Written by Dawn Chmielewski
Los Angeles – The art collection of J. The Paul Getty Museum, which includes paintings by Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Monet and Degas, also found itself in danger of being destroyed by fire as the Palisades fire spread.
As fire officials issued evacuation orders for the Brentwood area Friday night, the museum’s collection remained safe inside the Getty Center’s fortress of travertine stone, fireproof steel and reinforced concrete.
“It would be very foolish to try to remove the work of art,” said Katherine E. Fleming, president and chief executive officer of the J. Paul Getty Trust, noting how fires spread quickly, with little notice.
“It’s complicated enough to walk around, really precious works of art under the best of circumstances. The last thing we’d try to do is take them out en masse, on the eve of an event like this.”
The Palisades fire has burned more than 23,000 hectares (93 sq km) from the ocean to the mountains, damaged or destroyed about 5,000 structures since it started last week and was only 17 percent contained as of Tuesday morning. It has caused eight confirmed deaths.
The facility, which opened in 1997, is designed to withstand wildfires. Everything from building materials to landscaping is designed with fire safety in mind.
It safely withstood one test, in October 2019, when a brush fire started on Interstate 405 near the Getty Center entrance, burning 745 acres (3 square km), earning the name Getty Fire.
The 12-story Getty Center sits high above the access road, a safe distance from the Santa Monica Mountains’ burning chaparral. The art gallery is located about 200 meters (655 feet) from the landing area, with its large travertine marble barrier imported from Italy.
“This was chosen for the construction of the area, not only because it is beautiful and Italian, but because it can withstand fire as a building material,” said Fleming.
As soon as fire officials issued a “red flag” warning, indicating conditions of low humidity and high winds ready for a dangerous fire, Fleming said Getty Center workers began watering their areas, so the soil becomes wet and provides protection. against fire.
A one-million-gallon (3.8-million) water storage tank on site provides a sprinkler system, and provides an emergency firefighting service.
Getty’s “minimalist” landscape design, with sparse vegetation, reflects a concern for wildfires.
“A lot of the plants we have around buildings are things that will burn quickly,” said Fleming, “or plants that store a lot of water themselves, like Acacias, that hold water and help you put out fires if you put them close to your buildings.”
IRON, STONE AND TEA
The walls are made of reinforced concrete or fireproof steel, and the buildings are built with automatic fire doors designed to seal off the area and prevent the fire from spreading, according to an article published after the Getty Fire in 2019.
The roof is covered with a combination of stone, which is fire resistant.
“We’ve taken great care to make sure that the galleries themselves are actually the safest place when the artwork is in the middle of a fire,” said Fleming.
The museum’s collection includes more than 400 European paintings produced before 1900, and reflects the Getty’s association with Italian Renaissance and 17th-century Dutch and Flemish paintings, according to its website.
The collection was expanded, after the death of J. Paul Getty in 1976, to include examples of early Italian and Dutch works, French photographers and examples of the Spanish and German schools. It also has the largest collection of photographs in the world.
Among its most famous works are Vincent van Gogh’s Irises, Rembrandt’s An Old Man in Military Costume and Claude Monet’s Wheatstacks, Snow Effect, Morning.
On a tour of the Getty Center’s grounds, Fleming pointed out the orange tape covering all the doors — preventing even a small ember from entering the museum.
The air conditioning filter system of this facility is designed to increase the pressure inside the building, so that there is no smoke and ash. Dampers, or small valves in an air conditioning system, are closed to circulate air and remove foreign particles, Fleming said.
Fire extinguishers are at the ready inside the entrance hall of the museum, which will be used to quickly put out the fire found in the premises.
The Getty is taking safety seriously, and Fleming said staff knew exactly how to respond as the Pacific Palisades fire threatened the Getty Villa, a Roman villa reconstruction on the coast of Malibu. This museum was not damaged in the fire.
“Within less than ten minutes of the fire, we had to change the ventilation system to prevent smoke from entering the garages,” said Fleming.
“We had closed the dampers. We started to close the galleries there, and we quickly decided which group of workers would stay in this place for the night.”
