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| Founded | 1919 |
|---|---|
| Founders | Henry E. Huntington,Arabella Huntington |
| Type | Collections-based research and educational institution |
| Focus | Research, education |
| Location |
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| Coordinates | 34°07′38″N118°06′36″W / 34.12722°N 118.11000°W /34.12722; -118.11000 |
Area served | Southern California |
President | Karen R. Lawrence |
| Endowment | $728 million (as of June 30, 2023) |
| Employees | 478 |
| Volunteers | 1,200 |
| Website | huntington |
The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, known asThe Huntington,[a] is a collections-based educational and research institution established byHenry E. Huntington andArabella Huntington inSan Marino, California, United States. In addition to the library, the institution houses an extensive art collection with a focus on 18th and 19th centuryEuropean art and 17th to mid-20th centuryAmerican art. The property also has approximately 120 acres (49 ha) of specialized botanical landscaped gardens, including the "Japanese Garden", the "Desert Garden", and the "Chinese Garden".
As a landowner,Henry Edwards Huntington (1850–1927) played a major role in the growth ofSouthern California. Huntington was born in 1850, inOneonta, New York, and was the nephew and heir ofCollis P. Huntington (1821–1900), one of the famous"Big Four" railroad tycoons of nineteenth centuryCalifornia history. In 1892, Huntington relocated toSan Francisco with his first wife, Mary Alice Prentice, and their four children. In 1902, he relocated from the financial and political center ofNorthern California,San Francisco, to the state's newer southern major metropolis,Los Angeles. In 1903, he purchased the 600 acres (240 ha) "San Marino Ranch" from James DeBarth Shorb Jr (1870–1907) for $240,000. He later purchased other large tracts of land in thePasadena andLos Angeles areas ofLos Angeles County for urban and suburban development. He divorced Mary Alice Prentice in 1906. He was one of the founders of the City of San Marino which was incorporated on April 25, 1913. On July 16, 1913, he married his uncle's widow, Arabella Huntington (1851–1924). As president of thePacific Electric Railway Company, the regionalstreetcar andpublic transit system for the Los Angeles metropolitan area and southern California and also of theLos Angeles Railway Company, (later theSouthern California Railway), he spearheaded urban and regional transportation efforts to link together far-flung communities, supporting growth of those communities as well as promoting commerce, recreation and tourism.
Huntington's interest in art was influenced in large part by Arabella, and with art experts to guide him, he benefited from a post-World War I European market that was "ready to sell almost anything". Before his death in 1927, Huntington amassed "far and away the greatest group ofeighteenth-century British portraits ever assembled by any one man". In accordance with Huntington's will, the collection, then worth $50 million, was opened to the public in 1928.[1]
On October 17, 1985, a fire erupted in an elevator shaft of the Huntington Art Gallery and destroyedSir Joshua Reynolds's 1777 portrait ofMrs. Edwin Lascelles. After a year-long, $1 million refurbishing project, the Huntington Gallery reopened in 1986, with its artworks cleaned of soot and stains. Most of the funds for the cleanup and refurbishing of theGeorgian mansion and its artworks came from donations from the Michael J. Connell Foundation, corporations and individuals.[2] Both the Federal art-supporting establishment of theNational Endowment for the Arts and theNational Endowment for the Humanities gave emergency grants, the former of $17,500 to "support conservation and other related costs resulting from a serious fire at the Gallery of Art",[3] and the latter of $30,000 to "support the restoration of several fire-damaged works of art that depict the story of Western culture."[4]
On September 5, 2019, The Huntington kicked off a year-long celebration of its centennial year with exhibitions, special programs, initiatives, a special Huntington 100th rose, and a float in the 2020Rose Parade in nearbyPasadena, California.
The executive leaders of The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens are:[5]
With an endowment of more than $700 million (and half a billion dollars raised between 2001 and 2013), the Huntington is among the wealthiest cultural institutions in the United States. It has undertaken major restorations and construction including a $60 million education and visitors center opened in 2015. In 2022 The Huntington received 1,014,000 visitors and had 54,000 member households. It hosted 1,360 readers and 131 scholars to conduct research within the collections and served 15,994 students through programs, classes, and site visits.[6][7]
The library building was designed in 1920 by the southern California architectMyron Hunt[8] in theMediterranean Revival style. Hunt's previous commissions for Mr. and Mrs. Huntington included the Huntington's residence in San Marino in 1909, and theHuntington Hotel in 1914. The library contains a substantial collection of rare books and manuscripts, concentrated in the fields of British and American history, literature, art, and the history of science. Spanning from the 11th century to the present, the library's holdings contain 7 million manuscript items, over 400,000 rare books, and over a million photographs, prints, and otherephemera. With the 2006 acquisition of theBurndy Library, a collection of nearly 60,000 items, the Huntington became one of the top institutions in the world for the study of thehistory of science and technology.
Highlights include one of elevenvellum copies of theGutenberg Bible known to exist, theEllesmere manuscript ofChaucer (ca. 1410), and letters and manuscripts byGeorge Washington,Thomas Jefferson,Benjamin Franklin, andAbraham Lincoln.[9] It is the only library in the world with the first twoquartos ofHamlet; it holds the manuscript ofBenjamin Franklin'sautobiography,Isaac Newton's personal copy of hisPhilosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica with annotations in Newton's own hand, the first seven drafts ofHenry David Thoreau'sWalden,John James Audubon'sBirds of America, and first editions and manuscripts from authors such asCharles Bukowski,Jack London,Alexander Pope,William Blake,Mark Twain, andWilliam Wordsworth.[10] The library also holds the papers and drafts ofKent Haruf, an American novelist fromColorado.[11] On December 14, 2022, the library announced they had acquired the archive of American authorThomas Pynchon.[12]
Researchers over age 18 may use the Library's reading rooms to consult the collection upon establishing a research need that requires the use of The Huntington's collections, identifying specific materials, and presenting the required form(s) of identification at orientation.[13] Through a rigorous peer-review program, the institution awards approximately 150 grants to scholars in the fields of history, literature, art, and the history of science, medicine, and technology. The Huntington also hosts numerous scholarly events, lectures, conferences, and workshops.[10]
In September 1991, then-director William A. Moffett announced that the library's photographic archive of theDead Sea Scrolls would be available to all qualified scholars, not just those approved by the international team of editors that had so long limited access to a chosen few. The collection consists of 3,000 photographs of all the original scrolls.[14][15]
Through a partnership with theUniversity of Southern California, the library has established two research centers: theUSC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute and theHuntington-USC Institute on California and the West.
The Huntington's collections are displayed in permanent installations housed in the Huntington Art Gallery and Virginia Steele Scott Gallery of American Art. Special temporary exhibitions are mounted in the MaryLou and George Boone Gallery, with smaller, focused exhibitions displayed in the Works on Paper Room in the Huntington Art Gallery and the Susan and Stephen Chandler Wing of the Scott Galleries. In addition the gallery also hosts different exhibitions of photography throughout the year including those about different social and political subjects.
The European collection, consisting largely of 18th- and 19th-century British & French paintings, sculptures and decorative arts, is housed in The Huntington Art Gallery, the original Huntington residence. The permanent installation also includes selections from the Arabella D. Huntington Memorial Art Collection, which containsItalian andNorthern Renaissance paintings and a spectacular collection of 18th-century Frenchtapestries, porcelain, and furniture. Some of the best known works in the European collection includeThe Blue Boy byThomas Gainsborough,Pinkie byThomas Lawrence, andMadonna and Child byRogier van der Weyden.
Complementing the European collections is the Huntington's American art holdings, a collection of paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures, and photographs dating from the 17th to the mid-20th century. The institution did not begin collecting American art until 1979, when it received a gift of 50 paintings from the Virginia Steele Scott Foundation. Consequently, The Virginia Steele Scott Gallery of American Art was established in 1984. In 2009, the Virginia Steele Scott Galleries were expanded, refurbished, and reinstalled. The new showcase, a $1.6 million project designed to give the Huntington's growing American art collection more space and visibility, combines the original, 1984 American gallery with the Lois and Robert F. Erburu Gallery, a modern classical addition designed by Los Angeles architectFrederick Fisher.[16] Highlights among the American art collections includeBreakfast in Bed byMary Cassatt,The Long Leg byEdward Hopper,Small Crushed Campbell's Soup Can (Beef Noodle) byAndy Warhol, andGlobal Loft (Spread) byRobert Rauschenberg. As of 2014, the collection numbers some 12,000 works, ninety percent of them drawings, photographs and prints.[17]
In 2014, the library acquired theMillard Sheets muralSouthern California landscape (1934), the dining room wall painting originally painted for homeowners Fred H. and Bessie Ranke in theHollywood Hills of Los Angeles.[18]
In 1999, the Huntington acquired the collection of materials relating to Arts and Crafts artist and designerWilliam Morris amassed by Sanford and Helen Berger, comprising stained glass, wallpaper, textiles, embroidery, drawings, ceramics, more than 2,000 books, originalwoodblock prints, and the complete archives of Morris's decorative arts firmMorris & Co. and its predecessorMorris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. These materials formed the foundation for the 2002 exhibit "William Morris: Creating the Useful and the Beautiful".[19]
In 2005, actorSteve Martin gave $1 million to the Huntington to support exhibitions and acquisitions of American art, with three-quarters of the money to be spent on exhibitions and the rest on purchases of artworks.[20] In 2009,Andy Warhol's paintingSmall Crushed Campbell's Soup Can (Beef Noodle) (1962) as well as group of the artist'sBrillo Boxes were donated by the estate of Robert Shapazian, the founding director ofGagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills.[21] In 2011, a $1.75 million acquisition fund for post-1945 American art was established by unidentified patrons in honor of the late Shapazian. The first purchase from the fund was the paintingGlobal Loft (Spread) (1979) byRobert Rauschenberg.[22]
In 2012, the museum acquired its first major work by an African-American artist when it purchased a 22-foot-long carved redwood panel from 1937 by sculptorSargent Claude Johnson.[23]
In October 2023, the museum unveiled a 320-year-old, 3,000 square feet (280 m2) Japanese home once owned by ashōya (village head). From 2018 to 2023, craftspeople carefully disassembled the house, labeled, cleaned, and repaired each part, reassembled the house in a Japanese warehouse, refitted the house to US building codes, disassembled it again, and reassembled it in California. Curator Robert Hori likened the whole process to building a "giant model airplane."[24]
The Huntington'sbotanical gardens cover 120 acres (49 ha) and showcase plants from around the world. Huntington worked to make them thrive in the generous California climate. Today his many projects of horticulture live on, providing opportunities for botanical research and for enjoyment.[25] The gardens are divided into more than a dozen themes, including the Australian Garden, Camellia Collection, Children's Garden,Desert Garden, Herb Garden,Japanese Garden, Lily Ponds, North Vista, Palm Garden,Rose Garden, theShakespeare Garden, Subtropical and Jungle Garden, and theChinese Garden (Liu Fang Yuan 流芳園 or the Garden of Flowing Fragrance).
The Rose Hills Foundation Conservatory for Botanical Science has a large tropical plant collection, as well as acarnivorous plants wing. The Huntington has a program to protect and propagate endangered plant species. In 1999, 2002, 2009, 2010, 2014, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2025 specimens ofAmorphophallus titanum, or the odiferous "corpse flower", bloomed at the facility. There were a total of fifteen corpse flowers bloomed at Huntington since 1999. Three flowers opened in July 2021.
The Camellia Collection, recognized as an International Camellia Garden of Excellence, includes nearly eighty differentcamellia species and some 1,200 cultivated varieties, many of them rare and historic. The Rose Garden contains approximately 1,200cultivars (4,000 individual plants) arranged historically to trace the development of roses from ancient to modern times.
AChinese garden, the largest outside of China,[6] was dedicated on February 26, 2008, after artisans fromSuzhou, China spent some six months at Huntington to construct the first phase of the newest facility. On 12 acres (4.9 ha) at the northwest corner of the Huntington, the garden features man-made lakes ("Pond of Reflected Greenery" and "Lake of Reflected Fragrance") with pavilions connected by bridges. Unique Chinese names are assigned to many of the facilities in the garden, such as thetea house, known as the "Hall of the Jade Camellia". Other pavilions are the "Love for the Lotus Pavilion", "Terrace of the Jade Mirror", and "Pavilion of the Three Friends". The initial phase cost $18.3 million to build.
The second phase, which includes the "Clear and Transcendent Pavilion", "Lingering Clouds Peak" with a waterfall, Waveless Boat, "Crossing through Fragrance" bridge and the "Cloud Steps" bridge, opened on March 8, 2014.[26] There were other pavilions, including the "Flowery Brush Studio", and structures completed under phase two. A place to display its large collections ofpenjing andbonsai has completed.[27]
TheDesert Garden, one of the world's largest and oldest outdoor collections ofcacti and othersucculents, contains plants from extreme environments, many of which were acquired by Henry E. Huntington and William Hertrich (the garden curator). One of the Huntington's most botanically important gardens, the Desert Garden brings together a plant group largely unknown and unappreciated in the beginning of the 1900s. Containing a broad category ofxerophytes (aridity-adapted plants), theDesert Garden grew to preeminence and remains today among the world's finest, with more than 5,000 species.
In 1911, art dealerGeorge Turner Marsh (who also created theJapanese Tea Garden at theGolden Gate Park) sold his commercial Japanese tea garden to Henry E. Huntington to create the foundations of what is known today as the Japanese Garden. The garden was completed in 1912 and opened to the public in 1928. According to historian Kendall Brown, the garden consists of three gardens: the original stroll garden withkoi-filled ponds and adrum or moon bridge, the raked-gravel dry garden added in 1968, and the traditionally landscaped tea garden.[28]
In addition, the gardens feature a large bell, the authentic ceremonial teahouse Seifu-an (the Arbor of Pure Breeze), a fully furnished Japanese house, the Zen Garden, and the bonsai collections with hundreds of trees. The Bonsai Courts at the Huntington is the home of the Golden StateBonsai Federation Southern Collection. Another ancient Japanese art form can be found at the Harry HiraoSuiseki Court, where visitors can touch the suiseki or viewing stones.
The Huntington Botanical Gardens were honored with a postal stamp as a part of the American Gardens stamps on May 13, 2020. The Desert Garden was featured.[29]
The gardens are frequently used as a filming location.[30] Footage shot there has been included in:
"Garden Song" by singer-songwriterPhoebe Bridgers mentions the Huntington by name.
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Footnotes
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