Angelenos woke up Saturday morning to find that the Getty Center, one of Los Angeles’s most renowned art museums, is now squarely in the mandatory evacuation zone as the Palisades fire’s footprint has grown.
Perched on a hilltop, the Getty Center is a popular attraction for locals, tourists and students from the nearby University of California, Los Angeles. The museum boasts master works from as far back as the 1400s, and Van Gogh’s irises and works by Rembrandt, Rubens, Monet and Degas have long drawn people to it. Visitors often take day trips to Brentwood, the Westside neighborhood that houses the museum, for afternoons filled with European art, modern architecture and stunning views of the city.
The museum has also described itself as “the safest place for art during a fire,” detailing in a 2019 article the anti-fire engineering of the Getty Center, which opened in 1997. Late Saturday afternoon, Katherine E. Fleming, the…
