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THE GETTY MUSUEM

Rated the #1 Thing-to-do in Los Angeles by Trip Advisor and with over 1,000,000 visitors a year, this spectacular museum boasts an impressive art collection ranging from illuminated manuscripts, paintings, drawings and sculpture, to decorative arts. Enjoy walking through time—from the Middle Ages to the early twentieth century and see works by artists from Leonardo Da Vinci’s Workshop, Titian, Rembrandt and JMW Turner to Monet, Renoir, Cezanne and Van Gogh. Meander through the architectural triumph of its six buildings, view magnificent gardens and the panoramic views of Los Angeles. 
 Location: Los Angeles - Tours available every day - CLOSED MONDAYS

THE GETTY VILLA

Visit the ancient world of Greece and Rome in a museum recreated as a first century A.D. Roman country house. It is a near replica of a luxurious Roman residence in Herculaneum, Italy that had been buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. Learn about ancient Greek and Roman art 7,000 years from the end of the Stone Age to the fall of the Roman empire. It is flanked by lush gardens that overlook the Pacific, adorned with fountains and mosaics. 
Location: Malibu - Tours a vailable every day - CLOSED TUESDAYS

NORTON SIMON MUSEUM

Known around the world as one of the most remarkable private art collections ever assembled, they range from the Renaissance to the 21st century, including a stellar collection of Indian and Southeast Asian art. The Norton Simon Museum is richest in works by Rembrandt, Picasso, and, most of all, Degas—this is one of the only two U.S. institutions (the other is New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art) to hold nearly all of the artist's model bronzes. 
Location: Pasadena. Tours available every day - CLOSED TUESDAYS
 Future and Continuing Tours
The Getty Center Current Exhibition
Cy Twombly
Making Past Present
August 2–October 30, 2022, GETTY CENTER
Plan your visit

 American artist Cy Twombly’s engagement with the art and poetry of ancient Greece and Rome played a central role in his creative process. This exhibition explores Twombly’s lifelong fascination with the ancient Mediterranean world through evocative groupings of his paintings, drawings, prints, and sculpture made from the mid-20th to the early 21st century, tracing an imaginative journey of encounters with and responses to ancient texts and artifacts. The presentation includes Greek and Roman antiquities from the artist’s personal collection, on public display for the first time.

Cy Twombly (1928–2011) ranks among the most prominent US painters to emerge in the 1950s, a period of radical experimentation in American and European art. Combining gestural strokes of paint, broad areas of empty space, and words scribbled in a nearly illegible hand, Twombly’s work can be enigmatic, even perplexing. Making sense of it requires an appreciation of his attitudes toward history, place, and cultural memory.

This exhibition explores Twombly’s art through the lens of ancient Greek and Roman culture, a consistent source of inspiration throughout his career. Twombly avoided centers of modern art like New York, moving to Italy in 1959. There he engaged creatively with the enduring legacy of antiquity, infusing his work with provocative allusions to mythology, poetry, and archaeology. By exploring the classical past,
Lines have a great effect on paintings. They give great emphasis. There’s a line in Alkman: “Leaving Paphos ringed with waves.” . . . It’s central to me. I’m a Mediterranean painter.    —Cy Twombly
This painting is one of a group of four  canvases that comprises the Athens exhibition and is inspired by a quote from the seventh-century-BCE choral lyric poet Alkman. Twombly used it previously in the ten-part Coronation of Sesostris (2000), which charts the energetic course and  eventual demise of the Pharaonic warrior Sesostris II. Twombly’s abbreviation of the original line announces the departure from Paphos, a city sacred to the goddess Aphrodite. The recurring boat ideograph in Twombly’s work is a figure for passage and exile, voyaging and homecoming, death and imperial decline. In these paintings he imparts startling new vigor to the motif and its accompanying script in hot vermilions and rich yellows against expanses of vivid turquoise sea.
Twombly followed a long tradition in American and European art. His great contribution lay in linking his understanding of ancient art and literature to late-twentieth-century modernist practice, translating historically remote references into a bracingly contemporary artistic idiom.

This exhibition is organized with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

 Demytifying Art Tour - Continuing
Get to know the backstories of famous artists! 

This part of the tour will simplify art for the reluctant, first-time museum visitor and distinguish fact from fiction for every art lover!

 Manet from Monet: How these friends were very  different --- personally and professionally.

Da Vinci decoded.
 
Rembrandt revealed.
 
Bernini bared.
 
Van Gogh verified. 

Why are there so many nudes in art?
  
Why is the Virgin Mary always in red or blue…or both?
 
Why does some art look unfinished?
 
Do artists copy one another...and is that considered amateur?
 
Why is impressionism blurry?
 
Why and how are certain artworks worth millions of dollars? 

Take a Quick Culture tour and have a better understanding of the answers. 

You’ll wow everyone with your amusing, newfound  knowledge! 

Quick Culture promises to give you an entertaining, informative and memorable tour! 

Tour Length Descriptions

The Classic Tour

Explore the highlights of the museum’s permanent collection in this one-hour tour which focuses on a selection of works of art representing different cultures
and time periods.

       1-6 People: $150 Total
      Additional people: $20 PP

The Deluxe Tour

A one-hour highlight tour of the museum’s permanent collection PLUS an additional 30-minute tour of either one of the special exhibitions, exterior art sculptures, or an emphasis on a particular art period.

       1-6 people: $ 200 Total
       Additional people: $30 PP

The Grand Tour

Spend a morning or an afternoon at the museum on a 2-hour tour of the museum's highlights of the permanent collections, outdoor sculpture gardens, and current special collections exhibitions.

        1-6 People: $250 Total
        Additional people: $40 PP
Contact to BOOK and for Custom Tours and More
Tours available in Italian, French, German, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic,  Spanish, Mandarin, Korean and Japanese upon request. Surcharges apply.
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