Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens
San Marino
February 1, 2015
The two of us made this visit without Margaret. Pasadena and the adjacent area boast several excellent museums, but they are too far from the San Fernando Valley to make it easy to bring her here.
We were in Pasadena for the weekend volunteering as extras on the set of Phd Movie 2, the second movie based on Jorge Cham’s webcomic, Phd Comics. The first movie can be streamed here. We were in several scenes filmed Saturday, on the Cal Tech campus, but they did not need us for Sunday, so we headed to the Huntington right after church.
The Huntington is an extensive facility and even though we were there all day – weekend hours are 10:30 AM to 4:30 PM – we could not see it all. We decided to focus mainly on art, skipping the library building and seeing only part of the gardens. We first toured the European art collection, which is housed in the building which used to be the Huntington family mansion. It has a particularly strong English collection, including such artists as Gainsborough, Constable, Turner, and Reynolds. The museum has a particularly well known Gainsborough piece, The Blue Boy, and across the gallery is a portrait by Lawrence of a young girl known as Pinkie. The bulk of the European collection dates from the 18th and 19th centuries.
We next went on to the American art building. It holds pieces representing all periods from colonial through modern, and it was interesting to look at the pieces that were contemporary with the European art we had seen in the prior building. In the special exhibit gallery in that building was Samuel F. B. Morse’s painting Gallery of the Louvre dating from 1831-1833. Best known as the inventor of the telegraph, Morse began his career as a painter. In this colossal work he shows a gallery within the Louvre, populated with nearly 40 selected paintings of his choosing, including a variety of both sacred and secular works, such as the Mona Lisa, Caravaggio’s Fortune Teller, and a Raphael Madonna and Child.
In both buildings the decorative arts were also represented, and there were contemporary furniture pieces displayed with the paintings and sculpture, particularly in the American collection. We particularly enjoyed a room in the American art building given over to Arts and Crafts pieces and the work of Greene & Greene.
We went on from the American art building to see a special exhibition in a third building, the Boone Gallery, which was displaying photographs by Bruce Davidson and Paul Caponigro. The exhibition displayed photographs they each took during visits to Britain and Ireland in the 1960s and later. The exhibition was quite extensive and really gave a sense of photography as an art form, with compelling photos both of locations and people.
As we walked around the gardens from one building to another and briefly over to the Chinese garden at the far end of the property, we saw many families with small children. We had not seen small children in the art galleries (wise parents), but we can understand that the gardens would be a wonderful place to stroll with family on a nice day. We saw a number of beautiful flowers in bloom. The rose garden, of course, was dormant given the time of year, but must be spectacular when in bloom. We did go into the conservatory building and stroll through the rain forest and bog rooms, looking at various orchids and also carnivorous plants.
Although we did not have Margaret with us, we did look around to assess wheelchair accessibility, which generally seems quite good. The grounds are so extensive that it might be a challenge for a manual wheelchair user, just because of the distances, but the grounds are mostly flat or gently sloping. We were surprised to see that the elevator in the European art building was out of service, and if we had brought Margaret we would not have been able to take her up to the second floor. A guard told us that was a rare occurrence, however.
We picked up sandwiches in the café and ate at tables outdoors. We each chose smoked salmon with cream cheese on a bagel and had some fresh fruit on the side. The food was pricey but of good quality.
Admission is $23 for adults. There is no additional charge for parking.