
Photo by Hans Gutknecht/MediaNews Group/ Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images.
Under the fog of a winter dawn on January 7, two fires erupted in the mountains north of Los Angeles. Many thought, in our supposedly modern age of high-pressure water systems and aerial firefighting, that urban fires were symptomatic of a bygone era. There was the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, which leapt across the Chicago River and melted steel rail tracks in its path, leaving a third of the city’s population homeless. There was the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904, which led to the first national standards for firefighting equipment. Two years later, in 1906, San Francisco burned: earthquake rubble caught fire while water mains were broken, leaving the city helpless as 490 city blocks burned for three days. These are stories in history books. The 2025 Los Angeles fires shatter an illusion: though California’s wilderness may burn, its cities would remain protected. Climate change devastation, once witnessed only through Angelenos’ phone screens, has now engulfed the city in a thick layer of smoke and ash.
With more than twenty-nine deaths, 12,000 structures destroyed, 40,000 acres burned, 100,000 evacuees, and $250 billion in damages at the time of this writing, the Eaton and Pacific Palisades fires stand as the costliest and most extensive urban fires in California’s history. The timing proved catastrophic: eight months without significant rainfall had left vegetation tinder-dry, and Santa Ana winds gusting to 70 mph, made the fires—whatever caused them—impossible to contain. The Pacific Palisades fire has brought numerous cultural landmarks under threat, including the Getty Villa and Getty Center, with flames reaching the Villa’s property on Tuesday, January 7.
The Getty institutions are supposed to be among the safest places in the world to store art, and their walls house some of the most significant pieces in art history: their collections include Van Gogh’s Irises (1889), Rembrandt’s An Old Man in Military Costume (1630–31), Manet’s Jeanne (Spring) (1881), Pontormo’s Portrait of a Halberdier (1529–30) at the Getty Center; the Greek bronze Victorious Youth (300–100 BCE) and the Roman marble statue Lansdowne Herakles (125 CE) at the Getty Villa. Turner’s Modern Rome – Campo Vaccino (1839), at the Getty Center, seems eerily prophetic—its atmospheric rendering of a city veiled in fog now recalls Los Angeles under siege from wildfire.

Image courtesy The Getty Center.
Still, both buildings and their thousands of priceless objects remain intact. The structures were, after all, built for disasters like these: the Getty Center, like a modern fortress, required 1.2 million square feet of travertine and was quarried from the same source outside Rome used for the Colosseum and St. Peter’s Basilica. Each of the 16,000 travertine blocks are fire-resistant, and rest on isolator bases that can withstand earthquakes up to magnitude 7.5. The Getty Villa, a reimagining of Pompeii’s Villa dei Papiri, was an attempt to recreate a first-century Roman villa with modern defense systems. The Getty Villa’s double-walled construction creates an environmental barrier for the art, and both institutions have air systems that can pressurize the galleries against smoke and ash infiltration. Fire doors can seal off individual galleries, while a sprinkler system with a million-gallon storage reservoir, and grounds with extensive irrigation systems, are ready to provide protective coats of moisture. The tree canopies and grounds are also pruned regularly to deny fuel for fires.
On January 7, the Palisades fire reached the Villa’s grounds. A skeleton crew of emergency staff remained on site to put out fires, while another group worked from a control room in Los Angeles to monitor the security cameras, several of which failed due to the heat. An aerial crew dropped water over the Villa’s ranch house—J. Paul Getty’s original residence, not built with the same fire-resistant construction as the Villa. The perimeter wall caught flames, and rosemary bushes directly above the outdoor classical theater caught fire but quickly burned out. When flames erupted at the museum’s pedestrian gate, Getty security extinguished them in six minutes.
The 2025 Los Angeles fires show how close the nation’s cultural heritage can come to destruction by fire, and the lengths people will go to prevent such loss. Although the Getty’s collections remain protected, Los Angeles’s Altadena art community is grieving its losses. Almost 200 artists have lost their homes, studios, or both to the flames. Among them are Kelly Akashi, Kathryn Andrews, Beatriz Cortez, Kenturah Davis, Alec Egan, Salomón Huerta, John Knuth, T. Kelly Mason, Paul McCarthy, Ruby Neri, Christina Quarles, Ross Simonini, Martine Syms, Camilla Taylor, Diana Thater, and Elizabeth Tremante. The Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena reports that seven of their staff members and teaching artists have lost their homes. Relief efforts are underway across multiple institutions. The Grief and Hope fund aims to raise $750,000 for artists and art workers impacted by the fire. The Armory Fire Relief Fund provides direct support to their displaced staff and teaching artists. Additional support is available through the Emergency Fund for ArtCenter Community Members and The Huntington Disaster Relief Fund, which assists staff, colleagues, and community members of the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens.