Priceless Acquisitions Thrill the L.A. Art World

High atop its perch in Brentwood, the Getty Center isn’t only setting a new standard as an arts, culture and research complex, it’s also putting a new spin on the proverbial opening night gala. For starters, the word “gala” will not apply.

Gala, say the Getty Center staff members overseeing the opening festivities, implies fund-raising, and the Getty is famously well-endowed. Black-tie dinner is the preferred description inside the offices of the expansive, travertine-clad “campus.”

Gwen Walden, assistant to Getty President and Chief Executive Officer Harold M. Williams, and Catherine Klose, manager of food and event services, sit at a long conference table to describe not so much what the opening will be like, but what it won’t be like.

Instead of one pull-out-all-the-stops affair, there will be four consecutive evenings of dinners, each for 500 people, Dec. 8-11. None of the dinners, Walden and Klose insist, will be more exclusive or more heavily weighted with VIPs than the next. “They’re all exactly the same,” said Walden.

Invitations were mailed in mid-October. In a town with a can-you-top-that? mentality, the Getty is throwing the social elite for a loop. There is no benefiting charity, no event chairman, no dinner committee, no honorary dinner committee, no sponsor, no silent auction, no ticket price, no suggested donation and, bottom line, no way to get in unless you belong there via a connection to the Getty.

“I don’t know who was invited, but it’s not me,” said Joni Smith, president of the Blue Ribbon of the Music Center and president of the Council of the Library Foundation of the Los Angeles Public Library.

Jennifer Diener, who is chairing the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra Ball on Tuesday and who was a chairwoman of the recent opening of the L.A. Opera season, said that she and her husband, Royce, who sits on several corporate and philanthropic boards, weren’t included either.

“I talked to [Getty Museum Director] John Walsh and told him, ‘We’re planning on being in Hawaii. Should we plan not to be?’ ” said Jennifer Diener. “He said, ‘Don’t.’ His response was that the opening is going to deal with people in the art world rather than everybody who’s social at all.”

Yet many members of the local art world are feeling left out of the loop too. “I haven’t seen an invitation yet,” said Marcia Hobbs, chairwoman of Christie’s Los Angeles office. One prominent art collector, who is a board member of the Museum of Contemporary Art, didn’t receive an invitation and didn’t know of anyone else who did.

Lenore and Bernard Greenberg did receive the nod--she is a MOCA board member and a past president of MOCA’s board of trustees--although she says she isn’t sure if the couple’s invitation was extended because of her art affiliation or because of her husband’s position as chairman of the Los Angeles Opera board. “I had no idea whether we would be included,” she said. “But we’re delighted.”

Also unlike other major L.A. openings, don’t count on spotting the cast of “Friends,” the stars of “Boogie Nights” or any other faces guaranteed to fetch “Entertainment Tonight” cameras, because the Getty isn’t interested in bringing in stars unless, like everyone else who received an invitation, “they have some relationship to the Getty and why we’re here and what we do,” said Walden.

Asked if any Hollywood executives were invited, only one sprang to Walden’s and Klose’s minds: Disney chief Michael Eisner. The Disney connection is through Getty trustee John F. Cook, executive vice president of corporate affairs at Disney.

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The core guest list was compiled from names culled from each of the Getty Center’s six program directors, including the heads of the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Education Institute for the Arts, Conservation Institute and grant program. Architect Richard Meier provided his own guest list. “We’re going,” said Barbara Davis of herself and husband Marvin, the financier and oil magnate. “We’re very close to Richard Meier. I’m looking forward to seeing it that night. I’m thrilled for the community and I’m thrilled for Richard.”

Getty president Williams was the final arbiter. “He made the guest list,” said Walden. Invitations were sent to those whom Walden called “advisors, consultants and friends of the center . . . people who have contact with the Getty leadership.”

These include Sotheby’s President and Chief Executive Diana Brooks; Christie’s America Chairman Christopher Burge; Getty-commissioned artists Ed Ruscha, Alexis Smith and Robert Irwin; prominent local artists, including Robert Graham and David Hockney; and museum directors, including those of the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the Louvre in Paris.

“It’s an international list,” said Walden. “We’re an international organization and have a lot of friends around the world we want to come.”

The heads of Los Angeles’ County Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art, as well as Gordon Davidson, artistic director / producer of the Center Theatre Group, with whom the Getty has been involved in co-productions, were also summoned. So were UCLA Chancellor AlbertCarnesale and University of Southern California President Steven B. Sample. Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan and Gov. Pete Wilson are invited to dine. All other elected officials are invited to the center’s opening ceremony on Dec. 13.

As for the delicate task of deciding who would attend which night, that was Williams’ job. There will be no clustering of like people--museum directors on one night, artists on another, friends of Meier on another. “It’s a fairly personal process,” explained Walden. “Mr. Williams knows everyone, and he’s extremely well-liked. And he has a good sense of taste and style.”

All members of the Getty board of trustees are welcome to attend all four evenings, including J. Paul Getty’s son Gordon Getty; Brown University President Vartan Gregorian; Agnes Gund, New York arts patron and president of the board of trustees of the Museum of Modern Art; and Robert Erburu, chairman of the Getty board of trustees.

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Originally, the plan was to hold three larger dinner parties, but El Nin~o fears changed all that. “We took those predictions very seriously and decided to make a rain plan,” Walden explained. By dividing the guests into four small groups of 500, they could be contained indoors. There are “good weather routes” to get from place to place in the complex and “bad weather routes.”

“Getty Center is filled with magnificent outdoor spaces--it would have been a mix of indoor and outdoor” had rainstorms not loomed, said Walden.

Although the Getty won’t reveal the parties’ budget, money would seemingly be no object. However, the dinners will by no means be overly lavish. They will be “tasteful and appropriate to the aesthetic sensibility of the Getty,” as Walden put it, referring to the minimalist, clean lines of the architecture.

“There will be no elaborate brocade tablecloths,” said Walden. Instead, tablecloths, along with stacking chair slipcovers, will be a creamy khaki / linen blend in keeping with the structure’s travertine facade. Because the complex is situated in a brush-fire area, there will be no candles on the tables. A florist hasn’t been chosen, but flowers will probably be simple and beige-y. Everyone will receive a favor, but no one is saying what it is, only what it isn’t: perfume.

From 6 to 8 p.m., guests will be invited to explore. One big bar will be set up in the entrance hall of the museum, where hors d’oeuvres will be passed. The exhibition space at the Research Institute for the Arts and Humanities will also be available for cocktails and mingling, and behind-the-scenes tours will be conducted. At 7:45, Williams and possibly others will make their remarks inside the museum. Then guests will be ushered to dinner in the museum’s Cafe Terrace, where a gigantic clear vinyl tent will be erected (and outfitted with heaters) to provide sight lines to one of the breathtaking vistas toward the Pacific Ocean.

Patina is catering the dinners, which will consist of salad and a main course. Menus will vary each night because trustees and some Getty senior staff members will be attending all four evenings. Buffet-style desserts will be served back in the museum entrance and research institute lobby.

The four dinners will precede the opening ceremony and will follow private celebratory events for staff, construction workers, neighbors and docents. In all, including the black-tie parties, there will be 18 pre-opening events.

* PRESERVATION AGREEMENT: The Getty Trust enters partnership with World Bank. F1