Displaying items by tag: huntington library art collections and botanical gardens

Amid a national conversation on race and identity, and an upcoming presidential election, the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens on Tuesday announced a schedule of upcoming exhibitions looking at what it means to be American.

The broad theme, which organizers said will also illuminate how national and international influences have shaped American culture, is to be embodied in six exhibitions in San Marino through early 2017.

Even in the home stretch of his 14-year run as president of the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, Steven Koblik was still learning on the job.

Recently leading a visitor on a tour of some of his favorite things on the 207-acre spread in San Marino, Koblik began with the reading room where scholars writing books come from around the world to comb through manuscripts and rare books from the Huntington's huge collections.

The sculpted heads of Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Joseph Conrad, Dante Alighieri and other great authors and statesmen whose papers and rare editions reside at the Huntington looked down on readers from arched perches above the bookshelves.

The Huntington spent nearly $1 million to buy two paintings and a ceramic sculpture that will fill gaps in the museum’s American art galleries.

At an annual meeting last month, The Huntington’s Art Collectors’ Council purchased two 1936 paintings — “Burlesque” by Milton Avery and “Irises (The Sentinels)” by Pasadena artist Helen Lundeberg — as well as a Sargent Claude Johnson sculpture, “Head of a Boy.”

The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens is expected to announce Wednesday that it is expanding its Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art, adding 5,000 square feet of gallery space by summer 2016.

The oldest portion of the Scott galleries is closed for renovation and the expansion. It is the third project of its kind in seven years at the San Marino museum.

The expansion features a new glass entrance and lobby and eight new rooms for art display, 8,600 square feet in all. It is in keeping with the museum's growing commitment to American art, said the announcement from the Huntington's director of art collections, Kevin Salatino.

For Laura Skandera Trombley, the Pitzer College president who was named Tuesday as the next president of the Huntington Library, Art Collection and Botanical Gardens, it won’t be just a new job but a more visible platform for pursuing the most important theme in her career and for the Huntington’s mission: persuading people living at a time when tech is king that the humanities remain indispensable.

Trombley, who’ll take over from longtime president Steven Koblik on July 1, 2015, said her portfolio will include not just overseeing what goes on at the Huntington, which occupies a 207-acre estate in San Marino.

One man puts humanity in sharp focus; the other said he loves people as long as they are not in front of his camera — they are two of the greatest American photographers of their generation, and their work is being displayed at the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens.

“It’s really a show about two eminent photographers, contemporaries. Both of them are in their 80s, still actively making images,” said Jennifer Watts, curator of photographs at The Huntington.

The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens announced Wednesday that the front portion of its new Steven S. Koblik Education and Visitor Center will open Jan. 14.

A new entrance facade will be flanked by an arrival court filled with California pepper trees and framed by grapevines. A new admissions and membership building will have lockers, an ATM and new restrooms. Other new visitor amenities at the San Marino museum and gardens will include a simple coffee shop serving sandwiches and salads and a 5,000-square-foot store.

The Terra Foundation for American Art announced today that Samuel F. B. Morse’s monumental painting "Gallery of the Louvre" will embark on a multi-year national tour in January. Kicking off at The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, in San Marino, CA (January 24–April 20, 2015), the tour will visit nine museums across the country, including venues in Fort Worth, TX; Bentonville, AR; Detroit, MI; Salem, MA; and Winston-Salem, NC.

“Our founder, Daniel Terra, believed American art was a dynamic and powerful expression of the nation’s history and identity,” explained Terra Foundation President & CEO Elizabeth Glassman.

One of the earliest examples of color woodblock printing — which originated in China — now belongs to The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, the institution announced Thursday.

Prominent publisher, calligrapher and seal-carver Hu Zhengyan first published “The Ten Bamboo Studio Collection of Calligraphy and Pictures” in 1633.

Donors purchased the first edition in honor of The Huntington President Steven Koblik, who will retire on June 30, 2015.

When it first opened 30 years ago, The Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art comprised 50 paintings. But The Huntington has more than 12,000 objects now — and more of them will be on display soon in newly expanded galleries.

The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens added five rooms totaling 5,400 square feet to its Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art. The extra space allowed for 116 new, borrowed or stored objects to be displayed.