"The rapid growth of the collections made possible by J. Paul Getty's bequest in 1976 could not have been imagined when the Getty Museum opened in 1954, or even when the Villa building opened in Malibu in 1974.

Since the early 1980s hundreds of important new works of art have been acquired in the areas of the Museum's three traditional interests, antiquities, French furniture and decorative arts, and European paintings, and thousands more have been acquired to form four new collections - drawings, illuminated manuscripts, European sculpture, and photographs.".

"This revised and updated Handbook of the Collections includes many major objects acquired since 1997, when the Getty Museum at the Getty Center opened in a dazzling new setting on a hilltop in the Santa Monica mountains. Readers who have not been among the millions of visitors to the new site will find this Handbook an inducement for coming to Los Angeles; for those who have been to the Center, may it recall the experience and enrich their recollection."--BOOK JACKET.