Visit to the Getty Villa

This Spring Break, I visited the Getty Villa in Malibu. I had a fabulous time there; the museum was absolutely gorgeous. I found the Villa particularly interesting in that, aside from the galleries inside, the building itself and the gardens were integral parts of the museum experience. The building is modeled after an ancient Roman villa in Herculaneum called Villa of the Papyri, and it is built to be like it once was thousands of years ago. The building is new looking, and not antiqued to look like the ruins that were excavated in the early 1700s. This makes the experience of entering the villa a unique one that could not even be experienced at the original Villa of the Papyri. Museum-goers experience the villa as if they had traveled back in time. The gardens contain the real growing herbs that once were used by inhabitants of the villa, and the fountains and courtyards that were found in ruins at the original villa have been brought back to life for the public to encounter. The museum immerses you into another world because the atmosphere is so compelling.

One exhibit that I found particularly interesting was the tactile exhibit, which was intended to teach through touch. In this exhibit, visitors are allowed to touch sculptures that are so rarely allowed to be touched. Visitors learn about the craft and brilliance of the sculptors when they can feel the small grooves that were made by the sculptor’s chisel and the smooth polished rock that was sanded to perfection. Feeling sculptures leads the visitor to understand why some surfaces were left rough and why some were polished and how that brings the sculpture to life.

The museum tells many stories including the history of Greek mythology, the history of Greek sculpture, the history of Etruscan Jewelry and it’s cultural significance, the history of Roman Imperial symbolism, as well as the history of J. Paul Getty and the creation of the Getty Villa. The museum engages visitors on many levels, by use of artifacts to look at, plaques that explain them in words, videos describing the building, smells from the garden and the sea that evoke the Mediterranean, and so on. The layout allows for the visitor to explore the building for him or herself as if he or she had come to a real ancient Greek home. The Getty Villa is a beautifully designed museum and very worth visiting.