A Trip to the Getty Villa

If you visit south California, you to have go to Los Angeles whether you like it or not. That’s the cold hard truth. Everything in southern California revolves around L.A.; everyone either lives in the city, or lives somewhere else in a desperate attempt to get out of the city. Sooner or later, then, you’ll wind up in the City of Angels. Why fight it? That’s why I went up to L.A. this weekend. I went with four other Nixon Library interns—Ben, Drew, Sam and Corrie.

The last time I visited L.A. was during my brief stint on Jeopardy. I didn’t get to see much of the city; I spent most of the time at the hotel in Universal City, at the taping location in USC’s Galen Center, or on the bus between the two. My only views of the city came through the window of that bus. I don’t remember much of it. I only recall that every day we passed by the headquarters for Vivid Entertainment. For those of you who don’t know, Vivid Entertainment produces “adult videos”—porn, in short. We always giggled as we drove by.

Our plan was to visit the Getty Museum and then…well, our plans stopped with the Getty Museum. We would wing it from there. Corrie was kind enough, and brave enough, to drive us into the city. Driving in Los Angeles takes a very special kind of skill. Specifically, it demands the ability to merge into a space the size of a walk-in closet while traveling fifty or sixty miles per hour. Only the suicidal drive in Los Angeles. Coincidentally, everyone in Los Angeles is suicidal. That’s why the freeway is always jam-packed with cars.

The Getty Museum stands on a cliff overlooking the big, blue wet thing some people call the Pacific. Before becoming a museum, the Getty Museum belonged to a Mr. Getty. He had a first name, I think, but I don’t have the energy to check Wikipedia. Mr. Getty became unbelievably wealthy thanks to his oil business. What he did with the oil, I don’t know, but he managed to make several gazillion dollars doing it. One day Mr. Getty realized that he was letting his money go to waste. You can only enjoy money by spending it, and Mr. Getty resolved to spend, spend, spend. And spend he did. He purchased approximately 90% of all ancient artifacts discovered in the modern era. An archaeologist would uncover a piece of broken shale that might have once served as a plate; seconds later, a Getty representative would swoop down and buy the piece for several thousand dollars.

Getty blew through a lot of money this way. Nonetheless, he put together a formidable collection of ancient crap. After sorting through his collection and tossing out all the useless stuff—for instance, the tiny chips that might either be flakes from an Etruscan axe or an archaeologist’s dandruff—Mr. Getty decided to display his goods in public. That is not a euphemism for flashing. Rather, it’s a euphemism for founding a museum. Mr. Getty created the world-famous Getty Museum, which draws at least five or six visitors every year. Usually more. Today it got five more visitors: the Nixon interns!

Recently, the museum underwent a few revisions. The management called in an architectural tag team from Boston to make some changes around the place. And by God, did they ever make those changes. The new exterior is meant to look like an archaeological dig. A layer of heavy gray marble covers the ground; here and there stand little pools of water. The next layer up is stone; don’t ask me what kind of stone, because I forgot it five seconds after the docent told us the name. Above that is a layer of concrete, molded to have the texture and patterns of wood. Then comes another layer of marble. It really did look like some half-excavated quarry. The only thing missing was a bunch of dumpy archaeologists with brushes and pith helmets. Incidentally, do people wear pith helmets any more?

The inside of the museum resembles a Roman villa. Sadly, there was no vomitorium, but the rest of the interior looked accurate. I say “looked” accurate because I have no idea what a real Roman villa ought to look like. There should be slaves somewhere, I suppose, and maybe a couple vestal virgins. I looked hard—no sign of any vestal virgins, or vestal women of any kind for that matter.

Out front is an enormous garden. Like shrubs? Then you’ll love the Getty villa’s garden, which boasts more shrubs than you can shake a stick at. It has every kind of shrub imaginable. Granted, that’s not much; not even the world’s most creative man could imagine more than two or three kinds of shrub. A few varieties of herb add spice to the shrubbery; no pun intended, of course. There was tarragon, thyme, and I think I even saw a sprig of basil. Perhaps I just imagined it.

Oh yes, there’s also a bit of artwork in the Getty Villa. Mr. Getty did not waste his millions, not at all. He managed to lay his hands on every piece of rock or marble ever touched by Roman hands. We spent an hour or two wandering around the second story of the villa, home to the largest collection of Roman artifacts outside of Rome. I made up that fact just now, but it may be the truth for all I know. It certainly seems possible.

My favorite piece was a small stone tablet that, according to the accompanying plaque, honored the memory of “Helena.” But, the plaque continues, we aren’t sure if Helena was a girl—or a girl’s dog. Rather a big difference there, I must say. I also enjoyed gawking at the miniature Roman jewelry. Each piece was roughly the size of a midget june bug on a diet, yet, within that space, the Roman artist crammed a gorgeously detailed etching. You had to look hard to see it, though. I nearly blew out my corneas straining to see a teeny-tiny cameo carving of a Roman archer.

But I’ve rambled enough! My God, this took more than a week to write. At this rate, I’ll finish writing about my Orange County escapades sometime next decade.