Richard Meier designed the Getty Center, opened in 1997 on this hilltop in the Santa Monica Mountains. The Getty Center was designed by Richard Meier and opened in 1997 on a hilltop in the Santa Monica Mountains, reached by a tram from the parking structure below. The complex of travertine-clad pavilions, gardens, and courtyards took fourteen years and nearly a billion dollars to build, funded by the estate of J. Paul Getty, the oil billionaire who was at one point the richest man in the world.
Getty himself never visited; he died in 1976, more than twenty years before the museum opened. The collection includes European paintings, drawings, illuminated manuscripts, decorative arts, sculpture, and photography, with particular strength in Impressionist and Post-Impressionist work. But the building and site are as important as the collection: the travertine walls change color from cream to gold as the light moves, the gardens designed by Robert Irwin are in constant seasonal change, and the views from the terraces take in the Los Angeles Basin, the Pacific Ocean, and on clear days the Palos Verdes Peninsula.
Admission is free; parking requires a reservation and a fee.