A Magic Kingdom for Art Lovers

Among all the pomp and precedents surrounding the opening of the new Getty Museum, David Thatcher of Sylmar figures he almost got his name foot-noted in the history books.

He was the first person nearly arrested on museum grounds.

Thatcher arrived by bus just after 6 a.m. Tuesday--nearly five hours before the official public opening and, with no security in sight, slipped aboard one of the shiny new trams that whisked him up to the museum.

Beamed Thatcher, a traffic school teacher: “Nobody said I couldn’t.”

Once on top, he stood before the Modernist white museum structure with its hand-cut Italian marble walls and marveled at the views from the crest of a jagged Brentwood hilltop--until, finally, somebody asked him to leave.

“I thought I was going to be able to slip inside the museum and have the entire place to myself,” he said. “But then people started looking at me, asking who I was. I didn’t look like Sam Donaldson, so they put me in a car and sent me back down. Hey, at least I didn’t end up in handcuffs.”

Thatcher was among thousands of foot soldiers, bus riders and cab-takers who came to check out the Getty on its first public day--this opening for the ordinary museum-goers that officials hope will flock to their new attraction in record numbers.

Of 10,000 people expected to visit the museum Tuesday, about 25% would come by bus, bike, cab or even on foot. By 9 a.m., more than 150 eager, admitted “museum groupies” who arrived by public transport were lined up, huddling and stamping their feet in a drafty tunnel under the San Diego Freeway.

Many had arrived before sunrise. Like Thatcher, all were waiting for their chance to make a bit of local art history and be among the first Angelenos to tour the billion-dollar palace.

Limited parking kept reservations at a minimum. But museum officials are allowing anyone who doesn’t need a parking space to just show up.

Few of them left disappointed Tuesday. Like the Torrance woman who stepped off the tram and gaped up at the museum. “Wow!” she said. “This is better than Disneyland!”

For years, many of these people had driven by on the freeway gawking skyward to see this romantic place on the hill slowly go up, piece by piece. On Tuesday, as they prepared to finally look inside, they told about their struggles to simply be here for this celebrated day of art appreciation.

There was Jane Montero, the official first person in line, who had spent months writing letters to the Getty, trying to get invited to one of the galas held over the weekend for special guests and dignitaries.

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Finally, she gave up and had her husband drop her off in front of the museum early in the morning.

There were Richard and Delores Tuckfield, who got up at 4 a.m. for the drive from Ventura. They parked three blocks away, on a dead-end street, and kept their fingers crossed that their car wouldn’t get towed.

“I came to see where all my grandfather’s money went,” said Richard Tuckfield. “J. Paul Getty made his money in the oil business. And a lot of our grandfathers worked in oil and helped put Getty on the map.”

And there was Jim Boehnlein, a 55-year-old retired schoolteacher from El Segundo who braved one of the first bus rides of his life.

“I’m not much of a bus rider,” Boehnlein said. “In fact, I didn’t really know how to do it.” But he made a few trial runs and got himself used to the route, so he could live out a years-long dream to see the Getty on opening day.

By the hundreds, they continued to come: 30-year-old Ivan Richards walked the three miles from his parents’ home in Brentwood. Gray-haired Lou Sirota pedaled his bike from Baldwin Hills.

On Tuesday, it seemed, every third car outside the Getty was a taxi, each whisking around the entrance-way circle to unload its occupants--people such as Monica Hidalgo, her mother and brother. The trio had driven to Brentwood from their San Marino home Tuesday and parked at an expensive hotel.

Explained Monica: “You get to have breakfast in a nice hotel and then walk outside and hail a cab, just like you stayed there the whole night.”

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She glanced over at a bus that had stopped to disgorge another 50 eager museum-goers. “Taking the bus is so inhuman,” she said. “This way, you don’t have to get on any of those rotten buses and sit around like a ding-dong.”

By 9 a.m. the museum had sent a coffee cart down to serve the people waiting in line. Then the public-transport crowd found even more of a red-carpet treatment:

John Walsh, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum, showed up as people squealed as though they had spotted a celebrity backstage at some Hollywood movie premiere.

Walsh signed autographs and posed for pictures and admitted that he was amazed by the turnout of uninvited guests.

“We love this,” he said, surveying the crowd. “I think this is wonderful. Unlike our old Malibu site, you don’t need a car to get here.”

Then, at 10 a.m., breaking his own museum rules, Walsh apologized about the chilly wait under the freeway tunnel and escorted about 200 people up a flight of stairs to the tram cars. That way, he said, they could take the 3-minute ride up and wait the last hour in the lush gardens outside the facility.

With Walsh in tow, they rode up on the tram, this first group of public transporters, gasping at the panoramic views that showed the snowcapped San Gabriels, the downtown skyline and an ocean vista clear from Malibu to San Jacinto.

“So, where you gonna go first?” a woman asked Thatcher.

“Me? I’m gonna go to the bathroom first, after all the coffee I’ve drunk.”

As they got off the tram, a horde of press photographers snapped their pictures. “We’re not celebrities,” someone said. “We took the bus. We weren’t even invited.”

Nearby, Curtis D. Williams, director of facilities for the high-tech museum, stood by, nervously awaiting an opening he said had given his stomach more than a few butterflies.

Williams said he prayed there wouldn’t be a repeat of Sunday’s events, when one of the two trams malfunctioned and officials had to use buses to get people to the top of the art world’s new Mt. Olympus.

To solve a component glitch, officials contacted the author of the tram’s computer program, who quickly solved the problem from Connecticut, he said.

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At precisely 11 a.m., the doors opened and people rushed inside. They scurried around, gushing at the way the light played off the hand-cut marble walls, the way the stone steps crossed the reflecting pool, at the fantastic views.

And, yes, they even marveled at the contents within.

Said one viewer: “At most museums, the collection is what people come to see. Here, the museum itself is the thing.”

Montero, the art teacher who had staked out the first place in line for uninvited guests, brought along an artist’s sketchbook that instead turned into an autograph journal.

In the lobby, jostling past women in mink wraps and bearded men wearing Windbreakers, she approached Getty President and Chief Executive Officer Harold M. Williams and even got a few of the Getty gardeners to sign her book.

Then she approached Walsh, who greeted her with a “Hey, there’s the woman who was first in line!”

In her book, he wrote: “With best wishes for Jane, who stood out in the cold. May the museum make her warm.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Visiting the New Getty Center

Location: The Getty Center is located 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.; Thursdays 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 severely restricted. MTA bus No. 561 and the Santa Monica Blue Bus No. 14 stop 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.

* FANTASIST’S DREAM

The Getty’s garden: a wild romp of color and form. F1

* MONUMENT MAKING

KCET-TV offers a candid history of the Getty Center’s creation. F1