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Los Angeles Times
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Getty Villa sets reopening date after fire: L.A. arts and culture this weekend
The Getty Villa Museum will reopen to the public on a limited basis beginning June 27 after a nearly six-month closure forced by the devastating Palisades fire. On the night of Jan. 7, reports swirled that the wind-driven conflagration had reached the outskirts of the Villa. A Getty team stayed through the night, putting out spot fires with fire extinguishers and ensuring that the galleries were safely sealed off, while updating a command team at Getty Center that included Getty President and Chief Executive Katherine Fleming. A few days later, Fleming told The Times that the teams were confident that their thorough preparation — including extensive brush clearing — would keep the museum from burning. The galleries and other buildings did remain safe, but the glittering fountain pools went dark with ash. Extensive work on the property, including intensive cleaning and testing of indoor and outdoor spaces for toxic residue, is nearing completion. The water system has been flushed, and air and water filters have been replaced. More than 1,300 fire-damaged trees were removed. 'The site may look different to visitors,' the museum warned in an announcement this week, 'with less vegetation and some burn damage to the outer grounds.' The limited visitor hours will be 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday through Monday. The goal will be to help limit traffic on Pacific Coast Highway, which is the only way to reach the campus. (The Villa is not yet accessible via Sunset Boulevard.) Reservations are limited to 500 visitors daily, and free, timed-entry reservations can be booked online. Parking is $25. Unfortunately, the exhibition on view when the fire erupted, 'Ancient Thrace and the Classical World: Treasures From Bulgaria, Romania, and Greece,' had to close, but the Getty created a virtual tour. Times art critic Christopher Knight had great things to say about it when he viewed it just before the fire. The exhibition for the reopening is 'The Kingdom of Pylos: Warrior-Princes of Ancient Greece,' which will be on view from June 27 through Jan. 12. It will feature more than 230 works of art and artifacts from Messenia, a region in Greece where the Mycenaean civilization flourished during the Late Bronze Age. Theater fans can breathe a sigh of relief. The outdoor classical theater will return in the fall with 'Oedipus the King, Mama!' co-produced by Troubadour Theater Company. I'm arts and culture writer Jessica Gelt, looking forward to reading a book in the shade by a Villa fountain. Here's your weekend arts roundup. Does Los Angeles have its own musical style? Times classical music critic Mark Swed answers the question after attending the Hear Now Music Festival and Tod Machover's opera 'Schoenberg in Hollywood.' 'Los Angeles is the home of film music. The two most influential classical composers of the first half of the 20th century, Stravinsky and Schoenberg, lived here. ... The composer with the most radical influence on the second half of the 20th century, John Cage, was born and grew up here. Ferreting out L.A.'s bearing on jazz and the many, many aspects of popular music, as well as world music, is a lifetime's effort,' Swed writes. 'A Doll's House, Part 2' at Pasadena Playhouse gets a mixed review from Times theater critic Charles McNulty, who praises Jason Butler Harner's performance as Torvald, while noting that costumes and set design did not come together. Lucas Hnath's play picks up 15 years after the conclusion of Henrik Ibsen's 1879 classic, when Nora famously walks out on her husband and children. Nora's life is complicated. And so is McNulty's reaction to the show. Last week, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art laid off 15 full-time employees, accounting for 14% of its staff. Most were from the organization's education and public programming team. Seven part-time, on-call employees were also let go, according to the museum. Sources described the morning of the layoffs as chaotic and shocking, with staff being summoned by human resources and being told they needed to be out of the building by 2 p.m. The museum said in a statement, 'Education remains a central pillar of the Lucas Museum.' The Hammer Museum raised $2.4 million during its 20th annual Gala in the Garden last Saturday. The fete honored Jane Fonda and artist Lauren Halsey, and it featured a performance by the singer Griff. This marked the first gala for the museum's new director, Zoë Ryan, who took over in January. Last year's party marked a heartfelt send-off for longtime director Ann Philbin, who retired after 25 years at the helm of the institution. This year, per usual, plenty of celebrities were in attendance, including LeBron and Savannah James, Usher, Will Ferrell, Dustin Hoffman, Ted Danson, Mary Steenburgen and Molly Shannon, as well as plenty of artists including Doug Aitken, Andrea Bowers, Diedrick Brackens, Catherine Opie, Ed Ruscha and Jonas Wood. Thelma Golden, the director of the Studio Museum in Harlem, paid tribute to Halsey; Danson and Steenburgen celebrated Fonda. The Fowler Museum on Tuesday returned 11 objects to the Larrakia community of the Northern Territory in Australia. The items, which hold deep cultural and spiritual significance to the Larrakia people, consist of 10 glass spearheads and a kangaroo tooth headband worn by a Larrakia elder. Elders have worked closely with the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies and the museum over the last four years to identify and arrange the return of the objects. This particular return ceremony is the second time the Fowler has returned artifacts in partnership with AIATSIS. Last July, the museum repatriated 20 items to the Warumungu community of Tennant Creek in northern Australia. The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has announced its 2025-26 theater season — the first with President Donald Trump as chair. 'Hamilton,' as previously reported, is out. Offerings include plenty of Trump-approved Broadway fare, including 'Moulin Rouge,' 'Chicago,' 'Mrs. Doubtfire,' 'Back to the Future: The Musical' and 'Monty Python's Spamalot.' Tony Award winner Charles Strouse, who composed the music for 'Annie,' 'Bye Bye Birdie' and 'Applause,' has died. He was 96. — Jessica Gelt You can opt to be buried up to your neck in compost at this California spa. I love a good spa day, but this is a hard pass for me.
Los Angeles Times
11-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Review: At the Getty Villa, the marvelous exhibition rescued from the Palisades fire
What is Thrace? Or, better, where is Thrace? Of all the ancient cultures clustered around the eastern half of the Mediterranean Sea, whether Egypt, Greece, Persia or Rome's imperial outreaches, Thrace is surely the least well-known. In recent memory, mostly it pops up from 'Spartacus,' the 1960 Stanley Kubrick Hollywood epic, and its later television offspring. But the sizable Balkan territory once encompassed much of modern Bulgaria and parts of northern Greece and European Turkey, between the Black Sea and the Aegean. 'Spartacus' screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, blacklisted during the Red Scare, may have identified with the shrewd Thracian gladiator who led a slave revolt against the crushing overlords of the Roman Republic. Unsurprisingly, some of that movie's blunt-force muscularity turns up in 'Ancient Thrace and the Classical World: Treasures From Bulgaria, Romania, and Greece,' a survey of vessels, warrior paraphernalia (armor, weapons, horse trappings), jewelry, tomb sculptures and other objects at the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades. Understandably, the Villa is temporarily closed. The horrendous Pacific Palisades fire annihilated huge swaths of the surrounding community and burned some of the Getty Villa's grounds. Thankfully, the museum and interior formal gardens were largely untouched. The day was saved by advance planning for wildfire mitigation and courageous staff, including security guards and groundskeepers who risked life and limb and remained at the site to fight the deadly blaze. No reopening date has been announced, as parts of Pacific Coast Highway are closed. (The Getty Center in Brentwood has reopened.) The Thracian show floats in a state of suspended animation. I managed to see it shortly before the fire. Here's what I found. 'Ancient Thrace and the Classical World' is significantly characterized by brutality. The archaic society was known for the prowess of its soldiers and its brawny militarism. To generalize, we might describe Thracian art as embodying a barbaric style — not as a term of derision but merely descriptive of a blunt, skillful fierceness so often encountered in its forms. Among the more startling objects on view is a late 4th century BC bronze helmet that takes the unmistakable form of the conical glans of a human penis. Adorning the spot where the urethral opening would be is a small, finely crafted silver relief bust of Athena, goddess of wisdom and warfare, protector of Aegean city-states, aide and ally of Herakles, Odysseus and other mythic heroes. Such a helmet, worn to protect the head during battle, stands as an unmistakable sign of aggressive power. Imagine a helmeted phalanx of Thracian soldiers advancing on an enemy. Could there be a more emphatic conflation of symbolic maleness and brute force? Swords, scabbards, armor — weaponry and objects related to combat are plentiful in the show. Some of the most exquisitely crafted pieces are small decorative elements made for the harnesses of soldiers' horses — the powerful and celebrated Thessalian breed, perhaps. Think animal jewelry — bridles, straps and other harness parts adorned with eagle heads, rosettes, griffins, busts of Herakles, serpents and lions, often shaped from gold. These small dazzlers glint in the light to both impress and intimidate. Many (if not most) works in the exhibition have been retrieved from tombs and burial mounds, where even horses could be interred — an indication of their essential value to a warrior class. On occasion, a deceased warrior's wife would be killed during a funerary ceremony. Necklaces, earrings, bracelets and domestic objects, including painted clay pots and sumptuous gold and silver banquet vessels, would be buried along with them. One stunning piece, excavated 60 years ago from a tomb in the foothills of mountainous northwest Bulgaria, about 70 miles from Sofia, is the left shin and knee guard from a soldier's armor. Called a greave, it was hammered from a single thick sheet of silver and symmetrically decorated with gilded animals, both real (lions) and imagined (griffins). Covering the knee is the head of a goddess, the brow above her two wide-open eyes adorned with a victor's wreath. (Nearby, a vitrine holds a spectacular, oversize oak wreath, delicately assembled from snipped sheets of gold and wire, found laid atop the head of an aristocratic grave.) Horizontal bands of silver and gold march in a rhythmic pattern down the right side of the goddess' face, ornament that may represent the elaborate body tattoos popular among Thracians. The pattern's strict rectilinear geometry creates a stark contrast with organic facial features, vivifying the otherworldly human form. The exhibition's most riveting work, sure to have been a popular favorite, is the roughly life-size bronze head of Seuthes III, a Thracian king almost contemporary with, if perhaps slightly younger than, Macedonian Alexander the Great. Metalwork was a highly refined practice in Thrace, evidenced throughout the exhibition, nowhere more beautifully demonstrated than here. Some scholars also think the head might have been fabricated in Greece, given the close relationship between the two regions — an Athenian commission brought to Thrace to mark a neighboring king's grave. The state of preservation for the 2,300-year-old bronze is pretty remarkable. The neck's jagged base suggests that the head was torn from a larger, perhaps full-length figure, but the sculpture reveals almost no other significant damage. A deep brown patina radiates a glow of dark greenish tint. The gently furrowed brow, crow's feet fanning out at the eyes, a full beard as dynamic as a waterfall and broad handlebar mustache together yield a sense of age embodying experienced wisdom. So carefully observed are the head's features that even a small wart marks the left cheek. What astounds, though, are the sculpture's extraordinary eyes. The king stares intently into an eternal distance through composite orbs fashioned from alabaster and glass, rendered in varying degrees of clarity, transparency and opacity. Rimmed with delicate lashes of thinly shredded, light-reflective copper, the luminous eyes sparkle. It's a dramatic tour de force. The exhibition was organized by Getty curators Sara E. Cole and Jens Daehner and former curator Jeffrey Spier, together with Margarit Damyanov, a professor of Thracian archaeology at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. It is divided into three sections, opening with interactions between Thrace and neighboring Greece and Persia — the former generally friendlier than the latter but all three cosmopolitan thanks to trade and stylistic mingling. The room's most impressive object is a 5th century BC carved marble stele, 8 feet tall. The funerary marker features the torqued and compressed figure of an old man, who offers a piece of meat to an eager dog — a rare moment of compassion. The canine rises up on its hind legs in an almost prayer-like pose that fuses desire and fealty. The second room is focused on archaeological tomb discoveries, including the bronze head of Seuthes, the silver greave and the gold wreath. The final room is a treasure house of luxury objects, including an exquisite saucer, nearly 10 inches in diameter, featuring three concentric rings, each composed of 24 embossed heads of Black African men in increasing size. Together with its deeply researched catalog of recent scholarly inquiry into the tribal culture, 'Ancient Thrace and the Classical World' is the third in a fine series of Getty shows that mean to provide larger context for the museum's collection of mostly Greek and Roman antiquities. It joins studies of Egypt in 2018 and Persia in 2022. The current exhibition can only sketch the art of a period that lasted around two millennia, from about 1700 BC to AD 300, but it stands as a marvelous introduction. The Thrace exhibition's fate may echo what happened to the engaging 'Where the Truth Lies: The Art of Qiu Ying,' which COVID abruptly shuttered at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art five years ago. The Thrace show was scheduled to close March 3, and impressive loans of art from Eastern Europe will need to be returned. The fine exhibition catalog is worth perusing. The epic destruction that surrounds the Villa today adds an unnerving element to the exhibition's art historical context. It's easy to forget that the Villa is based on an ancient Roman house buried and destroyed in the lava of the erupting Mt. Vesuvius. Civilizations are inevitably transient — rising, expanding, collapsing, disappearing. Relatively obscure Thracian art, for all its muscular power and authority, is a sobering reminder of our common fragility.
