Page 49 - Reside Magazine Premier Central Florida
P. 49
Reside — Central Florida Edition
Art institutions around “ ysteriously and rather giddily splendid, hidden in a grove
the world get back to M of sycamores just above the Pacific Coast Highway in
Malibu…” So opens cultural critic Joan Didion’s evocative
nature with gardens that essay on the Getty Villa—a place that doesn’t ask its
hold their own against nearly half a million visitors a year to choose between art
and nature, but to appreciate both in equal measure.
the works of art inside, Opened in 1974, the museum was oil tycoon and business magnate J Paul
discovers Lauren Gallow Getty’s tribute to classical antiquity, and just as the building itself was carefully
crafted to replicate a Roman country house, the landscaping was also inspired
by Mediterranean gardens of the time. Here, among carefully arranged cypress
and pomegranate trees, neat boxwood hedges, and a fragrant herb garden, the
visitor is transported to another time and place in a setting that evokes ancient
Greek, Roman, and Etruscan life just steps from the Californian coast.
More and more culture seekers today are seeking out places like the
gardens at the Getty Villa on their travels; somewhere they can be wholly
immersed in an environment of inspiration and creative vision. While these
celebrated art gardens at cultural institutions around the globe relate in
many different ways to the artworks on show inside, they share a singular
ability to engage the senses and offer a new
perspective on one’s place in the world.
For Brian Houck, head of ground and
gardens at the Getty, who oversees public
garden space for both the villa and the sprawling
Getty Center in the Santa Monica Mountains
of west Los Angeles, this function makes art
gardens some of the most special places in the
world. “What we offer with our public gardens
is something complete and something different,
and that allows people to be inspired,” he says.
Inspiration comes in different flora forms, with
some gardens designed to complement the more
traditional examples of art and architecture on
view, and some designed to be art themselves.
At the Getty Center, which opened in
1995, Houck oversees the Central Garden,
which was created by the late Californian artist
Robert Irwin in parallel with Richard
Meier’s architectural design of the site. The
134,000 sq ft garden sits at the heart of the
complex in what was originally a small canyon,
with Irwin designing a zigzagging walkway that
draws visitors down through a mosaic of
expertly curated flowers, trees and perennials,
ending at a waterfall and reflecting pool that
contains a maze of clipped azaleas.
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