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There first time I was in LA I wasn't sure where the Getty was but I had a general idea and figured when I got close enough someone could give me directions. You would be surprised what the man on the street doesn't know about his own town. When I finally got there I found it was the museum's day off.

What a shame. LA is a BIG place. The Getty Villa has been closed for a few years now ... so is the Griffith Park Observatory (of Rebel Without A Cause" fame). The new Getty is open and is just outside the window of my office here in Brentwood. The Villa will open again but I'm not sure yet whether it will contain the antiquities which are numerous. When it reopens it will be the Getty Conservation Institute. But it a totally awesome building ... just unbelieveable. It was an almost exact replica of the villa at Herculeneum which was destroyed during the eruption at Pompei. Many of the floors, walls and tiny multiple galleries are paneled with marble from quarries that were long ago closed ... J. Paul paid to open them up again. Second best: Get a book at the library about the building. :)

I tend to mix my vacations with business ventures so when I get somewhere I can check out the museums and the scenery but my time for free wheeling is limited. Sometimes I travel with partners and that can be a cramp on my style even if I do have a good time with them. Anyway I used to go to LA on business a couple times a year but never got to the Getty but not from lack of trying. I do have a pretty good library of art books though and so am somewhat familiar with the museums contents. I do go to the Met in NY about 10 times a year. At least there is some classical work to groove on close by.

The authorities in Pompeii have recently announced that the long buried Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum - which is believed to contain a tantalizing “lost library” of Latin and Greek poetic and philosophical masterpieces - will be opened to the public for the first time since it was entombed in mud and lava. The villa, which had suffered from neglect over the years due partly to the sporadic nature of its excavation, will be open to visitors by arrangement only in groups of 25 on weekend mornings. The villa belonged to Lucius Calpurnius Piso (the father-in-law of Julius Caesar) and occupied an area of 30,000sq ft overlooking the sea. Considered one of the most magnificent villas of the Roman world, it was “recreated” in the 1970s to house the classical collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum at Malibu, which is a replica of how the villa is thought to have looked. Like Pompeii nearby, the villa was overwhelmed when Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD 79. Whereas Pompeii was preserved under layers of ash - and therefore easier to excavate - the Villa of the Papyri is buried in volcanic rock formed by the solidified mud that engulfed it. The villa was first discovered in the 18th century by tunnelers exploring a well shaft. Many of the finest ancient bronzes on display at the National Archaeological Museum in Naples came from this site. More of it came to light a decade ago when modern archaeologists drove a crater 100 ft. deep into the rock. The crater, however, is vulnerable to flooding and scholars disagree over the high cost and feasibility of digging through the rock in search of a treasure that may or may not be there. The difficulties are compounded by the fact that much of the villa now lies beneath modern housing. The villa takes its name from the nearly 2,000 papyrus scrolls that have come to light since the first dig in 1752 – most of which have been painstakingly unrolled. They have proven to consist largely of the works of the Greek Epicurean philosopher Philodemus, who lived at Piso’s seaside villa and enjoyed his patronage. Scholars continue to speculate, however, about the possible existence of priceless lost works by Plato or Aristotle, which may be awaiting discovery...