Why Doesn’t Malibu Getty Honor Its Roots?

It was with more than a little interest that I read Suzanne Muchnic’s article, “A Getty Chronicle: The Malibu Years,” (Calendar, July 6), which included a history of how the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu was designed and built. Although I am mentioned in passing, the article scarcely indicates what I really did, since no one, other than J. Paul Getty himself, had more to do with what the villa in Malibu looks like than I did. I was responsible for every historic detail of the building. I told the architects what to do.

Two weeks ago, I visited the original Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum, Italy--on which the Getty is patterned--as part of an international conference on the problems concerning the excavation of the villa. The villa was buried in AD 79 under lava and mud (along with Pompeii) and first excavated in 1750-64 during underground mining.

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Most significantly, these new excavations have shown that the current proposal to change the entrance to the Malibu Getty to enter through the west porch into the atrium is not more historically accurate, as is indicated in Muchnic’s article. The equivalent porch in the original villa is on the edge of a cliff with two stories beneath the atrium floor. It would have been impossible to enter on the cliff side. The real entrance to the villa was on the opposite side, equivalent to the museum’s east garden. A reading of the manual of the Roman architect Vitruvius could have told the museum that the suggested change was wrong.

The description of the proposed new entrance sounds like a bit of Rube Goldberg deconstructivism. Besides, it would still require approaching from a parking lot and would scarcely have the panache of the present approach to the galleries from the south end of the great peristyle, a view that not surprisingly graced the cover of the July 6 Calendar.

From its January 1974 opening, Times’ writers have been violently hostile to the building. The most vicious of the criticisms began immediately in The Times and this unfortunately was picked up around the world. For example, then-Times architectural critic John Pastier wrote: “But the worst failing of the museum is as a piece of architecture and archeology. It is a faithful replica of nothing that ever existed, re-created by inappropriate technologies and frequently lacking in basic architectural design judgment. . . . In short, the Getty Museum is a multimillion-dollar piece of unintended folk art housing a highly sophisticated art collection.” This was unfair and, I believe, simply wrongheaded.

The only positive words about the Malibu villa appeared in an article by Van Shears in the old (and lamented) Home magazine the weekend before the museum’s opening and in a column by Jack Smith that same year.

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Only subsequently did it become appreciated by European scholars, but it is still largely scorned in this country. Fortunately, the public loves it.

The criticism that the building overshadowed the collection (which was, originally, rather undistinguished) is perhaps true, but the building brought people there who would never have come to see the art, and those people who were drawn by the building tarried to see the art. Also, it was sort of a goad to make the collection live up to and ever surpass its setting.

The money the Getty is about to waste on this new entrance could be used well to carry on the excavation in Herculaneum. The Malibu Getty has indicated it will respect the historical accuracy of the Herculaneum source. Why don’t they?