The Getty Center, the campus above the Sepulveda Pass on Bel Air's western edge, closes to the public on March 15, 2027, and plans to reopen in spring 2028. Most of what is on view this fall closes well before that. The Getty lists nine shows and installations running between now and the closure. Five of them close before March, and four of those five are gone by January 10.
So the final season comes in two parts. The first is what you can see right now, and most of it winds down over the holidays. The second is a smaller set of shows, two of which haven't opened yet, and it runs to the last day.
Most of Part One Closes by January 10
The campus has already shrunk. The North Pavilion, the South Pavilion and the East Pavilion's plaza-level galleries are closed for renovation while the Getty replaces 80 air-handling units and refurbishes galleries ahead of the full closure. With less gallery space, the closing dates of the current shows set the pace. Here they are in order:
- Charles Ross: Spectrum 14 closes November 29, 2026, the Sunday after Thanksgiving.
- Every Minute Is History: Five Views of Los Angeles closes January 3, 2027.
- Instante/revelación: Moments in Mexican Photography also closes January 3.
- The Holy Family at Home closes January 10.
- Reggie Burrows Hodges: A Theater of Passions, an installation on the East Pavilion's upper level, stays until February 28.
The holidays squeeze this run harder than the dates suggest. The Center closes on Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day and New Year's Day, and it closes early on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve. It is also closed every Monday. The last full weekend for both photography shows is December 26 and 27. After that, only the holiday weekend that ends January 3 is left.
The talks follow the same schedule. "When the Holy Family Went Viral," a talk tied to the Holy Family show, is on November 7. November also brings "Canto de Todes" on the 14th, "Oaxacan Recipes and Remembrance" on the 15th and a Getty Supper Club evening, "La Belle Époque," on the 22nd.
Part Two Opens Just Before Thanksgiving and Runs to March 14
Two exhibitions are still on their way. A Light in the Dark: Joseph Wright of Derby opens November 24 on the plaza level of the West Pavilion. Paul R. Williams: Architecture Across the Color Line opens December 15 in the Research Institute Galleries. The Getty describes Williams as the first Black architect licensed in the western United States. The show is the first public display of his archive. It runs alongside Williams exhibitions at LACMA and the USC Fisher Museum of Art, and the three together form the first major museum retrospectives of his work.
Two displays that are already open run to the same final date. Joshua Reynolds's Portrait of Mai and 18th-Century Portraiture is on the plaza level of the West Pavilion, and The Making of a Medieval Manuscript is on its lower level. All four of these second-part shows close on March 14, 2027, a Sunday and the Center's last public day.
The second part has its own talks too. A Joseph Wright talk is set for December 6. The last dated Center event on the calendar is also about Wright. "Shining a New Light on Joseph Wright of Derby's Two Boys with a Bladder" is on Friday, March 12, three days before the doors close.
Admission is free, but every visit needs a timed-entry reservation. Reservations open six weeks ahead. That puts the final weekend of March 13 and 14 on the booking calendar around the end of January, while the first-part shows are already closing.
Saturday Nights Get the Best Parking Rate
Neighbors who come up for a garden walk rather than a full museum day should know how the parking rates line up with the hours. The Center is open 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and on Sunday. On Saturday it stays open until 9 p.m. Parking costs:
- $25 per car or motorcycle for a standard visit
- $15 after 3 p.m.
- $10 after 6 p.m.
- Free after 6 p.m. on Saturdays
On a weekday, the $10 evening rate covers only the last half hour before closing. On a Saturday, the same 6 p.m. cutoff gives you three free hours. Between now and March 14 there are about nineteen Saturdays. That count includes the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and it ends with March 13, the last free Saturday evening before the closure.
Walks in the Central Garden fit those evenings well. The Getty runs free English-language garden tours daily. Its garden page also points visitors to the cactus garden between the East and West Pavilions, which sits right beside the West Pavilion galleries holding the Wright and Reynolds shows.
December Up and Down the Pass
The Getty's Joseph Wright talk on Sunday, December 6, falls on the same day as the Skirball Cultural Center's Hanukkah Festival, which runs from noon to 5 p.m. farther up the pass. Festival tickets go on sale Thursday, November 5, at 10 a.m.
Later that month, Hotel Bel-Air's holiday program includes "Movies Under the Stars" screenings: Elf on December 16, A Christmas Story on December 17 and The Holiday on December 18. Its seasonal cocktail menu started November 1. Those screenings fall in the same week the Williams exhibition opens at the Getty.
What Changes Before the Getty Reopens
The work that follows the closure has already come before the local neighborhood council. The Bel Air Beverly Crest Neighborhood Council looked at the Getty's lower tram and entry project under case CPC-1984-441-PA4. Its Planning and Land Use Committee voted on September 8, 2026, to recommend approval as long as the vertical glass used fritting. Once the fritting was confirmed at the board meeting, the full council voted to recommend approval, according to the council's October 2026 Report to the Community. The project as presented includes a new parking office, café and restrooms, a shade canopy, grand entry stairs and elevators.
The Getty's May 28, 2026 release names the design team:
- Gehry Partners is designing the arrival experience at the lower tram station.
- OLIN is handling the landscape.
- Doppelmayr is building the replacement tram, with a new car and propulsion system, more capacity and shorter waits as the goal.
- WHY Architecture is redesigning the Welcome Hall, adding a large information screen, an expanded bookstore and a new full-service café.
The release says this work is meant to fit Richard Meier and Partners' original design. In a Getty interview, Pierre Ouillet described an arrival that passes through an art installation in the I-405 underpass, with prepaid parking and new wayfinding before visitors reach the tram.
For the year in between, the Getty's April 9, 2026 announcement says the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades stays open and adds a gallery of selected paintings from the Center's collection. A new programming space on Sepulveda Boulevard will host special programs during the closure and stay in use after the Center reopens. Admission to the Villa is also free with a timed-entry reservation.
The Getty's year away will reshape how Bel Air's closest cultural neighbor looks and works when it reopens in 2028. If you own a legacy estate or hillside land near the Sepulveda Pass and want a development-minded view of what institutional projects like this mean for the parcels around them, Amir Jawaherian is available for a private, confidential consultation.
