THE NEW GETTY CENTER, one of the largest architectural commissions of the last decade, was one of the sights I most wanted to see in L.A., and one of the first things I did. It was well worth the anticipation.
     This huge complex was built for the Getty Foundation, an institution which, like the Huntington Library in Pasadena, seems to play the role, in L.A., of proving that the city isn't merely ephemeral -- that it is anchored, culturally, into some deeper bedrock.
      I suppose all museums do this, on some level; but in L.A., the task seems rather more urgent, because Culture (the traditional sort) seems at constant risk of just drifting cheerfully away, in a way that you don't fear in, say, Paris.

Thus the Parthenon-esque monumentality of the new Getty, designed by Richard Meier in a epic ten-year process, and dramatically situated on a hilltop west of downtown. The comparison to the Parthenon, which seems dubious at first, turns out to be surprisingly apt: the serenely massive complex does command a hilltop with a panoramic view of the city, and its architecture explicitly evokes some kind of ancient Mediterranean monument -- walls of huge stone blocks (travertine, a sort of cross between limestone and marble), relieved by cool shadowed area; immense stone columns, and a huge, classical rotunda space.

The blindingly bright sunlight reflecting off the polished travertine surfaces, along with early symptoms of heat stroke, made it quite easy for me, at least, to feel that I was on some rocky outcropping amid the Aegean.

Arriving at this ancient hilltop is, however, a quintessentially Californian, high-tech experience. First, it's largely unreachable except by car, via an exit off the San Diego freeway, which takes you to the entrance of a large underground parking structure at the hill's base; advance reservations are usually required. This gets you to a kind of embarkation point --an immaculately clean platform set amid a carefully planted grove of poplars, where two or three attendants, smiling cultishly, direct you where to wait for the next shuttle train.

A few minutes later, the shuttle glides in on the monorail, almost soundlessly, and discharges a batch of visitors. You get on, and a few minutes later the doors hiss shut and the unmanned car accelerates up the track, seeming to float over the freeway below before curving round for a spectacular view east across L.A. At the terminus on top, you disembark, a little dazed, onto a vast stone plaza, at one side of which stone steps beckon you onwards to the grand rotunda lobby. This coolly spectacular space bridges interior to exterior, and ushers you into the central courtyard, off which open the various buildings and spaces of the center
    

The Getty's facility is referred to as the "Center" because it comprises not only an art museum but extensive facilities for scholars, state-of-the-art conservation laboratories, offices for the Getty staff and its publishing division, etc.

Its multi-billion dollar endowment makes it one of the world's wealthiest cultural institutions, which allows it to fund a wide array of programs as well as enter the circle of top bidders for the few Old Master paintings or Classical sculptures that enter the art market.

In fact, the foundation's lavish expenditure on its new hilltop facility was prompted in part by its legal requirement, as a non-profit institution, to spend a minimum percentage of its endowment per year.

 The Getty Museum's current collection may not compare in breadth to those of encyclopedic museums such as the Louvre or Metropolitan, but its galleries are beautiful. The interiors were designed by French designer Thierry Despont, whose sumptuous style led to bitter conflicts with the chief architect Richard Meier and his latter-day Modernist aesthetic.

I felt, however, that the two styles meshed surprisingly well. Despont's interiors, with their rich materials and saturated colors provide a soothing counterweight to the Herculean sweep of Meier's exterior spaces.

I particularly liked this area, where an overhead passageway clad in Meier's trademark white-enameled aluminum panels bridges between the two sheer stone walls of adjacent buildings. It's a rather obvious juxtaposition of modern and ancient elements, but the confidence and resolution with which it is done makes it work.

Standing there, you're drawn to the view framed by the overpass, and the light reflecting towards you off the polished travertine floor, which further prevents the old-new juxtaposition from seeming overdone.

 Another great thing about the Center is the variety of informal plaza spaces scattered throughout. The chairs and tables can be moved around, and you are free to luxuriate in any of these spaces for as long as you want.

It's a beautiful place just to spend a day, regardless of the art museum. Since the only cost is the $10 per vehicle parking fee, it's also a very economical expedition for a family or group.

 Much of the landscaping surrounding the buildings was designed by Robert Irwin, the California-based "Light and Space" artist. As he did with Thierry Despont, the headstrong Richard Meier battled Irwin strenuously over artistic direction, to the point where the two were not on speaking terms for long stretches of the project.

 While the museum doesn't yet have a particularly large collection, it does have some extraordinary individual pieces. Foremost among them, for me, is James Ensor's 1888 masterwork, "Christ's Entry into Brussels in 1889", an enormous canvas which the artist worked on for much of his career, and to which the Getty appropriately devotes an entire gallery.

Ensor's painting imagines a Second Coming of Christ into modern Brussels, in the scene of a violent carnival or demonstration where Christ is mocked as he was upon re-entering Jerusalem. This panoramic and savage grotesquerie is something like a modern Hieronymous Bosch, a catalogue of sinning humanity as the artist saw it.

Although the painting does have a denunciatory quality, it is also ironically exuberant, and perhaps even ultimately tolerant of the human array depicted. For this reason, I think it's fitting that the work has ended up in Los Angeles -- in its own imagination a hugely energetic, "colorful", apocalyptic and occasionally grotesque city, the "outdoor circus" of Morrow Mayo's description.

 This painting by British-born L.A. resident David Hockney is also in the Getty's collection. It strikes rather a different note than Ensor -- a. mixture of banal, eerie, and idyllic -- but is also iconically L.A.