Within the span of one month, I’ve had the opportunity to visit three beautiful art museums in California: the J. Paul Getty in LA, the Timken Museum of Art and the San Diego Museum of Art in Balboa Park. Three beautiful museums that vary slightly from each other, but still capture the essence of art and architecture.
The Getty Center is the most spacious of the three – it’s
sprawling grounds are sprinkled with modern outdoor sculptures, from Horse to Running Man at the base of the center, outside the tram waiting
center, to Air by Aristide Maillol
and That Profile by Martin Puryear.
The path that runs alongside the tram tracks are cloaked in the shadow of
luscious trees, and as one approaches the center, the freeway cuts across the
hills below. The steps to the Getty are a clean marble, and the main entrance
hall has it’s characteristic curving walls, lined with perfect squares like
graphing paper.
While outside of the buildings the Getty seems modern and
clean, with white walls and cactus gardens, inside of the exhibitions are
lavish and meticulous.
Woven Gold: Tapestries
of Louis XIV features a collection of beautiful ecru and gold tapestries,
highlighted with deep red and blues. As overhead lights highlight the giant
tapestries, the walls of the exhibition are painted with a deep burgundy in
sharp juxtaposition to the lightness of the tapestries. The exhibition room is
dark; the skylights are covered and the only light comes from the ones shining
on the tapestries.
In the plaza level, sculpture and decorative arts galleries
are found. In one ancient Greece gallery, marble columns support the roof, and
a pale blue color coats the walls. There are elegant bronze vases and pearly
white busts of ancient Greek philosophers and mathematicians.
In the upper pavilions, painting galleries are illuminated
by skylights, sunlight streaming into the exhibitions and washing over
paintings and wood floor alike. The walls of each gallery vary in color, from
light gray to patterned olive to a brilliant scarlet. The selection and
placement of each painting in these galleries is deliberate; each painting’s
center lines with the next. One’s eye falls easily over the line of paintings.
The frame sizes are varied as well, allowing for variety. Gold and auburn
frames are paired with brilliant scarlet backgrounds, matching with the
varnished wood slats. The walls of the upper pavilion are white at the very
top, sloping inward to form skylights. Each painting has its own headlight.
A similar set up can be seen in the San Diego Museum of Art.
In the exhibition Ferocious Bronze,
sculptures of the late artist Arthur Putnam are dark and tarnished bronze, set
against a vibrant background of daisy yellow paint.
Art of Asia is an intricate exhibition, with sculptures of
Buddha from ancient temples to gold and silver manuscripts to a collection of
beautiful Persian pottery and ceramic art. Sculptures of Buddha are mainly
schist or rock, set against a simple white background. The blue in Persian
pottery and ceramic tiles are highlighted by the royal blue background of the
gallery.
Upstairs, German Expressionist works hang in a dark gallery,
walls of ebony. Brueghel to Canaletto:
European Masterpieces from the Grasset Collection features still life and
landscape; the yellows and pinks and whites of still-life – flowers and cheese,
peaches and grapes – pop against a simple silver background. The gallery is
spacious and skylights allow natural sunlight to filter into the exhibition.
Across the hall, The Art of Devotion,
a series of religious pieces are framed by a wine-red background. Once again,
the paintings all hang in such a way that their centers line on a baseline
perfectly, and the frames alternate between larger and small.
The exterior of the museum is intricate. Along with the rest
of Balboa Park, the architecture has its roots in Spanish Baroque and Colonial
styles. The doors are nestled below a large and decorate scallop; four
decorative pillars frame the door as well, two on each side. Above the scallop
are a series of sculptures embedded in the building’s façade, as well as many
other beautiful designs and coat of arms.
The Timken Museum of Art is a squat, square, one-level
building. It’s glass doors are framed in gold and the spacious interior is
split into two wings. The walls of the museum are covered in a pale pink
fabric, unlike the paints of the Getty and the SDMA. Nevertheless, the effect
is still delicate, and each doorframe that leads to another wing of the gallery
has pink curtains pulled back delicately to reveal the juncture between two
wings.
Each of these museums is unique and different in its own
way, but each own shows a deliberate and articulate collection of paintings and
art, and the design of each museum elevates the art to its fullest.
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Getty Museum
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| Getty Museum |
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| San Diego Museum of Art |
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| San Diego Museum of Art |
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| Timken |
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