The Getty Center

The Getty Center is an amazing complex set high in the hills surrounding L.A. I was a bit ambivalent about going because while I like art I wasn't sure if I could spend an entire day looking at pictures. In fact I was much more than just an art gallery and I could have spent days there.

The first thing that strikes you, even before you arrive, is the complex itself. I know nothing about architecture yet even I can tell that it is an architectural marvel. The buildings seem to frame each other and the white marble is stunning against the everpresent blue sky.

We decided to go a highlights tour which went around the four main collections and went into detail about one piece in each collection. We then had lunch and afterwards we had a look at a special exhibition taking place on a 17th century female artist called Maria Sibylla Merian who produced scientific drawings of plants, birds and insects and discovered that caterpillers metamorphose into butterflies. The artwork was stunning and it was fantastic to see this scientist finally being recognised.

Probably the most exciting gallery was the impressionist paintings. There were paintings by Van Gogh, Monet, Sisley and a load of other impressionists. The most incredible thing was you were allowed to photograph the paintings!! This is a close-up of 'Irises' by Van Gogh.

The Getty Center also has spectacular gardens. They look quite small from the outside but the winding paths and the huge number of plants means that they take a long time to look around.


I loved the Getty. Everything about it was stunning. The building, the galleries, the temporary exhibitions, the views. It was huge and had far more stuff than can be properly seen in one day. I would go back in a heartbeat!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sexism vs cultural imperialism

Image
As I was getting ready for bed last night a friend shared a tweet that immediately caught my attention. https://twitter.com/sbattrawden/status/1143465003409915905 The tweet was of a paper that has just been published online, titled "Does physician gender have a significant impact on first-pass success rate of emergency endotracheal intubation?" and showed the abstract which began, It is unknown whether female physicians can perform equivalently to male physicians with respect to emergency procedures. Understandably, this got the backs up of a lot of people, myself included. Who on earth thinks that's a valid question to be researching in this day and age? Are we really still having to battle assumptions of female inferiority when it comes to things like this? Who on earth gave this ethics approval, let alone got it though peer review? I then took a deep breath and asked myself why a respected journal, The American Journal of Emergency Medicine , would publish
Read more

The remarkable tree lobster

Image
I can’t remember the first time I heard about the Lord Howe Island stick insect, and I can’t say my interest has been much more than in passing. They would pique my interest when I saw them in the news, only to fade back into the vast and ever growing pile of ‘oh, interesting’. Then, at the beginning of November, I actually got to come face to face with one of these creatures and it was so incredible I decided to find out more. This is what I’ve learned… Lord Howe Island stick insects are - I’m sure you’ll be surprised to learn - found on Lord Howe Island. This is a small crescent-shaped island in the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand. I didn’t realise until researching this piece that the island is actually inhabited. It has a population of 382 people according to the 2011 census . The Lord Howe Island stick insect ( Dryococelus australis ), or LHISI as it’s known to friends, was first described by Xavier Montrouzier in 1855 from specimens collected by the HMS Hera
Read more

Gutting the DSA with dodgy statistics

A couple of days ago the Rt Hon. David Willetts MP (Minister for Universities and Science) announced his changes to the Disabled Students’ Allowance. The DSA is a grant given to disabled students to help cover costs that arise as a direct result of their disability. It's an excellent scheme and for many it can, and has, make the difference between success and failure. These 'changes', more accurately termed 'cuts', are far-reaching and devastating. 
Read more