Getty Trust

Getty Trust, private operating foundation that was founded by the American oil billionaire J. Paul Getty in 1953 for the purpose of establishing the J. Paul Getty Museum, which opened to the public in 1954. The Getty Trust has become a multibillion-dollar philanthropic foundation dedicated to enlarging and exhibiting its deceased founder’s art collection in the Getty Museum. The trust also funds and operates ongoing programs of conservation, research, and education in the visual arts. It is headquartered in Los Angeles.

J. Paul Getty began collecting artworks in the 1930s and displayed them in a wing added to his ranch house in the Pacific Palisades section of Los Angeles. The collections eventually outgrew that space, so Getty built a new museum nearby that opened in 1974. This second J. Paul Getty Museum was a lavish re-creation of the Villa of the Papyri, a Roman villa uncovered in the town of Herculaneum, which had been buried by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 ce. Getty died in 1976 and bequeathed the bulk of his fortune—about $700 million worth of stock in the Getty Oil Company—to the museum. Legal wrangles followed, but, when the Getty Trust actually received the bequest in 1982, it had grown to $1.2 billion, making the Getty Museum perhaps the most richly endowed cultural institution in the world. The trust also received part of the proceeds from the sale of the Getty Oil Company to Texaco Inc. for $10 billion in 1984. In the early 21st century the trust’s endowment totaled about $7 billion.

In 1983 the trust diversified its activities, establishing institutes specializing in art restoration, art-historical research and documentation, and art education. The trust then decided to construct a complex of buildings to house a new, enlarged J. Paul Getty Museum as well as the other operating programs. After 14 years of planning and construction, the Getty Center (commonly called the Getty), a six-building campus set on a hilltop in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles, opened to the public in 1997. The buildings were designed by the American architect Richard Meier in a restrained Modernist style.

Discover how ordinary objects work, and expand your understanding of the familiar.

SIGN UP

" height="20" alt="HEW Logo">

Thank you for signing up!"

Back to homepage

By clicking "Sign Up", you consent to the Britannica Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

The J. Paul Getty Museum occupies the largest building in the complex. It contains European paintings, sculpture, drawings, and decorative arts from before 1900 as well as illuminated manuscripts and photographs. The museum’s collections reflect Getty’s preference for Renaissance and Baroque paintings and French furniture. Getty’s collection of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman antiquities remains in the Roman-style villa in Pacific Palisades, which was closed for renovation in 1997 and reopened in 2006.

The other buildings of the Getty Center house additional institutions and programs, including the Getty Research Institute, the Getty Conservation Institute, and the Getty Foundation. The Getty Research Institute (formerly the Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities) contains a large library and archives and supports interdisciplinary research in art history and the related humanities. The Getty Conservation Institute conducts and supports scientific research and training in the conservation of art, architecture, and archaeological sites. The Getty Foundation (formerly the Getty Grant Program) supports projects around the world involving research in the history and understanding of art and its conservation. Other institutions were dissolved around the turn of the 21st century, notably the Getty Information Institute, which developed computerized databases of art-historical information; the Getty Education Institute for the Arts, which promoted art education in schools; and the Getty Leadership Institute for Museum Management, which offered management training for professionals from all types of museums.