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| Installation view of gallery E204, "Dutch Landscapes and Interiors" |
The Getty Museum has reinstalled five painting galleries in its East Pavilion and opened a West Pavilion room celebrating the first Los Angeles showing of Joshua Reynolds'
Portrait of Mai. The Reynolds portrait, of the first known Polynesian visitor to England, was acquired jointly with the National Portrait Gallery, London, in 2023.
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| Gallery W102, "Joshua Reynolds and 18th-Century Portraiture" |
This is the year of thematic installations of L.A. museum collections. The Getty's upper-level East Pavilion galleries are now installed thematically in what I'd imagine is a preview for the whole museum after its pending year-long closure (Mar. 15, 2027 through spring 2028). "Thematic" means different things to different curators. Anyone burnt out on Geffen gray and Lucas hypercube white will find walls of plum, teal, and Prussian blue. Each room has a theme that is declared and explained in plain English and Spanish. The installation is a bit denser than it was, with a few paintings stacked above eye level.
The new East Pavilion does not try too hard to mix up chronology and geography. It's all European painting and sculpture of the 1600s or thereabouts. In fact, the East Pavilion's one time-warp provocation—
Roy Lichtenstein's brushstroke sculpture—has been taken off display. Most key 17th-century objects have landed roughly where they were before. There's still a big room of pan-European artists in Rome, and a space devoted to Rembrandt and his students. The main difference is that these galleries now have names ("The Allure of Italy" and "Rembrandt and the Dutch Republic") and posted explanations.
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| Gallery E201, "The Allure of Italy" |
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| Gallery E203, "Rubens and the Southern Netherlands" |
Rubens and his circle now get their own room. This is anchored by Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder's The Return from War and includes paintings by Brueghel, van Dyck, and Sweerts.
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| "Poussin and the Changing Landscape" |
There are themes within themes. One is "Poussin and the Changing Landscape," an unbilled nano-exhibition consisting of the Getty's Poussin Landscape with a Calm paired with its pendant, The Storm, on loan from Rouen. As the gallery text has it, "Poussin's landscapes often reference philosophical ideas about fate, life, and time."
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| Jan Davidsz. de Heem, Banquet Still Life, 1649. Private collection |
Another loan is the Jan de Heem pronk Still Life that sold to an unknown party for £3.67 million at Christie's London in July 2025. It's shown in the same room as the Getty's recently purchased de Heem flower piece.
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| Workshop of Peter Paul Rubens, Four Studies of a Male Head, about 1617–20 |
"Rubens and Black Models" pairs a painting that's long been in the storeroom with an oil sketch on paper that was part of an expensive 2017 group purchase. The Four Studies, an oil on panel, was purchased for a record sum by J. Paul Getty himself in an attempt to break his Rubens curse: Every painting that Getty had bought as a Rubens turned out to be a copy. Unfortunately scholars have concluded that the Getty Four Studies is not by Rubens' hand.
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| At right is the newly acquired Philippe de Champaigne Saint Augustine in His Study Trampling the Heretics |
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| The Getty's star (and autograph) Rubens, The Entombment, is not in the Rubens gallery but in the adjacent "New Sensibilities and Subjects" |
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| Gallery W102: Joshua Reynolds, Portrait of Mai, about 1776. Purchased jointly by the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Board of Trustees of the National Portrait Gallery, London |
Mai is now in the West Pavilion, behind glazing and surrounded by painted and sculpted portraits of roughly the same period. Conventional wisdom holds that Reynolds is the dull rival to Gainsborough; and neither Briton is to be taken so seriously as Goya, whose work is political with a satirical edge. This display of
Mai won't upend that view. Reynolds' well-mannered paint handling can't compete with Gainsborough and Goya's pyrotechnics.
But pictures work on many levels. The Portrait of Mai compels, largely for Mai's extraordinary life story. Reynolds wouldn't have intended Mai to be a political picture "about" colonialism, but that's what it's become, for our time at least. Reynolds didn't intend self-satire either, but what else can you call an Enlightenment painter who sees the global Other through the lens of the Apollo Belvedere?
If you don't know anything about Mai, Reynolds, or the portrait, the Getty's bilingual labels will answer your obvious questions without taking much time from your face-to-face encounter with art. There's also trilingual (inc. Tahitian) audio accessible with a QR code.
Why can't LACMA/Geffen or the Lucas do likewise?
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| Thomas Gainsborough, Portrait of Anne, Countess of Chesterfield, 1777–78 |
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| Jean-Antoine Houdon, Bust of Marie Sébastien Fontaine de Biré, 1785 |
Comments
"Sir Joshua Reynolds was, on very many accounts, one of the most memorable men of his time. He was the first Englishman who added the praise of the elegant arts to the other glories of his country. In taste, in grace, in facility, in happy invention, and in the richness and harmony of colouring, he was equal to the great masters of the renowned ages. In portrait he went beyond them; for he communicated to that description of the art… a variety, a fancy, and a dignity derived from the higher branches… His portraits remind the spectator of the invention of history, and the amenity of landscape. In painting portraits he appeared not to be raised upon that platform, but to descend to it from a higher sphere… To be such a painter, he was a profound and penetrating philosopher.”
> than it was, with a few paintings
> stacked above eye level.
Thank bejesus for the Getty. It wasn't that long ago when the region was limited to mainly Pereira-era LACMA on Wilshire and the Huntington near Pasadena.
The Getty Villa and Simon in the 1970s caused some stir. Then MOCA in the 1980s, the Hammer and Getty Center in the 1990s, the Broad in the 2010s. As for the Marciano or Dataland, they're more like a Hauser & Wirth.
LACMA in the early 1980s did some redevelopment that moved it from D grade to a barely passing grade. Then the Anderson building and Japanese Pavilion were added in the second half of the 1980s.
As for the number of objects in an installation, LACMA and its Geffen did just the opposite of the Getty. Gray concrete walls and way too many windows are no longer the biggest "oops." It's now a case of artworks not being arranged more professionally and way too much bare space between each of them.
It's possible if the installation were handled better, the opening of the Geffen would have received better word-of-mouth, as what the Lucas has generated---although it does cater to a different audience. However, the Lucas's visitor services of cafe/restaurant, theaters and gardens/library put LACMA in the shade.
...Upon arriving, my friend and I were fortunate to meet Pia, a tour guide from the Getty. We had a lovely conversation with her, during which she shared plenty of fascinating details about both the Lucas Museum and the Getty.
The Lucas Museum stands out... The building itself is an architectural masterpiece, and the Skywalker restaurant was absolutely worth the visit. I can't stop thinking about how wonderful this place is, and I can't wait to return. George Lucas has truly created a narrative art museum for everyone to enjoy.