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It houses some of the richest treasures of the art world, such as Vincent van Gogh’s Irises, a popular Rembrandt and a priceless collection of paintings, portraits and other works spanning more than seven centuries.
To protect them, the Getty Center in Los Angeles was built in 1997 as “a marvel of anti-fire engineering”, complete with fire-resistant stone and concrete, protected steel, and set in well-irrigated landscaping.
Now, with an evacuation order in place for the Brentwood area of the city in which the museum is housed, and as flames from the deadly Palisades wildfire rage nearby, the Getty’s claim of being the safest place for art during a fire could soon be put to the test.
Outwardly, at least, there is little concern. “Our galleries are safe and protected,” Katherine Fleming, president and chief executive of the J Paul Getty Trust asserted in a statement on Saturday.
But after a close call last week at the Getty Center’s sister facility, the Getty Villa museum in Malibu about 10 miles away, staff who have remained on site admit they are “monitoring the situation closely”.
There are, Fleming said, no plans to evacuate artwork or the remaining personnel because Getty officials consider them “already in the safest place possible”.
A 2019 article published on the museum’s website details the extensive planning that went into the construction of the museum complex high in the hills above Brentwood, with “materials, design, construction, operations, and controls purpose-built for safety” inside and out.
The buildings sit on travertine plazas and are surrounded by extensive open space to act as a buffer from any fire. Landscaping includes drought-resistant plants and oak trees, with branches trimmed often to prevent them from becoming fuel, while a comprehensive ground irrigation network is designed to stop flames taking hold.
“Emergency planning and safety are things we do all year round. That’s part of our Getty culture, to think about fire safety,” said Mike Rogers, Getty’s director of facilities, said in the article.
Inside the campus, walls are built of reinforced concrete or fire-protected steel, while the buildings have stone aggregate roofs. Sprinklers, with a million-gallon storage reservoir, are everywhere, but would only be used as a last resort given the fragility of many of the museum’s pieces of art.
Instead, the buildings rely more on containment and are designed with fire separations – doors that can isolate individual parts of the site.
“If a fire starts, it doesn’t have the ability to travel,” Rogers said.
“We have a very significant building here. It was well thought-out and carefully constructed, and is very carefully maintained and operated. We feel very safe here.”
Fleming told the Los Angeles Times that all 16 staff of the Getty Villa museum remained at work last week as the Palisades fire licked at that campus, and that “we did get lucky in some ways, and people were rushing around”.
She said pre-emptive action, including a severe pruning of landscaping, clearance of low-lying brush and heavy irrigation, had helped prevent a disaster.
