A Grand Day Out, to quote Wallace & Gromit

Jean Paul Getty (/ˈɡɛti/; December 15, 1892 – June 6, 1976) was an American-born British industrialist. He founded the Getty Oil Company, and in 1957 Fortune magazine named him the richest living American, while the 1966 Guinness Book of Records named him as the world's richest private citizen, worth an estimated $1.2 billion (approximately $9.05 billion in 2017). [wiki] To put this in perspective, Forbes states Bill Gates’ net worth today is $91.9 billion, making J. Paul a pauper. But $9.05 B was enough to fund the land purchase and building (completed in 1997) of the extraordinary Getty Museum in Brentwood — the site of the 1994 murder of O.J. Simpson’s ex-wife, Nicole. Luckily the Sun was overnight in LA so I had time to get together with my cousin Joan née Nash and her husband, Jim, who took me to the Getty for the day, where we walked over 8,000 steps (so says my phone) around the vast museum campus. Entrance to the museum pavilions, sculpture park and grounds is free (parking costs $15) and the Getty Foundation hosts educational and cultural programs continually. Getty’s personal collections range from antiquities to 500 years of painting to modern sculpture and photography, and it would take days to see everything. Getty was known to be cheap — but he put his mega-wealth to good use. Here’s a sampling. What the well-dressed teenage museum goers are wearing these days: