Reopening the Getty Villa Museum after the Palisades Fire

Five months after the Palisades Fire sent sparks onto the Getty Villa Museum's grounds—setting the landscape aflame and forcing the Villa to close to the public—Getty emergency preparedness specialist Les Borsay says the art is ready to welcome visitors again.

“The Mummy of Herakleides is tired of me,” he jokes.

Borsay is among the small group of people who have stepped foot inside the Villa since the beginning of the year. As the fire blazed across the Pacific Palisades on January 7, 2025, the site closed, Getty’s emergency procedures were activated, and a small team of staff remained on-site to fight the flames that erupted around the Villa’s trees and plants. Thanks to these brave and strategic efforts, as well as the work of first responders, the Villa’s buildings sustained no major damage.

But when the smoke cleared, it was time for the cleanup to begin. The grounds around the Villa suffered major losses, and the site was blanketed in soot and ash. A complex recovery operation has gotten the Villa back up and running. It will reopen to visitors on June 27, operating just Fridays through Mondays until eventually returning to its regular hours (free timed reservations are available online).

The last five months have provided an opportunity not only to recover from the fire, but also to improve Getty’s preparedness for future emergencies and share knowledge and resources with other institutions. The Palisades Fire is certainly not the last natural disaster the Villa will encounter, so hopefully its teachings will endure.

“If you can’t learn from what just happened, then you’re doomed to repeat it, or the situation could be worse,” Borsay says. “So we’re making sure that we look back at this and go, ‘Okay, what can we do better?’”

A thorough clean

Once the immediate threat of fire subsided, the first step toward recovery was restoring the Villa’s utility systems, including gas and water service. “That’s one lesson learned that we’d like to share with people—these very large natural disasters really can impact the public utility system, and we were not spared from that,” says Michael Rogers, Getty’s then director of facilities.

Next up was maintenance inside the structures. Crews gave all indoor spaces a thorough cleaning to remove any bits of dirt and dust that had accumulated under doors and in other nooks and crannies. “We were very fortunate on the interior of the buildings, because they are built so well,” Rogers says. “They have such great filtration and procedures in place to keep them clean during a fire that we had very little material ever get into the buildings.”

The exteriors required a unique cleaning approach. Ash from the fire had settled over the site, so the first step was conducting environmental testing and working with county and federal agencies to make sure it was safe to clean up. Then, a specialty cleaning company launched a multistep process to sweep and wash ash off the roof, roadways, courtyards, and patios, bag it up, and dispose of it safely.

Rogers and his team also reviewed the buildings from an engineering point of view, changing filters, replacing security cameras that had burned, and ensuring that all equipment, ductwork, and systems like fire sprinklers were clean and functioning.

While everyone hopes the Villa won’t face another wildfire anytime soon, Borsay wants staff to be even more prepared. He’s looking into creating additional fire instruction for employees. “We’re not going to make them firefighters, but I want to add some basic training so they’re better prepared to keep themselves safe,” he says.

Restoring the frescoes

The outer walls also needed maintenance, including an additional task unique to the Villa: a team of conservators was enlisted to repair the murals painted on the Outer Peristyle that imitate ancient Roman frescoes.

Throughout the years the murals in the Outer Peristyle have been carefully maintained by conservators. They’re usually focused on challenges like repairing bubbles in the paint layers caused by the salty ocean breeze, inpainting sunshine-faded areas, and removing any dirt or abrasions created by people. One of these conservators, Suzanne Morris of Zebala & Partners Art Conservation, first worked on the Outer Peristyle in 2005. She describes the Villa as a “second home.” Morris didn’t know what to expect when she returned to the Villa in April to begin the fire remediation work. “It was surprising how much soot and grime was on the wall,” Morris says, “but nothing was destroyed on the murals.”

The first step for the conservators was to vacuum that soot and grime off all the walls. Next, they methodically wiped down the surface of the murals with wet sponges to make sure they’d removed as much dirt as possible. After that, they could begin inpainting the walls, to highlight the intricate details that make these murals so bright and colorful.

Morris said that coming back to the Palisades after the fires was a difficult experience. “There was a part of me that didn’t want to drive here because I didn’t want to see all the devastation. But to be able to come see this museum that is still intact was a beautiful light at the end of that horrible tunnel,” she says. “It’s incredibly important that it opens so that people can come enjoy it. It’s important that the community still has us.”

A greener future

The fire’s largest impact was on the forest that surrounds the Villa (the plants in the courtyards were unharmed). Rogers and Brian Houck, Getty’s grounds and gardens director, worked with arborists to evaluate the landscape; they also collaborated with a team of civil engineers and geologists who took aerial photographs of the entire site from aircraft flown high above the Villa. Based on these findings, around 1,415 trees were removed due to fire damage—that’s 44 percent of the Villa’s forest.

In February, Getty’s grounds crew also worked to fight erosion to the burned areas caused by heavy rains.

The entire irrigation system was also destroyed; mostly made of PVC plastic, it “melted or vaporized” in the fire, as Houck describes. Brand-new equipment that can better withstand potential future fires will be installed.

Visitors will notice that the views from the Villa have opened up—it’s now easier to see the Pacific Ocean and the site’s “back of house.” But big plans are in store for the grounds. Instead of replanting the same kinds of plants and trees that burned (namely eucalyptus and other non-Mediterranean exotics—great for creating a landscape with an Italian look and feel, but not so great for fire prevention), Houck and his team will be prioritizing native flora that is naturally flame retardant, particularly in areas that visitors don’t see. These new plants will help sustainably rebuild the landscape, resist fire, and create a more robust ecosystem for insects, invertebrates, and animals that comes through the area, like monarch butterflies.

“Our guiding light going forward is what J. Paul Getty said about his theme for the Villa: that it should ‘reflect’ a first-century Roman garden,” Houck says. “So for our landscape coming up, Getty’s vision is our first filter, and then priorities about sustainability, resilience, and preparing for the future all fit into that.”

Camille Kirk, Getty’s director of sustainability, is also spearheading a new project to help visitors understand the damage the fire caused. In the coming months, new signage at the Villa will explain what happened to the landscape and how Getty will help it recover and evolve over time. Some of the burned trees have also been salvaged, perhaps to use in an art installation or furnishings to memorialize the event.

“We want to both respect the visitor experience that shows what it would’ve been like to go to a Roman villa back in the first century, and at the same time, understand that we’re nestled into this greater ecosystem in the Santa Monica Mountains, what that means, and how we need to work with nature, not against it,” Kirk says.

Looking toward the Museum’s future

As the Villa’s cleanup process progressed, teams from across the site began preparing for the reopening. First, the exhibition Ancient Thrace and the Classical World: Treasures from Bulgaria, Romania, and Greece was deinstalled. (If you missed seeing the show in person, watch a tour hosted by Timothy Potts, Maria Hummer-Tuttle and Robert Tuttle Director of the J. Paul Getty Museum.) Then, a new exhibition, The Kingdom of Pylos: Warrior-Princes of Ancient Greece, was installed, to open on June 27. The public programs department has also begun planning events focused on The Kingdom of Pylos. The next Outdoor Classical Theater production, Oedipus the King, Mama!, will open in September.

Meanwhile, institutions around the world have been asking Getty to share advice and strategies for emergency preparedness and protecting cultural heritage. Kirk spearheaded a four-hour workshop at the recent American Alliance of Museums Annual Meeting that convened experts from diverse sectors to share lessons on recovery and resilience in the face of events like the LA fires and Hurricane Katrina.

“We had a number of people coming up afterwards saying: ‘We had no idea there are this many people working in this sector with resources and similar kinds of questions. I’ve been feeling lonely and wondering what to do, and I feel like I have a much better sense of who I could reach out to and who has resources,’” Kirk says. “Now we’re trying to think about what that next step looks like in terms of sharing resources and continuing to build our knowledge cross-sector of how to support each other in resilience and disaster recovery.”

Getty is also working to support Pacific Palisades and Altadena’s recovery with grants, including the LA Arts Community Fire Relief Fund, which raised over $15 million for artists and arts workers affected by the fires, and a $420,000 grant to the Los Angeles Conservancy to lead a community-driven historic resources survey and cultural asset mapping project designed to inform the rebuilding of Altadena.

Returning to the Pacific Palisades

The reopening of the Villa represents months of hard work for Getty staff, and there’s a sense of excitement in the air to welcome back guests.

“I’m deeply grateful to our Getty staff for the care and dedication they’ve shown in readying the Villa to welcome visitors once again. We’re looking forward to seeing people return to the gardens and galleries, especially with the opening of The Kingdom of Pylos,” says Katherine E. Fleming, president and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust. “While work to rebuild the local community continues, I hope the Villa provides some respite and a place for people to reconnect with art and with each other.”

For visitors who haven’t been to the Pacific Palisades area since the fire broke out, the drive to the Villa may be eye-opening. Borsay reassures guests that the Villa still looks lovely, and the art collection is as delightful as ever, but they might still observe the wreckage of the disaster in the surrounding neighborhood. Most of the destroyed houses have not begun to rebuild yet, and hillsides still look burned. “I’ve been driving to and from the Villa since the fire, and you see the devastation in the area. It’s shocking and honestly upsetting,” Borsay says. “But now I look at it and I’m optimistic. I know there’s a long way to go for the neighborhood surrounding us, but there are improvements every day.”

Kirk points out that the Villa has always been deeply connected to natural disaster: its design is based on the Villa dei Papiri, which was buried in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE. The people who lived during that time were certainly familiar with what can happen to belongings, memories, and cultural heritage in the face of destruction, and perhaps we can look to their lived experience.

“I think it’s almost an ironic poignance to go back to the Villa with this understanding of the historical lessons we can learn from our forebearers of resilience, of finding joy, of continuing, of being optimistic, hopeful, and finding ways to build back,” Kirk says. “Hopefully learning lessons and doing it better.”