Getty Museum

Established in 1954, the Getty Museum is the largest art museum in California. The museum complex includes the famous Villa Getty and the Getty Center in Los Angeles. The Getty Center exhibits an extensive collection of works of Western art covering the period from the Middle Ages to the present. The collection of antique art is one of the largest in the world.

The idea of creating such a museum was inspired by the famous collector and oil tycoon J.K. Paul Getty, who went down in history as one of the most wealthy people of the twentieth century. He established a museum fund, the size of which was one billion dollars, so that after the death of the founder, the Getty Museum became one of the most authoritative buyers of ancient and European art at the largest world auctions.

In the first years of its existence, the museum exposition was placed on the Villa Getty, modeled after the world-famous ancient Greek Villa of Papyri in Herculaneum. The new building was built in Los Angeles in 1997 - the Getty Center building designed by Richard Meyer cost the creators $1.2 billion. The collections of the museum are so extensive that the exhibition occupies four large exhibition pavilions, which exhibit only part of the unique collection of the Getty.