Getty the Most at Holidays

There is no better time to visit the Getty Center--that looming cultural citadel on the hill above the San Diego Freeway--than during the holiday season. The museum opens at 10 a.m., an hour earlier than usual, and the crowds have thinned to a manageable throng.

For San Fernando Valley residents looking to occupy their visiting relatives or to fill their vacation time, the Getty is a great escape, not to mention a cheap thrill. Admission is free and parking is $5.

At the moment, the main exhibitions play up the established strengths and biases of the Getty, namely vintage, pre-20th century art and photography as fine art.

The mild-mannered blockbuster “Raphael and His Circle: Drawings from the Windsor Castle” presents works by the Renaissance master (1483-1520), as well as such noted contemporaries as Caravaggio. The traveling show began in London and is making its only West Coast stop at the Getty before moving to the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.

The show requires close-up scrutiny for full effect. The fine detail and composition of his drawings and his lasting influence represent the show’s real message.

While much of it consists of smaller, humble works, a more dazzling centerpiece is a huge photographic reproduction of the fresco known as the “Stanza della Segnatura,” the original of which is in the Pope’s Library in the Vatican. Created at the same time Michelangelo was grappling with the Sistine Chapel, Raphael’s complex reading of the Eucharist carefully balances figures and gestures. The Getty’s long-standing focus on photography as a fine art deserving wider recognition verges on crusader zeal. The current show, “Voyages and Visions: Early Photographs from the Wilson Family Collection,” offers intriguing background material from photography’s beginnings.

The invention of photography is traced to 1839, give or take a few experimental processes. Passionate early practitioners of the craft (and art) tended to view the medium as a revolutionary means of documenting the known, visible world and took their wares to exotic locales. Englishman Roger Fenton traveled in his “artist’s van” to the Crimean War. In part, he was on a mission to re-create the soldiers’ conditions on the front. The show includes pieces by seminal photographer William Henry Fox Talbot and American photographer John Beasly Greene.

One of the artists, French photographer Desire Charnay, figures prominently in another photography show in the Getty Research Institute gallery. “Mexico: From Empire to Revolution” is an illuminating, unofficial companion to the Wilson Collection. Charnay was captivated by the volatile mix of old and new in Mexico.

Charnay dutifully chronicled the changing landscape he found in Mexico, from cathedrals built over Aztec temples and palaces to precious remnants of the pre-Spanish world. In the 19th century, European photographers such as Charnay and Teobart Maler had an obvious fascination with archeological ruins to be discovered in the jungle underbrush of the Yucatan, far from their Old World.

Both shows depict photography as an appropriate modern tool in the 19th century for documenting a world intrigued by its past and its lesser-known corners.

BE THERE

“Raphael and His Circle: Drawings from the Windsor Castle,” through Jan. 7; “Voyages and Visions: Early Photographs from the Wilson Family Collection,” through Feb. 18; and “Mexico: From Empire to Revolution,” through Jan. 21 at the Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive, Los Angeles. Hours: Tuesday-Wednesday 10 a.m.-7 p.m., Thursday-Friday 10 a.m.-9 p.m., Saturday-Sunday 10 a.m.-6 p.m. (closed Mondays and major holidays). Call (310) 440-7300.