Getty Exhibitions Hit Pause
The Getty Center's last large loan show, "Gustave Caillebotte: Painting Men," closed May 25, 2025. The Exhibition Pavilion has been empty ever since, and the Getty website does not list any show opening there in the coming months.
At the Getty Villa, the loan exhibition "The Kingdom of Pylos: Warrior-Princes of Ancient Greece" closed Jan. 12, 2026. No comparable show is on the calendar. Next up is "Egyptian Book of the Dead" (Mar. 4–Nov. 20, 2026), a reprise of a 2023 exhibition of inscribed mummy wrappings and other small objects from the permanent collection.
It's unusual for any museum to repeat a show outright, and the dearth of upcoming loan shows is unusual for the Getty. The institution has been averaging about four medium-to-largish loan exhibitions a year, split between the Center and the Villa. For instance, 2024 had the PST show "Lumen: The Art and Science of Light" and "Camille Claudel" at the Getty Center; "Picture Worlds: Greek, Maya, and Moche Pottery," and "Ancient Thrace and the Classical World" at the Villa.
The only major loan exhibition on the Getty's public calendar for 2026 is "Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955–1985," organized by the National Gallery of Art. It will be in the Getty Center's photography galleries, not in the Exhibition Pavilion. The usual small rotations of photography, drawings, manuscripts, and archives from the Getty collection continue.
Why is the 2026 schedule thin? One guess is the Jan. 2025 wildfires. Both Getty museums were closed for indefinite periods in early 2025, complicating exhibition scheduling. In April 2025, the Getty Trust sold $500 million in bonds to finance protective measures against future fires and earthquakes. It was reported that the proceeds were to be used for firefighting equipment, water storage, irrigation, and communications equipment. The bond valuation exceeds a year of the entire Getty Trust's operating budget ($433 million in 2025). That would justify belt-tightening, and exhibitions may be impacted disproportionately.
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As with LACMA and its Resnick Pavilion, how about hauling out items in storage? Okay, both LACMA and the Getty may not have a whole lot squirreled away they feel is worthy of being exhibited. If so, that makes them different from those museums that have more stuff than they know what to do with.
With LACMA being so much into contemporary art, I thought, well, at least the Getty's special exhibitions make up for that. But I guess not.
In both cases, if the budget is forcing cutbacks, vacant spaces need to remain vacant? Or do they have to be slotted in with commercial-gallery-type contemporary art?
If the Getty's only major show is "Photography and the Black Arts," museums in Paris, London or NYC, etc, will be green with envy.
So most of that is already either on display or is too much in the research-only category, that hauling a few works out of storage is seen as worse than leaving exhibit spaces vacant?
In LACMA's case, they'd rather have temporary displays of things like contemporary art that riffs on the Met Opera's chandeliers instead of their own collection.
Looking at the schedule, there are some talks, lectures, and a conference, but nothing of remarkable interest or profundity.
The post suggests that the Getty is being frugal with its money But long before the bond sale, I started to notice a decline in the intellectual/curatorial product.
The last Getty catalogue I purchased was Lumen, the catalogue that accompanied the Getty's contribution to the most recent Pacific Standard Time event. I would buy it again.
I would NOT buy the catalogue for the more recent Caillebotte exhibition. It was thin on ideas and good writing. Shame Caillebotte deserved better than more cliches about the male gaze.
--- J. Garcin
It will be nice if the Geffen Galleries make LACMA less into what Christopher Knight a few years ago said about the museum, but the modus operandi may now be built into it due to its budget and Michael Govan.
WHAT'S HAPPENING WITH OUR GALLERY CLOSURES?
WHY IS IT NECESSARY?
WHEN WILL IT END?
IS ART USUALLY APPEARING IN THE CLOSED GALLERIES STILL VIEWABLE ELSEWHERE IN THE MUSEUM.
OH, AND THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE WHILE WE IMPROVE OUR VISITORS' EXPERIENCE.
https://www.getty.edu/exhibitions/collection-highlights-baroque/
Accession no. 70.PB.34
"Musical Group on a Balcony," of 1622
by Gerrit van Honthorst (Dutch, 1590 - 1656).
It was my favorite von Honthorst in America. But then I saw Minneapolis's von Honthorst when it showed at the Uffizi, and Getty's canvas was eclipsed.
Still, very sadly, per Getty's site, my von Honthorst is "Not currently on view."