Upcoming Exhibitions
Evolving Ideas: Midcentury Printmakers Explore Process
Oct. 2, 2010–Jan. 3, 2011Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art, Susan and Stephen Chandler WingAmerican artists’ innovative and unconventional printmaking techniques in the years during and just following World War II come to light in “Evolving Ideas: Midcentury Printmakers Explore Process.” Drawn from The Huntington’s permanent collection and the print collection of Hannah S. Kully, a promised gift to the institution, many of the approximately 25 visually evocative prints by six artists in the exhibition show the influence of European Surrealism as well as a desire to experiment with process that resulted from printmakers’ experience working in the collaborative creative environment of the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression. Sue Fuller (b. 1914), for example, pressed an old lace collar into a prepared etching plate to create the basis for a dynamic, modernist bird in
Hen (1945). Each of the prints is shown with preliminary drawings, early states, or impressions of the same print interpreted in different colors, providing insight into artists’ evolving ideas about printmaking at midcentury.
Beauty and Power: Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes from the Peter Marino Collection
Oct. 9, 2010–Jan. 24, 2011MaryLou and George Boone GalleryThe Huntington is the first U.S. venue for “Beauty and Power: Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes from the Peter Marino Collection” a rare look at approximately 20 bronze statuettes made from about 1500 to the mid-18th century in Italy, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. Since antiquity, small bronzes delighted and engaged viewers who contemplated their beauty, erudite subject matter, and inventive compositions. The exhibition displays publicly for the first time New York architect Peter Marino’s private collection of prime examples by such artists as Giovanni Battista Foggini (1652–1737) and Michel Anguier (ca. 1613–1686). Marino is one of a long line of sophisticated collectors who have avidly assembled collections of these sculptures since the Renaissance. His collection complements The Huntington’s holdings of related works by Giambologna (1529–1608), Hubert Gerhard (1540–1620), and other masters of the period, some of which will be on view in the exhibition. “Beauty and Power” opened at the Wallace Collection, London, in April 2010 and will be presented at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts in February 2011. It is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog reflecting new research on the works.
Charles Bukowski: Poet on the Edge
Oct. 9, 2010–Feb. 14, 2011Library, West Hall
Los Angeles writer Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) was one of the most original voices in 20th-century American literature. In his poetry and prose, Bukowski used experience, emotion, and imagination, along with violent and sexual imagery, to capture life at its most raw and elemental. With unflinching honesty, he spoke for the social outcasts—the drunks, prostitutes, addicts, lay-abouts, and petty criminals—as well as those who are simply worn down by life. The most comprehensive exhibition on the writer ever undertaken, “Charles Bukowski: Poet on the Edge” includes corrected typescripts of Bukowski’s poems and his screenplay
Barfly, made into a film in 1987, starring Faye Dunaway and Mickey Rourke. There are also early periodicals containing his poetry and rare special editions of his writings, including the autobiographical work,
Ham on Rye (1982), published by John Martin, proprietor of the Black Sparrow Press, as well as memorabilia and photographs of Bukowski. The exhibition includes items on loan from Bukowski’s widow, Linda, as well as material from The Huntington’s Bukowski papers, donated by her.
Goya’s Prints from The Huntington’s Art Collections (Working title)
Jan. 29–Mar. 7. 2011Huntington Art Gallery, Works on Paper Room An installation of about a dozen prints by Spanish artist Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828) drawn from The Huntington’s art collections coincides with the temporary display of the artist’s haunting, powerful, and psychologically penetrating oil portrait of the Marqués de Sofraga (1795), on loan from the San Diego Museum of Art. Because of Goya’s uncompromising portrayal of his times and his belief that the artist’s vision is more important than tradition, Goya is often called “the first of the moderns.” The exhibition includes examples of his famous
Los Caprichos print series, a condemnation of the follies and foolishness in the Spanish society in which he lived, as well as a series known as
Los Desastres de la Guerra (Disasters of War), a visual protest of the brutal repression of French imperial forces in Spain that triggered the Spanish War of Independence.
Taxing Visions: Financial Episodes in Late 19th-Century American Art
Jan. 29–May 30, 2011Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art, Susan and Stephen Chandler Wing
Taxes, rent, economic depression, and financial inequity are the subject matter in the visually provocative paintings and works on paper explored in “Taxing Visions: Financial Episodes in Late 19th-Century American Art.” Although the late 19th century is identified artistically with leisure-laden landscapes, abundant still lifes, and class-conscious official portraits, American artists working in a variety of stylistic idioms reckoned with the financial panics and occupational turmoil that marked the Reconstruction, Gilded Age, and early Progressive eras. The approximately 30 paintings, drawings, and prints in this focused exhibition are drawn from museums across the country and demonstrate with sometimes startling clarity the experience of economic downturn, ultimately picking up where facts, figures, and the printed word leave off. The work of more than a dozen artists is represented, including that of David Gilmour Blythe, John George Brown, James Henry Cafferty, William Michael Harnett, George Inness, William Sidney Mount, and Thomas Waterman Wood. The exhibition is organized jointly by The Huntington and the Palmer Museum of Art, Pennsylvania State University, where it will be on view Sept. 28—Dec. 19, 2010. An illustrated catalog will accompany the exhibition.
Three Fragments of a Lost Tale: Sculpture and Story by John Frame
March 12–June 20, 2011
MaryLou and George Boone Gallery Since 2006, California sculptor John Frame (b. 1950) has been working toward the creation of a stop-motion animated drama featuring an eclectic cast of fully articulated characters composed of found materials and meticulously carved wood. These figures build upon the distinctive, often theatrical stationary sculptures Frame has created throughout his career, but the works on view in “Three Fragments of a Lost Tale: Sculpture and Story by John Frame” interact in a short film set in a curious and complex world. The exhibition includes sculptural figures, multiple stage settings, still photographs, and animated film vignettes. Frame’s longstanding interest in The Huntington’s rich holdings of works by William Blake (1757–1827) is reflected in a concurrent installation curated by Frame in the Works on Paper room of the Huntington Art Gallery. Frame’s first museum exhibition since an acclaimed 2005 presentation at the Long Beach Museum of Art, “Three Fragments of a Lost Tale” is accompanied by an illustrated catalog featuring an essay by art critic David Pagel.
Reassessing the Regency: Elegance, Excess, and Revolutions in England, 1811–20
April 23–Aug. 1, 2011Library, West HallRegency England (the period between 1811 and 1820, when George III was deemed unfit and his son ruled as prince regent) generally brings to mind Jane Austen’s world of elegant country house parties and mannered village society, or the extravagant, licentious activities of the prince regent and his aristocratic Carlton House set. But beneath this calm upper-class surface lay a far more complex and turbulent world: England’s victory over Napoleonic France at Waterloo left her the most powerful nation on earth, yet at home, growing clamor for political reform met with fierce government repression. Economic depression, famine, and the unemployment caused by industrialization created wrenching poverty for the working classes. Advances in science and technology transformed the everyday nature of English life; aesthetic refinement revolutionized fashion, manners, and the decorative arts; and the years from 1811 to 1820 saw breathtaking new work by Austen, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, Sir Walter Scott, and other British literary greats. In “Reassessing the Regency,” selections from The Huntington’s rich collection of rare books, manuscripts, prints, and drawings relating to the period commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Regency decade.
The House that Sam Built: Sam Maloof and Art in the Pomona Valley, 1945–85
Sept. 24, 2011–Jan. 30, 2012MaryLou and George Boone Gallery
Sam Maloof (1916–2009) was a woodworker born and raised in Southern California who became a nationally recognized leader of the American studio furniture movement—a movement that favored the aesthetics of craft and the handmade over the machine and mass-production. His iconic chairs, tables, and other creations are renowned for their elegant sculptural form and virtuosic craftsmanship. Maloof was also an integral member of the art, craft, and design community that emerged in the Pomona Valley, at the eastern edge of Los Angeles County, in the years following World War II. A major survey of his work, “The House that Sam Built” showcases about 30 important Maloof pieces spanning more than three decades of his career in a display integrated with approximately 80 works by about 30 of his friends and colleagues who worked in other media. Maloof’s circle included painters Millard Sheets, Phil Dike, and Karl Benjamin; sculptors Albert Stewart, Betty Davenport Ford, and John Svenson; ceramists Harrison McIntosh and Otto and Gertrud Natzler; enamelists Jean and Arthur Ames; wood turner Bob Stocksdale; and fiber artist Kay Sekimachi. The exhibition gathers together works from several private and public collections to shed new light on the rich network of influences and exchanges that developed among artists and artisans living in the Pomona Valley in this dynamic period of American art. It is accompanied by a catalog and related programming, including a conference to be held Oct. 28–30, 2011, in three locations: The Huntington, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Sam and Alfreda Maloof Foundation for Arts and Crafts in Alta Loma, Calif. “The House that Sam Built” is part of Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1954–1980, an initiative supported by the Getty Foundation that includes a series of concurrent exhibitions throughout the region.