The Beauty Of A Museum

Michael and I went to The Getty Museum in Los Angeles today. I had been wanting to go since I could see it being built in the late 1990’s and it was, as most remarkable museums are,  a wonderful, felt experience of Beauty. The experience begins before even arriving, from far down below, in our car, on the 405 freeway looking up to The Getty’s stunning hilltop location. I have driven by it over 100 times, each time feeling drawn to it and wishing I could take the Getty Center Drive exit instead of continuing on to wherever I was going. The Getty, a fortress-like group of white and beige buildings, sits on a high ridge within the Santa Monica Mountains. It stands all alone on the wide range surrounded by the silvery-gray and brown, native California brush that makes the massive complex look a little less massive than it actually is. After driving partially up the hill and parking, steep staircases allowed us to climb a bit higher to a level that housed the disney-like tram that would take us even higher yet to our final destination. Even as we stood in line, waiting to board the tram that matched the buildings up above, there was loveliness to take in. The tram station was set among sculpted trees, green gardens and running fountains inspiring Michael and I to work together on crafting a haiku of the beauty around us. 

 I don’t know why it took me so long to visit The Getty. Maybe I was waiting to go with Michael, my very own amateur Harvard professor of all things beautiful – art, literature, poetry. As we have wandered through museums around the world over the past 2.5 years, The Frick Collection and The Neue Galerie museums in New York City, The Huntington Library in Pasadena, The National Gallery in London, The Louvre, Musee d’Orsay and Musee Rodin in France,  I have found the joy of immersing in the beauty of art through him. He charmed and captivated me with stories of the artists and their paintings and sculptures. Every story made me fall in love with him, and the art he taught me about, a little bit more.

As a child of the 70’s and an emerging adult in the 80’s Striving was what I thought life was all about: be more, do more, achieve more.  Looking at paintings, listening to an opera or reading poetry were not “productive” pursuits I thought. It didn’t make sense to me. The years between then and now were filled with the striving I was bred to think was so important: college, law school, marriage, children.  Yes there was great happiness when my big goals were reached: obtaining that law degree, finding my person,  getting hired, creating a family, but reaching those big goals can be long and far between, and the happiness that accompanies them is fleeting. It is the in-between spaces that actually make up the majority of our lives and I realize now that our character is built on how we choose to fill those in-betweens.

I smile as I think back on my day with Michael at The Getty. Still feeling the awe and wonder of my experiences with the great paintings and drawings, the buzzy feeling of standing so high up on one of the many limestone terraces looking out at Beverly Hills and downtown Los Angeles, over Century City and out far beyond to the Pacific Ocean, I understand that my time spent appreciating the Beautiful Art in this Beautiful Museum has become a memory that has  been written into the narrative of my unique life.  A feeling I will now carry as part of me.  The experience has fed my soul and given delight and pleasure to one of my many in-betweens.