Press Release

HUNTINGTON’S UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS ANNOUNCED

 

Contemporary art in the Huntington mansion, the history of California wildflowers, and early American needlework highlight a lively year ahead

Left: Clara Mason Fox, “Eschscholzia californica, Silverado Canyon,” 1899, unidentified medium on paper. Collection of Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden. Center: Ricky Swallow, Standing Figure W/ Pockets & Buttons, 2011, patinated bronze. Edition of 3 + 1 AP. Image courtesy the artist; Stuart Shave/Modern Art, London; and Marc Foxx Gallery, Los Angeles. Photo: Fredrik Nilsen. Right: Rebecca Ives Gilman, Ives Family Coat of Arms, 1763, silk, gold, and silver thread on black silk. Promised Gift of Thomas H. Oxford and Victor Gail.

Aug. 9, 2012

 

SAN MARINO, Calif.—The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens announced today its slate of special exhibitions for the coming year. The previously announced pair of Civil War exhibitions presented this fall will be followed by seven new shows on topics ranging from contemporary art to early American needlework, from California wildflowers to 18th-century extra-illustrated books.

 

“Leslie Vance & Ricky Swallow” (Nov. 10, 2012–March 11, 2013) will place paintings and sculpture by the acclaimed contemporary artists in a room of the Huntington Art Gallery, home of the institution’s venerable collection of European art that once served as the residence of Henry E. Huntington and his wife, Arabella. The juxtaposition is intended to inspire people to look with a fresh perspective on the permanent collections of Old Master paintings, Renaissance bronzes, and 18th-century French decorative arts and British portraiture.

 

Spring at The Huntington will be punctuated by a major exhibition on the history of California wildflowers—“When They Were Wild: Recapturing California’s Wildflower Heritage” (March 9 –June 10, 2013) —a collaboration of The Huntington; Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, Claremont, Calif.; and the Theodore Payne Foundation for Wildflowers and Native Plants, Sun Valley, Calif.

 

“Useful Hours: Needlework and Painted Textiles from Southern California Collections” (June 1–Sept. 3, 2013), will explore the development of the art made by young women in their early teens in the United States in the late 18th and early 19th centuries; and “Illuminated Palaces: Extra-Illustrated Books from the Huntington Library,” (July 22–Oct. 21, 2013) will bring to light for the first time The Huntington’s rich collections representing the 18th and 19th century practice of turning books into repositories for original art, prints, autograph letters, and the excised pages of other books.

 

Other exhibitions announced today include those focused on American artists Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) and Maurice Merlin (1909–1947) and the history of the San Marino Ranch (the property now known as The Huntington) in honor of the city of San Marino’s centennial.

[EDITOR’S NOTE: An advance exhibition schedule follows. Information subject to change. High-resolution digital images available on request for publicity use.]

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Exhibition Schedule Through Summer 2013

Now on View

Roger Medearis: His Regionalism
Through Sept. 17, 2012
Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art, Susan and Stephen Chandler Wing

The career of American painter Roger Medearis (1920–2001) is explored in this special exhibition. With a title inspired by the artist’s unpublished book My Regionalism, the exhibition of more than 30 works brings together those given to The Huntington by his widow, Elizabeth (Betty) Medearis, as well as those on loan from private collections and a painting borrowed from the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum. Examples of Medearis’ accomplishments in various media, including paintings, prints, drawings, and sculpture, along with letters and photographs, trace the artist’s career, from his beginnings as a student of Thomas Hart Benton at the Kansas City Art Institute through the development of his own distinctive style in California later in life.


Royals, Courtiers, and Confidants: Early English Portrait Drawings from The Huntington’s Art Collections
Through Oct. 29, 2012
Huntington Art Gallery, Works on Paper Room

As part of their coursework on English cultural history, students from Claremont McKenna College contributed to this intimate exhibition on 16th- and 17th-century portrait drawings. Each student studied a single portrait, examining how it was made and how the subject was represented while conducting research on the portrait’s historical context. Their research forms the basis of the exhibition’s object labels. The 19 works on view include miniature graphite drawings, pastel sketches, and pen and ink drawings by artists such as Peter Lely, William Faithorne, Peter Oliver, and David Loggan. Collectively, these objects—and the students’ research—tell a story of how members of English society chose to portray themselves and how these works are seen by viewers today. “Royals, Courtiers, and Confidants: Early English Portrait Drawings from The Huntington’s Art Collections” is co-organized by Melinda McCurdy, associate curator of British art at The Huntington, and Victoria Sancho Lobis, visiting assistant professor at Claremont McKenna College and curator of the print collection and fine art galleries at the University of San Diego.

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Upcoming

A Just Cause: Voices of the American Civil War
Sept. 22, 2012–Jan. 14, 2013
Library, West Hall

To complement the major photographs exhibition “A Strange and Fearful Interest: Death, Mourning and Memory in the American Civil War,” this exhibition explores the wartime debate on the causes and mission of “this cruel war.” The debate that began long before the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter became increasingly fierce as the war raged on and casualties on both sides piled up. Both sides believed that they were fighting a just war in defense of the sacred legacy of the Revolution, be it independence, the integrity of the Union, or the cause of human rights, all of which inevitably boiled down to the dispute over slavery. The displays present the voices of numerous Americans —Northerners and Southerners, soldiers and civilians, black and white—who defended their own visions of the just cause. Visitors are offered a rare chance to explore these debates preserved in The Huntington’s famous Civil War collections of prints, pamphlets, cartoons, broadsides, sheet music, and private correspondence and diaries of soldiers, chaplains, surgeons, nurses, charity workers, and their families.

 

A Strange and Fearful Interest: Death, Mourning, and Memory in the American Civil War
Oct. 13, 2012–Jan. 14, 2013
MaryLou and George Boone Gallery

Named after a statement made by Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1863—“The field of photography is extending itself to embrace subjects of strange and sometimes of fearful interest”— this major exhibition is the first drawn exclusively from The Huntington’s collection of photographs related to the Civil War, offering an unprecedented opportunity to bring this rare and evocative material to light. The institution’s deep archives relating to the period—begun when Henry E. Huntington purchased three of the “Big Five” collections of Abraham Lincoln materials early in the 20th century— supply the more than 200 works by famed war photographers Mathew Brady, George Barnard, Alexander Gardner, and Andrew J. Russell as well as an immense amount of lithographic and print material selected for the exhibition. The Civil War coincided with the rise of photographic and printing technologies that enabled the wide dissemination of imagery to a rapt audience. “A Strange and Fearful Interest” explores how images explained, reflected, and shaped a national fixation on death and mourning, focusing on key episodes to highlight larger cultural issues. These include the Battle of Antietam as the bloodiest and costliest military engagement of the war; the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the hanging of the conspirators; and the establishment of Gettysburg National Monument and other battlefield sites as national attempts at reconciliation and healing.

 

Alpine Skeletons: Marsden Hartley Silverpoint Drawings
Oct. 20, 2012–Jan. 7, 2013
Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art, Susan and Stephen Chandler Wing

Between September 1933 and March 1934, American artist Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) traveled to Germany. First landing in Hamburg, he wended his way south to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, a village in the Bavarian Alps, producing works that captured the spare geometries of the surrounding mountains. In the 21 rarely exhibited silverpoint drawings on view, drawn from The Huntington’s collections, Hartley rendered the immense rock Alps with delicate lines, transforming them into wispy, airy abstractions that he called “skeletons."


Lesley Vance & Ricky Swallow
Nov. 10, 2012-March 11, 2013
Huntington Art Gallery

“Leslie Vance & Ricky Swallow” places approximately 20 contemporary paintings and sculptures by Los Angeles-based artists Lesley Vance and Ricky Swallow in a room of the Huntington Art Gallery, which displays the institution’s venerable collection of European art and once served as the residence of Henry E. Huntington and his wife, Arabella. Vance and Swallow are a married couple who share a studio and collaborated on the installation in the home where another married couple (Henry and Arabella) assembled a distinctive art collection a century ago. The exhibition is intended to inspire visitors to look with a fresh perspective on the permanent collections of Old Master paintings, Renaissance bronzes, and 18th-century French decorative arts and British portraiture. Co-curated by Catherine Hess, chief curator of European art at The Huntington, and Christopher Bedford, recently appointed Henry and Lois Foster Director of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University in Boston, “Lesley Vance & Ricky Swallow” is accompanied by a publication with essays by the curators and Suzanne Hudson, assistant professor of art history at University of Southern California.

 

Maurice Merlin and the American Scene, 1930–1947
Jan. 19–April 15, 2013
Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art, Susan and Stephen Chandler Wing

Born in Iowa, Maurice Merlin (1909–1947) studied at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1929 to 1931. After moving to Detroit, he was employed by the Federal Government’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) during the Great Depression. Turning to topical subjects like strikes, unemployed workers, and Detroit’s African American community, Merlin addressed the social tensions that faced the city and the nation during the 1930s. This exhibition includes work of fellow Detroit-based artists to shed light on the vibrant art that was often supported by the WPA. After serving in World War II, Merlin moved to Los Angeles and took up a job at an advertising firm. Tragically, he died at the young age of 38, in 1947. With paintings, posters, and watercolors on loan from collections in Los Angeles and Detroit, this is the first museum exhibition devoted primarily to Merlin’s career.

 

Founding Families of the San Marino Ranch
Feb. 16–May 13, 2013
Library, West Hall

The Huntington as we know it today looks quite different from the rural agricultural property owned by Benjamin D. Wilson in 1854. Since then, the San Marino Ranch was owned or managed by a who’s-who of Los Angeles history: Wilson, early mayor of Los Angeles best known for his namesake mountain and observatory; James DeBarth Shorb, who gave the ranch its Italian moniker and turned it into a prominent vineyard before losing it in foreclosure; and George S. Patton Sr., father of Gen. George S. Patton Jr., a close personal friend who managed the property for Henry E. Huntington during the early years. On the occasion of the City of San Marino’s centennial, visitors to this focused exhibition are offered a sense of the Huntington property’s early years, through the papers and photographs of the Wilson, Shorb, and Patton families drawn from The Huntington’s collections.


When They Were Wild: Recapturing California’s Wildflower Heritage
March 9 – June 10, 2013
MaryLou and George Boone Gallery

A collaborative project of The Huntington, Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, and the Theodore Payne Foundation for Wildflowers and Native Plants, “When They Were Wild” interprets the unique diversity of California flora from its origins to its current popularity. California’s rich plant life has captured the imagination of horticulturists, scientists, and artists for more than a century. This diversity has been depicted by a legion of amateur naturalists who were also talented artists, including Alice Brown Chittendon, Clara Mason Fox, and James Milford Zornes. Their illustrations, complemented by herbarium (plant specimen) collections, publications, and ephemera, depict an era when many of these species passed from growing wild into domestication. Some 200 items in the exhibition tell the story of the iconic beauty of California plants and teach about the botanical, ecological, and horticultural nature of native flowers.


Useful Hours: Needlework and Painted Textiles from Southern California Collections
June 1–Sept. 2, 2013
Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art, Susan and Stephen Chandler Wing

Taking its title from a verse stitched in a 1796 sampler by 10-year old Nancy “Anne” Moulton, “Useful Hours” explores the development of needlework and painted textiles in the United States in the late 18th and early 19th centuries through a selection of more than 20 samplers, coats of arms, family trees, mourning pictures, pocketbooks, and narrative painted textiles made primarily by young women in their early teenage years as a preparation for marriage and later life. The exhibition, which includes several exceedingly rare examples of 18th-century American needlework, is drawn in large part from the collection of Victor Gail and Thomas H. Oxford, a promised gift to The Huntington. To provide these surprisingly beautiful, touching, and finely wrought examples with an appropriate historical context, they are juxtaposed with several examples of British needlework, a related painting, American furniture, and other decorative arts objects, along with books and manuscripts from the Huntington’s collections.


Illuminated Palaces: Extra-Illustrated Books from the Huntington Library
July 20–Oct. 21, 2013
Library, West Hall

In the 18th and 19th centuries, historians, bibliophiles, and collectors turned ordinary books into extraordinary “illuminated palaces”—repositories for original art, prints and engravings, maps, autograph letters, and the excised pages of other, more famous books. This process of destruction and transformation, often called “extra-illustration” or “grangerizing” (after its most famous early advocate, the Rev. James Granger, an 18th-century cleric), was once a genteel hobby in the United States and Britain. The Huntington holds hundreds of extra-illustrated books, including the Kitto Bible, which boasts more than 33,000 additional artworks, bulking its original two volumes up to 60. What today might be called “vandalism” or at best “scrapbooking” was highly valued by Henry E. Huntington, who purchased some of the finest specimens of extra-illustration to be found at auction or private sale. This first exhibition to focus on The Huntington’s collection of extra-illustrated histories, Shakespeares, geographies, Bibles, and memoirs is a testament to the desire to collect art and create beautiful books.

 

  

CONTACTS:  Thea M. Page, 626-405-2260, tpage@huntington.org
                         Lisa Blackburn, 626-405-2140, lblackburn@huntington.org

 

About The Huntington
The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens is a collections-based research and educational institution serving scholars and the general public. More information about The Huntington can be found online at huntington.org.

Visitor information
The Huntington is located at 1151 Oxford Rd., San Marino, Calif., 12 miles from downtown Los Angeles. It is open to the public Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday from noon to 4:30 p.m.; and Saturday, Sunday, and Monday holidays from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Summer hours (Memorial Day through Labor Day) are 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Closed Tuesdays and major holidays. Admission on weekdays: $20 adults, $15 seniors (65+), $12 students (ages 12–18 or with full-time student I.D.), $8 youth (ages 5–11), free for children under 5. Group rate, $11 per person for groups of 15 or more. Members are admitted free. Admission on weekends: $23 adults, $18 seniors, $13 students, $8 youth, free for children under 5. Group rate, $14 per person for groups of 15 or more. Members are admitted free. Admission is free to all visitors on the first Thursday of each month with advance tickets. Information: 626-405-2100 or huntington.org.