Getty Center to Close for a Year; Getty Villa Stays Open

The Getty Museum's tram is wearing out, so the entire museum will close in 11 months for one year of renovations. That is the big museum up on the 405.

The Getty Villa Museum on PCH near Malibu will stay open. The Getty Villa will open a gallery with a selection of paintings from the big Getty Center's collection. But the majority of works — by van Gogh, Rembrandt, Rubens, Monet and Degas — will be out of sight for 11 months.

Up on the hill, all parts of the big museum in Brentwood will be refurbished. In addition to a new shuttle tram, an expanded entrance hall and a new south pavilion will be built.

The museum has also purchased a new building just across the freeway on Sepulveda Boulevard. It plans an array of public programming down there — family festivals, lecture series and other arts programs.

That's not the only major L.A. museum that is closing for renovations. The George Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits will close next summer for two years. It will come back much larger, with a new entrance and a rooftop terrace. The 13-acre Tar Pits campus will remain the only active paleontological research hub located in a major urban area. The tar pits museum's last day will be July 6.

But not all is glum on the museum front. The new L.A. County art museum Geffen Galleries will open its doors in 10 days. The new county art museum is a 347,500-square-foot amoeba that straddles Wilshire Boulevard. Leaders in the art world consider it a major milestone for the cultural life of the county. That's at the tar pits.

On Grand Avenue in downtown L.A., a new museum called Dataland opens this spring. It's an immersive experience, the world's first museum based on AI — artificial intelligence.

And down near USC, the George Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is officially scheduled to open on September 22. That's a $1 billion whopper of a museum, hovering like two spaceships over Exposition Park.

So to review for the quiz: the Getty Villa Museum on PCH near Malibu will stay open. The Getty off the 405 will close next March. The new county art museum near the tar pits will open in 10 days. The AI museum downtown will open this spring. The tar pit museum will close July 6. And the Lucas museum near USC will open this fall.