Getty Reinstallation Offers Ancient Beauty and Modern Horror Show

By JOHN HARLOW | Editor-in-Chief

Every visitor to the freshly reinstalled collection of ancient art at our local treasure house, the Getty Villa on PCH, will find their own favorite space.

Now the handsome Greek works are largely on the ground floor, the Romans moved upstairs and there are side rooms for those curious about the extraordinary wonders of ancient Persia.

And, of course, there are the much-vaunted “homages” to Plato by modern artists such as the irrepressible Jeff Koons (“Play-Doh,” indeed. Wonder who fabricated that pun for him?).

Arguably the most famous piece, the “Statue of a Victorious Youth,” once tucked away, is now seen as you step into a gallery reserved for its Hellenic contemporaries.

At last it’s in context.

The three-year overhaul has not only allowed Director Dr. Timoth Potts to rethink and rehang, but also add extra 3,000 square feet—enough to display an additional 100 items.

And the long pool, drained since the drought of 2014, is splashy again—adding to the atmosphere of the Villa which is, lest we forget, a loving replica of a Herculaneum home buried under ash ejected, as every school child learns, by Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.

But, for some, the most intense connection may be with a handful of somber masks and friezes on loan from the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek: So we have a museum funded by an oil family borrowing stuff from a museum floated on beer money.

Technically the pieces are funerary art, works commissioned by bereaved families to memorialize the deceased. The show is called “Loss and Remembrance.”

But because these pieces are from Palmyra in the Syria desert, there is more blood on these works than one might imagine.

These are, it must be pointed out, a fragment of the city’s treasures—legally exported from Syria before that ancient culture was chewed up in the current horror show.

Similar treasures cost the life of a very brave man who literally died to protect the city’s heritage.

Khalid al-Asaad was the chief archaeologist of Palmyra, responsible for protecting the UNESCO World Heritage site.

More than 2,000 years ago it was a booming mercantile city whose caravan-enriched merchants shared their wealth in amazing public works.

Al-Asaad was obsessed: He named his daughter Zenobia after a Palmerian queen who, in the second century AD, rebelled against Rome.

A quick look upstairs at the Getty Villa reminds us that was rarely a good idea.

At 83, al-Asaad had been retired for a decade when, three years ago, the Islamic State (ISIS) took over the city and jailed an entire class of “unbelievers.”

The common narrative is that ISIS fueled itself on stolen oil: It emerges that its true modus operandi were slavery and taxes, and asset-stripping conquered cities to sell pre-Muslim artifacts on the global black market and fuel the doomed war machine.

A few “idols” would be smashed for public display but more would be sold.

Looking for loot, ISIS soldiers arrested al-Asaad. He refused to reveal where some ancient treasures might have been hidden away as they had advanced.

After weeks of torture, Jihadists dragged the frail man to a public square and beheaded him. His body was suspended from a lamppost with red twine, the head kicked beneath.

Images flashed around the world on social media. A grainy video was his funerary art.

The works in the Getty Villa are, when you know the history, quietly moving.

Every face of the dead tells a story, shows the cultural influence of a city balanced between Hellenic and Persian style. You almost know these people.

They are al-Asaad’s ancestors.

There will always be many questions about how such extraordinary treasures ended up in, of all places, Pacific Palisades. Some may grumble about PCH traffic getting there or evening parking fees. But others have paid a far higher cost to protect works like these.

We are just so lucky.