County Has Quick Answers to Getty

During the next three days, 700 representatives from the local media corps are expected to overwhelm the new Getty Center art museum. Despite its proximity just over the hill, this writer does not intend to be one of them.

Too many hectares of old-growth forest have already been sacrificed to the worldwide word count continuing to gush about the glass, steel and stone aerie perched above the 405. Journalists seem to be conspiring to keep the great unwashed from missing what they consider the most la-de-da cultural event this side of the millennium.

An incalculable number of correspondents, from architectural analysts to food featurists, have already oohed and aahed over the billion-dollar travertine citadel with the Richard Meier edifice complex. Even Ventura-based Trailer Life named the new Getty a “must see” for its highly mobile readership.

Who knows why it has become the latest obsession to clog the nation’s news conduits? After all, it’s just another museum. Ventura County boasts some 27 repositories of refinement, ranging from a private family collection at the Lechler Museum in Piru to memorabilia at the landmark Stage Coach Inn in Newbury Park.

A cool $40 million in oil money enabled the Getty to keep Vincent van Gogh’s “Irises” out of the grasp of Ventura County art museums, but California Impressionists, arguably better than the French variety (or is that wine?), are yours to behold at the Carnegie Art Museum in Oxnard.

If you prefer antiquities, artifacts dating from 500 BC are on display at the Albinger Archaeological Museum in Ventura.

The Getty powers that be decided to move their extensive art collection from the Roman-style villa on the Malibu coast to a location just downwind of a landfill. The view of designer smog settling over Brentwood and surrounding environs is, indeed, impressive but can scarcely equal the particulate-free panorama found at the presidential library in Simi Valley.

The Ronald Reagan Museum offers the opportunity to not only lean against a length of the actual Berlin Wall (pieces of which are for sale in the gift shop), but you can also gasp with awe at the remarkable likeness of our 40th president constructed entirely of jelly beans.

Given all the Getty gelt, I’ve often wondered why these folk amassed such a vast collection of armless and legless statues. If you prefer them complete with the requisite number of limbs, visit the Ventura County Museum of History and Art. A collection of one-fourth-life-size historical figures by George Stewart of Ojai will amaze and amuse you.

One final reason to shop locally for culture is time. It literally takes days to do the entire Getty complex. Ventura County, on the other hand, provides the fast-food equivalent--whether your interests center on the Chumash or the Conejo, you can get through a county museum in less than 60 minutes, without breaking a sweat. Top that, Mr. Getty!