# @gettymuseum on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/CZALv8Jv1dx
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/34228661-gettymuseum-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/056875758c.jpg
- **Posted:** 2022-01-21T18:52:59.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Getty (@gettymuseum) — https://gondola.cc/gettymuseum

## Caption

#ConnectingCollections is celebrating new beginnings! Join us this month as we look at some #MuseumFirsts. Museums will be sharing stories about first exhibitions, first acquired objects, first publications, first storage systems, and more.

Published in 1954, the first Getty guidebook gives a snapshot of the museum when it opened to the public in May of that year. Before the construction of the Villa and the Getty Center, J. Paul Getty’s collections of ancient and European art were housed in a Spanish-style ranch house, nestled in a canyon above the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. The guidebook highlights the original display of objects, sometimes in surprising locations. Do you recognize the sculpture in the cover image?

Mr. Getty’s favorite work of art, the Lansdowne Hercules, is an over-life-size Roman sculpture of the Greek hero. Swipe to see a view of the museum entrance courtyard. Look closely, the statue of Hercules is on the far right. When the museum first opened, some marble sculptures were set up in the courtyard due to indoor space limitations. Swipe again for a detailed view of the sculpture, bathed in sunlight and surrounded by plants. This open air installation was temporary, and in 1957 the antiquities were brought into a newly built gallery connected to the Ranch House. 

In 1974, with the opening of the Villa, Hercules was moved to his own specially designed gallery, modeled after an ancient hero-cult temple, where he is still on view today. He stands in a framed niche, surrounded by colored marble and porphyry, overlooking a cut-marble floor (a replica of an ancient floor from the Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum), and with a view through the gardens to the Pacific Ocean. This opulent indoor space offers quite a different experience from the outdoor courtyard of the Ranch House!

This guidebook has been digitized and is freely available online through Getty’s Virtual Library, check it out at the #LinkInBio.
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#GettyMuseum #GettyVilla #JPaulGetty #AncientArt #Antiquities #Hercules #Mythology #Sculpture #Mallibu #SoCal

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## Tags

mythology, museumfirsts, gettymuseum, sculpture, gettyvilla, ancientart, jpaulgetty, hercules, socal, antiquities, connectingcollections, linkinbio, mallibu

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