Rapt in Perfect Packages

The first visitors today to the new Getty Center will probably be so dazzled by the multimillion-dollar paintings and stunning views that they’ll overlook the details.

But even a Van Gogh needs the right packaging.

Gene Karraker of Fullerton purchases and cares for the frames of the museum’s thousands of works. That’s right, the Cezanne the J. Paul Getty Museum purchased for about $25 million last year didn’t come with a suitable frame. So, he jets to Europe four times a year to search out mountings, spending an average of $20,000 on each.

In preparation for today’s opening, he spent 1 1/2 years poring over art history books and scouring London antique dealerships to replace a total of 40 frames for pre-20th century works in the collection. In some cases, he had to track down frames that coincided, period-wise, with the paintings. For those in the decorative arts galleries, he needed frames to match the Louis XIV furniture.

“We were basically reframing to match the room decor,” Karraker said.

The Getty’s frame conservator got an upgraded encasing of his own, of course. At 24 by 43 square feet, his new studio dwarfs his former quarters at the Getty site in Malibu. A computer controls the temperature and humidity, lest centuries-old wooden frames, crack or mildew. Filtered air is piped in.

“It’s certainly comfortable,” said Karraker, looking slightly guilty about the deluxe surroundings, where he replicates techniques practiced by the humble 17th century craftsmen pictured in the Diderot print on his wall.

A Kentucky native who earned a master’s degree in sculpture at the University of Kansas, Karraker began to train for job in the ‘80s while also supervising exhibition installations at Cal State Fullerton. (His wife, Lynn La Bate, is the exhibitions administrator at the Fullerton Museum Center.) He took a yearlong internship at the old Getty under paintings conservator Andrea Rothe and became its only frame conservator four years ago. His education continues, often overseas.

“[To prepare] for the opening, I spent three months in London last year studying at one of the frame workshops with the gilders and the carvers,” he said.

Occasionally, Getty acquisitions arrive in appropriate frames, in which case Karraker may need to repair only a bit of damaged gilt (made of gold leaf) or gesso (a type of plaster). The supplies, like the techniques, have changed little over time.

“The same type of gesso was being used back then,” he said, “and the gold leaf is a little thinner because it’s beaten by machine and not by hand, but it’s the same process of laying the gold.”

More often, though, Karraker starts from scratch. He spent more than a year, for example, in search of the perfect frame for Cezanne’s “Still Life With Apples,” which the Getty purchased for about $25 million in 1996.

“I probably looked at 75 to 100 frames and distilled that number to 20,” he said.

Then, various curators weighed in on his selections, narrowing the field to three, from which museum director John Walsh and chief curator Deborah Gribbons made the final choice.

One current framing challenge involves the museum’s most recent big-bucks acquisition, a large, $26-million landscape by 17th century French Classical artist Nicholas Poussin, “Landscape With Calm.” Brilliantly gilded French frames with ornate, flowery designs often surround Poussin’s paintings. But a little research revealed the artist’s taste for streamlined styles, said Karraker. In London, he found a simple frame of gilded poplar, which now stands in his studio.

“It’s very similar to a frame the artist painted in [the background of] one of his self-portraits a year before our landscape was painted,” Karraker said.

Still, curators may deem one of his picks all wrong. “They may walk in the galleries and say, ‘This isn’t appropriate,’ ” Karraker said. “Then we start again.”

If the brass approves, Karraker said, he will purchase the frame, now on loan, for $25,000, then head to his old-fashioned work bench. Using such time-tested tools as a hammer and saw, he will make it smaller.

“I’ll basically take it apart the same way the 17th century craftsmen would have put it together,” Karraker said.

“I’ll probably only have to disassemble and cut down two opposite corners while keeping two original corners intact. Then I’ll reproduce the original joinery, so hopefully when the frame is put back together and someone looks at the back, they won’t be able to tell that anyone touched it. That’s our goal, that even the back is as authentic as the front.”

The process will take two weeks, Karraker said. “We could just slice it in the miter and reassemble it in a day, but I mean, this is an important antique and it needs to be treated with respect, just as we treat the paintings.”

Working in the billion-dollar Brentwood complex makes his job easier, Karraker said.

“It’s much easier to get to the collection, since before, our department was in the ranch house [outside] the [Malibu] museum, so if you needed a painting brought from storage, it was always an ordeal, it had to be loaded in a truck and you had to be worried about weather conditions. This way, painting storage is down the hall, and if you need to go to the galleries, you just get on the elevator.”

Also, his commute is 10 miles shorter, and he finds architect Richard Meier’s 110-acre campus, with its ocean-to-mountain vistas “absolutely phenomenal.”

“We’re all still discovering new things everyday,” he said. “Every time you move or turn or look, you see some sort of nuance you didn’t really notice before.”