The Getty as Teacher

Everyone knows that art museums are educational. And, too often, boring. And hands-off. You tour galleries, peer at tiny notations beside paintings and sculptures, and never touch anything.

But the Getty Center, the $1-billion arts complex on a Brentwood hilltop that will open Tuesday, has made a conscious effort to redefine the museum’s role as teacher, using imaginative tactics to educate everyone from tots to grown-ups about the visual arts. “No forced march” through don’t-touch galleries seems to be the mantra at this marble-clad, 110-acre monument to founder J. Paul Getty.

OK, you still can’t touch Cezanne’s “Still Life With Apples” or that 400 BC statue of Aphrodite. But you can surf the Getty’s World Wide Web sites in a hands-on computer lab and hold a model of an antique bronze in one of the four information rooms throughout the museum.

Or, if you’re a child, you can try on costumes from famous Getty paintings in the Family Room, a very unstuffy place to orient parents and children that is an innovation for an art museum.

“I don’t know of another art museum that has one,” said Edward H. Able Jr., executive director of the American Assn. of Museums in Washington.

The Getty, said Able, is “advancing the state of the art of education in museums” through its vast resources, which include not only the museum but also a grant program and five institutes devoted to research, conservation, technology, museum management and education.

Of course, you can find gallery talks as well as films and lectures in the 450-seat auditorium. And there are tours too--staff-led, self-led with the aid of an audio guide and, starting in September, special tours for school groups. But Diane Brigham, head of the museum’s education department, said the Getty is also striving to offer visitors something different--a more active experience. That is a greater challenge for art repositories than for museums of science or natural history, where hands-on exhibits have become de rigueur.

“We’re used to museums as a passive experience--[you hope] the art is going to come out and hit you, but it doesn’t,” Brigham said. “We’ve got to make them seem less intimidating and come alive for them.”

The Research Library

Say you’re wandering through the European paintings and see Van Gogh’s “Irises.” It jogs your memory about another work of his and it’s driving you crazy that you can’t remember its name. Instead of losing sleep over it, walk across the plaza to the Research Library at the Getty’s Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities.

“Anybody can use the library by appointment,” if a legitimate research request is presented, said Research Institute assistant director Michael Roth. At the old Getty in Malibu, the institute wasn’t well-suited to handle public requests. But the new facility--more spacious and equipped with a reading room--can. Some visitors can be accommodated on a drop-in basis, Roth said.

Used mainly by scholars--including a rotating panel of resident Getty Scholars from around the world--the library houses a rich collection of 800,000 monographs, auction catalogs, artists’ correspondence, photographs and other artifacts of art history. Among the holdings are 19th century drawings of West African buildings, a bound album of drawings by the French master Jacques-Louis David and odd optical devices that would interest scholars of the early history of cinema.

Where: Getty Research Institute, west of the central garden.

The Family Room

Got children? Not sure where to start? This is the place for you.

Here you and your children can learn about portrait art at a participatory display called “Picture Yourself.” Or visit the wardrobe to try on six costumes from Getty’s paintings, such as the blue cape worn by the daughter of an aristocratic Dutchman in the 18th century “Portrait of Maria-Frederike van Reede-Athlone.”

There are two computer stations where you can explore the Getty collection or play art games on CD-ROMs. At a reading nook you can snuggle up with children’s art books, such as the colorfully illustrated “Going to the Getty” or “The King’s Day,” about the life of Louis XIV.

Also available are game boxes with activities centered on three paintings, plus a map showing where to find the works in the galleries. The game called “Catherine’s Story,” for instance, focuses on the 14th century panel painting of St. Catherine of Alexandria by Gregorio and Donato D’Arezzo. “This is a painting a kid would just walk by,” Brigham said. But the game engages a child--and Mom and Dad--in the painting’s story by asking children to match clue cards to the appropriate scenes, such as the one of soldiers admiring Catherine’s courage. (Children, take note: One panel shows a beheading!)

Although staffed, the room is not a place to drop off Jessica and Jason while you go ogle the Getty Bronze. The intent of the room, Brigham said, is to spark dialogues about art between adults and children. “Too many of our conversations are about homework or ‘Can I go to Joey’s house?’ and not enough about ideas,” she said. “If we can give families another context to talk to each other, we feel we have really done a service.”

Where: The Family Room is just off the museum courtyard, next to the east pavilion.

Information Rooms

You don’t need children to visit these rooms, places to learn more about the art in each pavilion.

For example, in the north pavilion, which houses the museum’s earliest art--such as bronzes, ceramics and manuscripts--the information center might feature an artist making parchment, or a display showing the steps in the lost-wax method of bronze casting.

A timeline highlighting world events from every era covered in the galleries festoons each room. Brigham said the timelines are meant to give visitors another way to connect with the art--”Oh, right, this is the era of the crusades!”

Another reason to stop in would be to check out Art Access on the touch-screen computer. If you’re wondering whether the Italian painter Dossodossi’s “Allegory of Fortune,” for instance, is on display or if it’s on loan to another museum, the interactive digital archive can tell you that. It also provides biographical information on each artist and allows you to turn an object to view it from another angle or zoom in on a detail.

Where: In each of the four art pavilions.

Digital Experience

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A museum famous for its holdings from Greek and Roman antiquity also has plunged headlong into the Cyber Age. The Digital Experience is a 650-square-foot room that embodies the central tenet of the Getty Information Institute: to bridge the gap between art and technology by making cultural resources available on the Internet.

Equipped with 14 computer workstations and three large projection screens, this cool, dimly lit digital laboratory will teach you how to explore culture on the World Wide Web. One program takes you on adventures through cyberspace, guided by the animated characters Nettie, Fetch and Slash the Kulture Kat. You also can take a virtual tour of online culture, peering into the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Louvre, for example, or the audio-enhanced home pages of singing cowboy Gene Autry and opera diva Maria Callas. Another program enables visitors to create online art and even send an “electronic postcard” featuring Nettie and company.

Visitors to the lab sign up for a half-hour ride through cyberspace. James M. Bower, who helped design the lab, said guests should expect a “social experience for the family.” And don’t be surprised to see 6-year-old cybernauts in the driver’s seat.

Where: Lower level of the west pavilion.

Visiting via the Web

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Can’t get to the Getty next week? If you’re wired to the Internet, here are two ways to gain virtual entree not only to the Getty but to scores of local arts and cultural heritage organizations with a presence on the World Wide Web.

LA Culture Net at https://www.lacn.org was spearheaded by the Getty in 1995, evolving into its current role as an electronic gateway to the cultural life of the city. Its purpose, said Eleanor Fink, head of the Getty Information Institute, is to “strengthen the presence” of cultural information on the Internet.

Among its features: a community-generated calendar of events; a discussion group called “People to People” for exchanging ideas on cultural topics; “Tour Bus,” a multilingual virtual tour of selected local cultural organizations; and “Neighborhood Views,” an outlet for community reports on cultural happenings.

Another feature is “Faces of L.A.,” a virtual database of 19 regional cultural resources. Useful in particular to students and educators, it provides access to more than 2 million records. Keying in “Gabrielino Indians,” for instance, provides links to bibliographic material at the Gene Autry Museum of Western Heritage, articles at the Los Angeles Public Library and images at UCLA’s Fowler Museum.

The database also offers online exhibitions and high school lesson plans that show teachers how to incorporate online resources into class assignments.

ArtsEdNet at https://www.artsednet.getty.edu is primarily for educators, providing Internet-savvy teachers with virtually all the resources they need to use the visual arts in teaching history, literature, math and other subjects. Produced by the Getty Education Institute, it has lesson plans, virtual galleries, chat rooms, articles and hyperlinks to other arts Web sites, from the Smithsonian and Jet Propulsion Laboratory to Midink, an electronic magazine on art and writing for the middle school set.

One of the artists currently featured is John Biggars, a south Texas muralist. Users can click onto galleries depicting his works and explanations of his symbol system. Another link brings up photography by children in an online exhibit called “Kids Framing Kids.”

Access to both LA Culture Net and ArtsEdNet is free.

Education Institute

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The Internet is only one way that the Getty reaches out to schools. The Education Institute, invisible to most of the public, works directly in them, training teachers and administrators to integrate the visual arts into the curriculum.

The core of the Education Institute is its effort to spread “discipline-based” arts education. This is not about teaching teachers new ways to make “fuzzy bunnies”--code for the messy fun that often passes for art training in elementary schools--but about art history, production, aesthetics and criticism. A typical lesson might revolve around a Matisse collage, in which students learn about the artist and his methods, evaluate the work as a critic would and later attempt to make a collage using similar techniques.

Led by Leilani Lattin Duke, the institute offers teachers and principals workshops through six regional centers in the United States. It is working closely with groups of schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District to incorporate arts education into larger educational reform projects, such as its collaboration with six high schools using art to link history, science and other basic subjects.

All of these efforts are meant not only to boost the status of the arts but also to answer practical needs, Getty officials say.

“In Los Angeles, the industries related to creative people are so essential,” said Mark Slavkin, a former Los Angeles school board member who now works for the Education Institute. “Our schools should be leading the nation in developing those people.”

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Visiting the New Getty Center

Location: The Getty Center is at 1200 Getty Center Drive in Brentwood.

Hours: Saturdays and Sundays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Thursday and Fridays, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Closed Mondays and major holidays.

Cost: Admission to the museum is free; parking is $5.

Transportation: Parking reservations are required and can be made by calling (310) 440-7300 or, for the hearing impaired, (310) 440-7305. Information is in English and Spanish. Visitors without a reservation can come via bus, taxi or bicycle, but parking in nearby neighborhoods is severly restricted. MTA bus No. 561 and the Santa Monica Blue Bus No. 14 at the front entrance on Sepulveda Boulevard. Bicycle racks and a taxi stop with direct phone lines to cab companies are located in the parking garage.