Another Getty Antiquities Scandal: Villa's Dumbed-Down Installation

Roman Sarcophagus representing a Dionysiac village festival, 290-300 A.D.
J. Paul Getty Museum, Villa Collection, Malibu

As I previously mentioned here, the Getty Museum's recent announcement that it had acquired a 3rd century A.D. Roman sarcophagus (above) reminded me of the shock I felt last February in perusing the two-year old reinstallation of the renovated Getty Villa in Malibu. According to the museum's recent press release:

The sarcophagus will form the centerpiece of an installation focusing on wine and wine-making in antiquity, featuring objects in the collection that were used for storing and drinking wine.

Thus, alcoholic beverages will join such hot-button topics as "Men in Antiquity," "Animals in Antiquity" and that old favorite, "Gods and Goddesses," as the superficial themes demeaning the Getty's serious holdings. Almost the entire collection is arrayed in this manner.

Of all the bad-news legacies left to the Getty by its former antiquities curator, Marion True, the simplistic, mindless reinstallation of the museum's important antiquities collection strikes me as the most inexcusable.

Judge for yourself. Here's one of the groupings from the "Gods and Goddesses" gallery, jumbling together everything from a Greek oil jar with Paris and Helen, 420-400 B.C., on the left, to a miniature Roman head of Venus, 100 A.D., on the lower right. In the center, the two large rectangular objects are a pair of altars with Aphrodite and Adonis, Greek, made in Taras, South Italy, 400-375 B.C. It doesn't matter whether or how they relate to each other; only that they fit the overriding theme and can be attractively arranged in a display case:



And here's the entire text of the wall label introducing the "Gods and Goddesses" mishmash. You decide whether this satisfies your desire for intellectual and aesthetic insight:

Ancient life revolved around religion and the worship of gods and goddesses, who inspired some of the greatest works of art. The Greeks and Romans believed that the gods lived on Mount Olympus and that they looked and behaved like humans. Although distinguished by their immortality and great powers, the Olympian deities developed friendships, fell in love, committed adultery, felt anger and jealousy and suffered losses. Many holy days were set aside for religious festivals and activities. Honors were paid and gifts were given to the gods to thank them for blessings received and to ensure future good fortune.

Except for the adultery part, it all seems keyed to 4th graders. And so it goes throughout the Getty Villa, except for one well conceived orientation room that attempts to give visitors some of the historical and art-historical background so lacking among the objects themselves.

Janet Grossman, associate curator of antiquities, told me during my visit that Marion True was the "guiding force" behind the move from a chronological installation to a thematic one, because it was deemed "very popular with the public" when a simllar approach was tried for the 1994 show of the Fleischman Collection, before those objects (some of which have now been relinquished to Italy) were acquired by the museum.

Grossman added:

Basically, if you're a curator and you have your ear tuned to your visitors, you know that most of them do not have a background in ancient Greece or Rome. Could they really care less if something is from the Archaic Period or the Iron Age or the Geometric Age?

Maybe. Maybe not. But this "give 'em what they want" philosophy, which refrains from burdening visitors with too much scholarly nuance, is an abdication of museums' proper role---to educate and elevate, not to pander. Museums need to decide whether they are primarily cultural centers or tourist attractions. And the Getty needs to revisit yet another unwise decision of its former antiquities curator.