LA’s Getty Center’s art safeguarded as Palisades fire rages By Reuters

By Dawn Chmielewski

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – J. The Paul Getty Museum’s priceless art collection, which includes paintings by Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Monet and Degas, was once again on the path to destruction as the Palisades Fire spread.

As fire officials issued evacuation orders for the Brentwood neighborhood Friday night, the museum’s collection remained safe in the Getty Center’s fortress of travertine stone, fire-resistant steel and reinforced concrete.

“It would be very foolish to try to remove the artwork,” says Catherine E. Fleming, president and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust, noting how quickly the fires spread without warning.

“Moving really, really valuable artwork is difficult enough under the best of circumstances. The last thing we’d want to do is take it out en masse on the eve of an event like this.”

The Palisades fire has burned more than 23,000 acres (93 sq km) from the sea to the mountains, damaged or destroyed nearly 5,000 structures since it began a week ago and was only 17 percent contained as of Tuesday morning.It is responsible for eight confirmed deaths.

The center, which opened in 1997, was designed to withstand wildfires, and everything from the building materials to the landscaping was built with fire safety in mind.

It safely withstood one test, in October 2019, when it ignited along Interstate 405 near the Getty Center entrance road and burned 745 acres (3 sq km), earning the name Getty Fire.

The 12-building Getty Center complex sits high above the access road, a safe distance from the flaming chaparral of the Santa Monica Mountains.The art galleries are about 200 meters (655 feet) from the arrivals plaza, with its expansive barrier of travertine marble imported from Italy.

“This was chosen for the construction of the site, not only because it is beautiful and Italianate, but also because it is highly fire-resistant as a building material,” said Fleming.

As soon as fire officials issue a “red flag” warning, signaling conditions of low moisture and high winds that are ripe for a dangerous blaze, Fleming said the Getty Center crew starts watering its grounds so the soil is moist and provides a buffer. . against fire.

A one million gallon (3.8 million liter) water storage tank on site supplies the sprinkler system and provides a resource for emergency firefighting.

Getty’s “minimalist” landscape design with sparse vegetation reflects concern about forest fires.

“A lot of plants near buildings are either things that will burn very quickly,” Fleming said, “or they’re plants that hold a lot of water themselves, like acacias, that can actually help you fight a fire against if they are close to your buildings.”

STEEL, STONE AND CENT

Walls are made of reinforced concrete or fire-resistant steel, and buildings are designed with automatic fire doors designed to seal off space and prevent fire from spreading, according to an article published after the Getty Fire in 2019.

The roofs are covered with stone aggregate, which is fire resistant.

“We’ve taken such care to make sure that galleries are actually the safest place for an artwork to be in a fire,” Fleming said.

The museum’s collection includes more than 400 European paintings produced before 1900, and reflects the Getty’s affinity for Italian Renaissance and 17th-century Dutch and Flemish paintings, according to its website.

The collection was expanded in 1976 by J. After Paul Getty’s death, including examples of early Italian and Dutch works, French Impressionists, and Spanish and German schools. It also has one of the largest photo collections in the world.

Among his most famous works are Vincent van Gogh’s Irises, Rembrandt’s “Old Man in Military Uniform” and Claude Monet’s “Heaps of Wheat”, “Snow Effect”, “Morning”.

On a tour of the Getty Center grounds, Fleming pointed out the orange tape that sealed off all the doors to keep even the tiniest bit of coal from entering the museum.

The center’s carbon-filtered air-conditioning system is designed to increase pressure inside the building, keeping smoke and ash out. Dampers, or small valves in the air-conditioning system, are closed to recirculate air and keep outside particles out, Fleming said.

Fire extinguishers are ready in the entrance hall of the museum, which will be used to quickly extinguish the fire found on the spot.

The Getty is so concerned with safety, Fleming said, that the staff knew exactly how to respond when the fire in the Pacific Ocean threatened the Getty Villa, a recreation of a Roman villa on the Malibu coast. The sister museum was not affected by the fire.

“Within 10 minutes of the fire, we changed the ventilation system to prevent smoke from entering the galleries,” Fleming said.

“We had the shutters closed. We started closing the galleries down there and very quickly decided what the main crew was going to be on site for the night.”