LOS ANGELES — The Getty Bronze, a Greek statue of a beautiful male athlete with enviable hair that is easily the most celebrated artwork at the Getty Villa, has not been knocked off his pedestal. But he does get a remarkably different treatment — less fanboy, more scholarly — after the extensive, yearlong renovation and reinstallation of the Getty Villa near Malibu, the branch of the Getty Museum dedicated to antiquities that is the former estate of the billionaire oilman J. Paul Getty.

Before the renovation, which was done in stages and marks its completion on April 18, this victorious athlete with a dramatic deep-sea discovery story that has inspired legal claims from the Italian government, was something of a diva looming over a small room of his own. Now he’s part of a new large gallery devoted to the Hellenistic world, dating from the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. to the rise of the Roman Empire in 31 B.C. (And the new pedestal is noticeably slimmer.)

“When you walk into this space, you realize what a wonderful collection of Hellenistic art we have — before, this work was spread out over 10 galleries,” said Timothy Potts, the Getty Museum’s director, who arrived in 2012 with an expertise in antiquities and with strong ideas for improving the Villa’s academic credentials.

One driving force behind the renovation was to put artworks into proper historical context. Mr. Potts and his team have rearranged works in the permanent collection galleries to tell a more chronological story, from 3000 B.C. to 400 A.D., largely presenting Greek works on the first floor and Roman on the second. Gone are the entertaining themes like “gods and goddesses” that mixed figures from different periods in a pantheon of superheroes.