The Last Season on the Hill: What the Getty's Year-Long Closure Actually Changes

For almost thirty years, the only way onto the Getty Center's hilltop campus has been the tram. Cars stop at the base of the hill on Sepulveda Boulevard, riders board a driverless car, and five minutes later they step off into a travertine campus with no street-level entrance to speak of. That arrangement changes on March 15, 2027, when the Getty Center closes to the public for roughly a year. Most of the coverage so far has focused on concert dates and construction timelines. What gets less attention is that the institution isn't just pausing. It's building a permanent foothold at street level and buying property near a future transit stop before it reopens.

One night left on the hill

Five Saturdays anchored the 2026 "Off the 405" season, the Getty's long-running free outdoor concert series that has drawn crowds to the museum courtyard since 2009. Aja monet opened the season on May 30, days after her Carnegie Hall debut. Hunx and His Punx followed in June, then Leenalchi and Horse Lords carried the summer through July. One date remains: Laurel Halo closes the season on August 22, and it is the last full "Off the 405" night before the hill goes quiet.

The format hasn't changed in years and it shouldn't. A DJ set opens the courtyard at 6 p.m., the headliner starts at 7:30, and the galleries stay open late so guests can wander the collection before the music starts. Reservations are free but go fast, typically opening about three weeks before each show. Parking is free after 6 p.m. on concert Saturdays, though the Getty encourages carpooling because that free hour draws a crowd of its own. Trellis Bar and Lounge, the terrace bar that opened in 2025, will be pouring specialty cocktails for the finale, and outside alcohol still isn't allowed on the grounds.

Why this isn't a normal off-season

In an ordinary year, the concert series would return next summer without much fanfare. Not this time. The Getty Center closes to the public on March 15, 2027, and doesn't reopen until spring 2028, which means there's no 2027 season at all. Katherine Fleming, president and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust, told the New York Times that people tend to assume the thirty-year-old campus is newer than it is. In her words, it's "starting to get a little long in the tooth." The fix is priced between $600 million and $800 million, described by the Trust as the most significant modernization since the Richard Meier-designed campus opened in 1997.

What the money is actually for

The renovation centers on the parts of a visit that have quietly annoyed people for years. The tram, unchanged since 1997, gets replaced by a new system from Doppelmayr, the Austrian ski-lift manufacturer, built to carry more passengers per car. The renderings released this spring show a tradeoff worth noting: the new tram appears to have less seating than the current one, traded for standing room. That's a small detail with a real implication. A tram designed for more bodies per trip is a tram built for bigger crowds, and the Getty is timing its reopening for spring 2028, just ahead of the Los Angeles Olympics and Paralympic Games. The lower tram stop is also getting a new plaza and sheltered stairway designed by Gehry Partners, the firm founded by the late architect Frank Gehry, who died in December 2025. Up top, the Welcome Hall is being rebuilt with a new cafe, bookstore, and retail space, and the campus is finally getting a serious upgrade to Wi-Fi and cell service, which has been spotty for years given the hill's elevation above Brentwood.

The building that doesn't close

The detail easiest to miss in the announcements is what happens across the street. The Getty is opening a new programming space on Sepulveda Boulevard, in a building currently under renovation directly opposite the Center's main entrance. It will run public programs during the year the hilltop is dark, and unlike the closure itself, it isn't temporary. The space stays open as a permanent program venue after the Center reopens in 2028. For an institution that has never had a true street-level presence, that's a structural change to how the neighborhood interacts with it, not a stopgap.

The Getty has also acquired a property in Westwood, near the planned Metro stop at Westwood and Wilshire, intended as long-term housing for its scholar programs. Neither move is framed as expansion for its own sake. Both are quiet bets that the institution's footprint in the neighborhood is going to look different in five years than it does today, regardless of what happens on the hill.

Timed to more than construction

The Getty isn't the only Los Angeles cultural institution closing on this clock. The George C. Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits shut to the public this past July for a redesign led by Weiss/Manfredi, with its own reopening set for 2028. Both projects are aimed at the same finish line, the 2028 Summer Olympics and Paralympic Games. Read against that backdrop, the Getty's tram redesign makes more sense. A campus built to move more standing passengers per car, reopening in spring 2028 just as the Olympics arrive, is a campus preparing for a bigger, busier version of itself.

That's the part worth sitting with if you live nearby and have gotten used to the Getty as the quiet option, the place you can show up to on a Tuesday without a plan and have the galleries mostly to yourself. That version of the institution ends with this closure whether or not anyone attends the August 22 show. The next chapter opens with a street-level annex it never had before, a scholar housing investment near a Metro stop that doesn't exist yet, and a tram engineered to move more people up the hill at once.

Before it goes quiet

If you want to catch Laurel Halo on August 22, reserve a spot sooner rather than later. Free tickets to "Off the 405" tend to sell out within days of release, and this is the one the Getty itself has been treating as the season's proper send-off. Bring a jacket once the sun drops behind the hill, and if you're driving, plan to arrive well before the free-parking window at 6 p.m. draws everyone else's cars at the same time.

Whether or not the concert lineup is what brought you here, a hilltop institution quietly building a permanent street-level presence, buying into a neighborhood a mile away, and re-engineering itself for bigger crowds says something about how this stretch of the Westside keeps changing shape, even in the corners that look the most settled. If you're thinking about where you fit into that shape, whether that's Brentwood, Bel Air, or the hills above it, Renée Avedon knows this stretch of the Westside as well as anyone working it. Let's Connect.