J. Paul Getty Museum. Registrar's Office.

The J. Paul Getty Museum was established as a charitable trust in 1953 by billionaire J. Paul Getty in order to house his growing art collections. Getty had been collecting art since the 1930s. The J. Paul Getty Museum originally opened in 1954, with relatively little publicity, in two rooms of Mr. Getty's Ranch House in the Pacific Palisades near Malibu, California. By August 1955 the museum in the Ranch House had six gallery areas. In 1956 Mr. Getty began planning a new antiquities gallery, which was completed and opened to the public in mid-December 1957. Each year the number of museum visitors increased, and though Mr. Getty curtailed his art acquisitions activities beginning in 1958, the museum continued to grow.

In the fall of 1968, after considering various options for expanding the Ranch House, Getty decided to build a separate museum facility on the same property. This new museum was designed in the form of a first-century Roman country house, based primarily on the plans of the ancient Villa dei Papiri just outside of Herculaneum, Italy. The new museum facility opened to the public on January 16, 1974. Although Getty retained the title of Museum Director over the years, he never left his home in England to visit the new museum building, effectively making the Museum Curator or Deputy Director the on-site director. Getty monitored every expense and purchase made by the museum, and staff regularly traveled to Sutton Place, his home outside London, to consult with him on museum matters.

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