Getty

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa spoke publicly for the first time Monday about the breakup of his 20-year marriage, saying he was responsible for the split even as he refused to talk about what caused it. In a somber meeting with reporters at City Hall, Villaraigosa declined to answer questions about whether the break with his wife, Corina, was triggered by another romantic relationship.

Surprisingly, little has changed at the Eames House since 1949, when Charles and Ray Eames designed their Pacific Palisades home and studio as a model of affordable modern living. Most of the objects they lived with remain in place at the two-part, rectangular structure on a bluff overlooking the ocean. Charles died in 1978; his wife and professional partner passed away 10 years later. But they are remembered for their creative use of materials and innovative design of architecture, furniture and industrial products.

The J. Paul Getty Trust is being told once more that its money ? this time $44.9 million ? may be no good in Great Britain, where authorities have blocked the sale of a prized landscape painting of Rome by J.M.W. Turner that the Getty appeared to have bought in a July auction in London. Britain's culture minister, Ed Vaizy, announced Wednesday that the required export license for "Modern Rome ? Campo Vaccino," which Turner painted in 1839, will be held up through Feb. 2, and possibly until Aug. 1, to give potential buyers who want to keep the painting on British soil a chance to match the Getty's bid. The Getty bid for the Turner knowing the sale could be negated, as happened in 2004, when the National Gallery of London was able to match the $46.6-million price the Getty had agreed to pay two years earlier to buy Raphael's "Madonna of the Pinks" from the Duke of Northumberland.

"Everything Loose Will Land" has landed. And its timing could hardly be better. The exhibition at the MAK Center in West Hollywood, curated by UCLA architectural historian and critic Sylvia Lavin, is a wry study of the ways Los Angeles artists and architects worked with, leaned on, stole from and influenced one another in the 1970s. In a larger sense, it charts the way Southern California architects threw off the influence of establishmen Modernism and helped remake the profession in that decade.

"LESSON plans instructing us about art are of decidedly lesser concern": From the looks of Christopher Knight's article ["Reassembly Required," Feb. 11], a primary reason for vilifying Barry Munitz was his dedication to making the Getty into an educational institution, not just an isolated Taj Mahal museum complex in one of the most economically upscale neighborhoods in the world. I hope the Getty trustees will not go back to an "art only" philosophy. That would truly cheapen the Getty's mission.

The J. Paul Getty Museum has spent the last five years making amends for acquiring looted antiquities and trying to distance itself from a culture of rapacious and corrupt collecting. Stricter rules on acquisitions have been put in place. Nearly 50 objects in the museum's possession - valued at many millions of dollars - have been returned since 2007 to their homelands. This month, Getty officials announced that they would voluntarily return to Sicily a terra cotta head of Hades, framed with lush curls, after the museum's curators realized it matched fragments of curls from an archaeological site that has been heavily looted in the past.

The Getty Museum announced Monday that it would cut 34 jobs, at least 10 of them through layoffs, with the goal of "realizing savings through more effective and efficient operations," a staff memo from Director James Cuno said. The bulk of the cuts will be in the museum's education program. Cuno said the museum would turn the paid positions of "gallery teacher" into duties for docents, who are volunteers. Administrative and "project focused" staff positions in the education department also will be cut. Other jobs in the exhibitions department and imaging services also will be eliminated.

SICILY, Italy - Two years ago, the J. Paul Getty Museum ended a lengthy dispute with Italian cultural authorities by returning a towering limestone and marble statue of a Greek goddess to Sicily. The sculpture is now the pride of the relatively modest Museo Archeologico in Aidone - and by far its biggest attraction. The tiny hilltop town in central Sicily, near an excavation of the ancient city of Morgantina, is also the home of a Hellenistic silver collection repatriated in 2010 by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The "Belles Heures" of the Duke of Berry -- a prime example of French medieval manuscript illumination and a highly prized possession of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York -- will be on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum from Nov. 18 to Feb. 8. And thanks to the Met's recent publication of a facsimile edition and related conservation work, which required dissembling the sumptuously illustrated prayer book, visitors will be able to see much...

How do you measure a city's cultural cache, or its reputation for serious art versus fun in the sun? The Getty has tried to do just that by commissioning multiple surveys related to its $10-million, decade-in-the-making, region-wide initiative Pacific Standard Time. On the whole, the surveys -- involving about 14,000 responses -- show that PST gave Los Angeles a bit of a boost in its reputation as an arts capital. Getty communications chief Ron Hartwig said the surveys, which relied on different population samplings and methodologies (and were vetted by the Getty's in-house metrics guru Tim Hart)

Collecting rare works that include Italy's Giotto di Bondone and Pacino di Bonaguida, art history expands at the Getty to incorporate manuscript paintings as an essential feature of the early Renaissance story. "Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance: Painting and Illumination, 1300-1350," together with its first-rate catalog, is among the most important in an American museum this year. J. Paul Getty Museum, 1200 Getty Center Drive, (310) 440-7300, through Feb. 10. Closed Mondays. http://www.getty.edu

The curator of a major architecture exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art says he is concerned it will be canceled in advance of its planned June 2 opening. “A New Sculpturalism: Contemporary Architecture from Southern California” is one of the central exhibitions in the Getty's new architecture series “Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A. " Organized by Christopher Mount, who is identified in MOCA materials as a "guest curator" and not a full-time museum employee, it is scheduled to run through Sept.

A film series titled "In Tokyo," in conjunction with the exhibition "Japan's Modern Divide: The Photographs of Hiroshi Hamaya and Kansuke Yamamoto," will run at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center on the weekends of April 20-21 and 27-28. The six films in the series take a different look at the city of Tokyo, from the pre-WWII era to its post-war reemergence. The lineup for April 20 will feature Hiroshi Shimizu's 1936 "Mr. Thank You" and Akira Kurosawa's 1948 "Drunken Angel. " April 21 will see Yasujiro Ozu's 1953 "Tokyo Story," which last year topped the magazine Sight & Sound's poll of directors for the greatest film of all time.

When British authorities the other day denied an export license for a 15th-century Flemish manuscript acquired last December by the J. Paul Getty Museum at a London auction, few could have been surprised. Stopping the export of exceptional works of art from the United Kingdom is business as usual for the government's catch-all Department for Culture, Media and Sport . Why? Often, as in this particular case, for no defensible reason. ART: Can you guess the high price?

There are at least three great reasons to see "Sicily: Art and Invention Between Greece and Rome," the newly opened antiquities exhibition at the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades. A major sculpture anchors each of the show's three rooms, and together they tell an accelerating story of artistic and social power on the ancient Mediterranean island. Chronologically, the first is a straightforward male torso, his finely chiseled marble body quietly brimming with latent energy. Second comes a preening charioteer, physically just larger than life but expressively very much so. And third is a depiction of a minor god with major fertility on his mind, his powerful physicality an embodiment of the contortions of carnal lust, both corporeal and psychological.

A valuable 15th century Flemish manuscript acquired by the J.Paul Getty Museum late last year has been placed under an export embargo by British authorities, who hope to keep the object in the United Kingdom.  Britain's cultural minister Ed Vaizey has put a temporary export bar on the manuscript, known as "Roman de Gillion de Trazegnies. " The export bar will prevent the object from leaving Britain while authorities attempt to raise the money needed to keep it in the country. In a statement Vaizey said that it "would be wonderful if the extra time granted by the export allows a buyer to come forward and ensure it remains in a UK collection.” PHOTOS: Arts and culture by The Times In a statement sent to The Times, Getty Director Timothy Potts said "this is normal procedure when purchasing works of art in the United Kingdom.

Four prized artifacts from the J. Paul Getty Museum in L.A. were returned to Italy on Tuesday, the first of 40 works to be handed over by the Getty as a result of Italy's efforts to recover antiquities it says were looted and sold to museums. Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli announced that the four works, which he said were insured for about $425 million, would be distributed to Italian museums.

An Italian judge ordered the seizure Thursday of the J. Paul Getty Museum's iconic bronze statue of an athlete, citing "grave negligence" in the museum's acquisition of the ancient statue in 1977. The ruling marks the first time an Italian court has demanded the return of the statue, which for decades has been the subject of heated debate between the museum and Italy's culture ministry, which claims the statue was illegally exported from Italy. The Getty vowed Thursday to appeal the ruling to Italy's highest court, noting that previous Italian courts have thrown out Italy's demand for the statue, which was found in international waters in 1964 and later smuggled out of the country.

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but this one has inspired many more, because it has become a departure point for how Europeans became acquainted with Asia. When the Getty acquired an 17th century drawing by Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens, "Man in Korean Costume," at a 1983 auction, it was already well known among the cognoscenti. Then six years ago Getty curator Stephanie Schrader learned that it had inspired two books in Korea - a bestselling novel in 1993 and a nonfiction volume by a Jesuit historian in 2004.

The Getty Museum is introducing a new parking program that will allow visitors to visit both the Getty Center in Brentwood and the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades on the same day and only pay once for parking. The new rule is scheduled to go into effect Saturday. Parking at either location currently costs $15. If visitors want to experience both sites on the same day, they would have to pay a total of $30 per vehicle. Under the new program, visitors will only have to pay $15 once and obtain a coupon that is good for same-day complimentary parking at the other Getty.