingy friends.
The various wings of the museum host a variety of art mediums, from paintings to sculpture to illuminated manuscripts (which weren't as exciting as the Huntington Library collection). The painting collections ranged almost entirely between the 1600's to the 1800's, my favorite being the Italian paintings of the Grand Canal and, of course, anything Rembrandt. The exhibit even features a single painting by Van Gogh (although I'm less interested in Van Gogh's work than I am with that whole romantic, ear-giving gesture).Each room of the museum seemed to have different photography rules, so I found myself asking constantly "is this room ok for pictures?" which evolved into "pictures ok?" and eventually a click, click gesture with my finger above my camera and a slight shrug to indicate a question was being asked. I felt like I was back in Japan for a moment there, trying to work through a language barrier.
There isn't much more to say about this Getty that can't be shown in pictures. So here's a few thousand words worth of images of the Getty Center.
