These two major L.A. museums are closing to prep for the Olympics – Time Out

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Los Angeles
The La Brea Tar Pits Museum and Getty Center just announced they’ll be shutting their doors for a while. Here’s what you need to know.
As Angelenos try to score tickets for the L.A. Olympics in 2028, Los Angeles itself is getting ready to host the Games. In addition to expanding the Metro system (to accommodate whatever a “car-free Olympics” will look like) and eagerly awaiting the opening of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, today news broke that two of the city’s best museums will be closing for improvements, with plans to reopen in time for L.A. to host the Summer Games.
The La Brea Tar Pits Museum and Brentwood’s Getty Center both announced on Thursday they would be temporarily shutting their doors. The Miracle Mile museum will be open to visitors until early July of this year, while the Getty will remain open until March 2027. Here’s everything you need to know.
The La Brea Tar Pits Museum opened in 1977, but it’s never undergone a major renovation—until now. In fact, Time Out has long praised the “delightfully old-fashioned museum”—officially named the George C. Page Museum—with its simple, instructive displays of items found in the pits, from the bones of a 15,000-pound Columbian mammoth to a wall of 400 wolf skulls.
Now, WEISS/MANFREDI and Gruen Associates have been tapped to rethink the property both inside and out, introducing state-of-the-art exhibition halls and labs you can peer into, an immersive theater, indoor/outdoor educational spaces and a rooftop terrace with views of the surrounding 13-acre park and the museum’s iconic Ice Age frieze. The design will also incorporate the newly created Samuel Oschin Global Center for Ice Age Research. The changes are meant to integrate the museum, active excavation sites, research facilities and surrounding park into a more cohesive campus. To that end, a new kilometer-long pedestrian loop will connect the disparate spaces along a clear path.
If you haven’t been to the museum recently and want to see it in its retro glory, you still have time. It will remain open until July 6. You can visit for free at an edition of KCRW Summer Nights on June 12, which will feature after-hours museum access and programming. Two weeks later, there will be a disco-themed dance party, dubbed “Last Dance at La Brea Tar Pits,” on June 27. And remember that L.A. residents can visit the Page Museum for free on weekdays from 3pm to 5pm.
The museum won’t reopen until 2028, but the silver lining is that the Tar Pits themselves aren’t going anywhere in the interim. The iconic outdoor attraction—including the Lake Pit with its famed family of mammoths—will keep bubbling away. And the pits are bound to attract even more foot traffic than normal, with the opening of the adjacent David Geffen Galleries at LACMA later this month. On-site excavation and scientific research will continue as well, with archaeologists continuing to excavate fossils—as they’ve been doing for nearly 120 years. 
You have more time to visit the Getty Center, which will remain open until March 15, 2027. And while the planned improvements there aren’t billed as a renovation per se (the Richard Meier–designed complex is pretty near perfect, let’s face it), the museum is calling the project the “most significant series of modernization initiatives since its 1997 opening” and promises a general enhancing of the visitor experience. What will this look like? Well, you can expect a renovated Welcome Hall, with a new cafe/bookstore and retail space, as well as refreshed and modernized galleries, new commissions by artists and campus-wide improvements to buildings and public spaces—including better cell service and Wi-Fi connectivity—with an emphasis on sustainability. The electric tram you ride up the hill to the museum will also be getting some upgrades, paired with a redesigned arrival and departure experience that aims to improve accessibility for visitors. The goal is for all the work to be finished in time to reopen in spring 2028, just in time for the Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games.
And in the meantime, the coastal Getty Villa, which reopened just last summer post–Palisades Fire, will remain open. In addition to its extensive collection of Greek and Roman antiquities, it will also temporarily house a selection of paintings from the Getty Center, harking back to when the Pacific Palisades villa was the sole Getty art institution. And across from the Getty Center itself, on Sepulveda Boulevard, a new building will serve as an event space, hosting special programs during the museum’s closure. It will remain open as a dedicated program space, even after the Getty Center is back up and running.
But from now until next spring, the Getty Center isn’t slowing down. It will still host its popular Off the 405 concert series this summer, as well as a full slate of exhibitions. We’re particularly excited about “Paul R. Williams: Architecture Across the Color Line,” dedicated to the groundbreaking Black architect Williams, who helped design the Los Angeles we know today, opening December 16.
Been there, done that? Think again, my friend.
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