hugreopen.htm

The Huntington
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
(626) 405-2100
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The Huntington Art Gallery is currently closed while final preparations are made for the re-opening May 28, 2008.

Visit "The Blue Boy," "Pinkie," and other favorite works of British and French art in the Erburu Gallery during the renovation.

The Huntington Art Gallery Renovation

The historic residence will re-open
May 28, 2008 after extensive renovation

Once the home of Henry E. Huntington (1850–1927) and his wife, Arabella (1850–1924), the Huntington Art Gallery opened in 1928 as the first public art gallery in Southern California, displaying what had been considered to be the greatest collection of 18th-century British art in the country, including the celebrated Blue Boy by Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) and View on the Stour near Dedham by John Constable (1776–1837), as well as a valuable collection of French decorative arts.

When it reopens on May 28, 2008, after a $20 million renovation, the gallery will offer visitors an enhanced experience with one of the finest collections of European art in the nation as well as a more accurate sense of the lifestyle of one of the most prominent millionaires of the early 20th century. In addition to a thoroughly updated infrastructure, the refurbished mansion will include 5,300 additional square feet of public space, new interpretive components, and new gallery presentations of approximately 1,200 objects of European art from the 15th to the early 20th century. The renovation also will bring to light original architectural features that previously had been obscured.

Designed by Myron Hunt (1868–1952) with Elmer Grey (1872–1963) and decorated under supervision of the Duveen Brothers of London, the 55,000-square-foot Beaux-Arts interpretation of an Italian Renaissance villa was hailed as the finest residence in Southern California when it was completed in 1911.

Highlights of the Huntington Art Gallery will include the refurbished 2,900-square-foot Portrait Gallery, featuring the most important full-length British portraits in the collection; a wing devoted to the Arabella D. Huntington Memorial Art Collection of Renaissance and French 18th-century paintings, sculptures, and decorative arts, previously housed in The Huntington’s Library Exhibition Hall; and the reconfiguration of the loggia, a large porch with a view of the San Gabriel Mountains, which will be furnished with wicker chairs and tables as it was during the Huntingtons’ time.

The lavish large library on the first floor will continue to fulfill its role as the only remaining example in the United States of a grand interior designed to display 18th-century French tapestries according to the taste millionaires expressed at the time, featuring the Beauvais tapestries designed by François Boucher (1703–1770) that famously cost more than the total price of constructing the house.

Among the gallery’s most dramatic innovations will be the newly created hall containing Humility, Mercy, Generosity, Charity, Justice, Liberty, Truth, Love, Faith, Courage (ca. 1898), a 15-foot stained glass window from a Unitarian chapel in Lancashire, England, produced by the firm of Morris and Co.

Other collection highlights in the Huntington Art Gallery will include the monumental bronze Diana Huntress (1782) by Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741–1828); Italian and Netherlandish Renaissance works such as Madonna and Child (ca. 1460) by Flemish artist Rogier van der Weyden (ca. 1400–1462) and Nessus and Deianira (ca. 1575), a famous cast of the model by Giambologna (1529–1608); a pair of carpets made in the 17th century at the Savonnerie factory for Louis XIV’s refurbishment of the Louvre palace; and The Huntington’s newly acquired Morris collection as well as other objects purchased in the last five years, such as a mahogany upright piano (1904) with inlaid checkered banded panels in holly by Charles Robert Ashbee (1863–1942).

The Huntington Art Gallery renovation was fully funded through private sources, led by a $10 million grant from the Los Angeles–based Rose Hills Foundation, as well as a major gift from Geneva and Charles B. Thornton Jr. of San Marino, Calif., to restore the Portrait Gallery.

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