Post:Pham Nguyen Thien Thuy
Image:Zhang Ke
Getty Center Museum is a private museum, located on a hill in the city of Los Angeles. In a place where "every inch of land is gold" like Los Angeles, being located on a large hill like Getty Center makes first-time visitors surprised. Because of its large coverage, Getty Center Museum also arranges a tram to continuously transport visitors from the parking lot to the sightseeing area.
One might think that private museums would have to charge visitors to compensate for the hard work and financial resources of those who make up the museum, but that is not the case. The Getty Center is open to all visitors free of charge; there are no tickets, no fees, except for parking. More impressively, despite not charging any fees, the Getty is still very clean, orderly, tidy and open to welcome tens of thousands of visitors each month.
Getty has about 44,000 works of visual art (paintings, photographs, sculptures...) and many antiquities from Greece, Italy, Europe. People have cleverly arranged it into different galleries according to each theme so that students, students, and visitors can easily learn about different types of art. There you can see many sculptures, elaborately carved reliefs, ceramic and glass vases, blocks of stone with many unique shapes, paintings, books stained by time...
And once you get lost in Getty, it feels like you are going back in time to visit some remote tribe, village, or land in Europe or America. Perhaps the spirit of the Getty founders is friendly and open, wanting to share with everyone through unique works of art, human knowledge collected, arranged, and preserved here.
Once you get lost in Getty, it feels like you are going back in time to visit some remote tribe, village, or land in Europe or America. Perhaps the spirit of the Getty founders is friendly and open, wanting to share with everyone through unique works of art, human knowledge collected, arranged, and preserved here.
Unlike many other museums, the Getty gives visitors the feeling of being closer to the works on display. There are rooms without glass, without barriers, without prohibitions on filming or taking pictures (no flash allowed) so that visitors can freely satisfy their vision. There are also rooms where a sign is posted at the entrance saying no photography, and almost all visitors voluntarily follow it without needing security guards to watch or remind them.
Leaving the exhibition halls, you can freely stroll around the flower gardens. What surprises many visitors is that Getty leaves many areas for visitors to sit and rest without being disturbed. The dining area is also planned in necessary places and does not overwhelm other resting areas. If this can be considered the respectful attitude of the museum managers towards visitors, the Getty Center deserves to be scored. Perhaps that is why visitors here, whether they are groups of students or visitors who come to visit on their own, are very self-conscious. They always keep the public hygiene and do not make noise to others. Many visitors even bring their own food and drinks like a picnic, then clean up on their own, without disturbing anyone. Another surprise is that at the Getty Center, there are many security guards and tour guides who are volunteers, not paid!
Leaving the Getty Center, I was told by an acquaintance that there is another Getty Villa museum located in Malibu (California), also part of The J. Paul Getty's Museum. These are two private museums whose founders are successful businessmen. Instead of keeping their precious collections for themselves, they chose a more expensive but more interesting way: sharing the values of humanity with the community; sharing the assets they were lucky enough to collect and consolidating them into a museum for everyone to admire, visit and enrich their knowledge.
It is truly admirable and worthy of respect and admiration for the founders of The L. Paul Getty's Museum! Will Vietnamese businessmen one day join hands to build such a museum?
