Firefighters spray water from a hose during the Eaton Fire. | U.S. Forest Service photo taken by Capt. Jason Benton / Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
The Eaton Fire of January 7, 2025 will be endlessly seared in the collective memories of the Pasadenans and Altadenans who experienced the largest blaze in the history of the San Gabriel Valley. Overnight 19 people died and 9,000 structures were reduced to ashes, among them 80 homes at Upper Hastings Ranch in Pasadena and over 4,500 in Altadena.
Large corporations and private citizens across the country responded immediately to the disaster – sending cash, food, personal items, and other basic necessities to the various collection sites that opened during the days following the fire.
All through the year, several non-profit organizations emerged in Altadena to continue to support those who were affected even as the rest of the country moved on to other important matters. Community leaders have worked ceaselessly to keep the momentum going and thought of ways to ensure we didn’t forget that thousands of Altadenans are still grappling with the aftermath.
Two individuals – Victoria Knapp and Ethan Marquez – are collaborating on an event to benefit those who were affected by the Eaton Fire. They are co-chairing the Altadena Forever Run which will be held at 8:00 am on Sunday, January 4, 2026 at the Mariposa Junction in Altadena.
Thousands of runners and community members will gather for a10K, 5K and 1K family run raising critical funds for residents still recovering from the Eaton Fire – including individuals and families who remain displaced, are living in vehicles, or are running out of short-term rental assistance.
Victoria Knapp is a longstanding Altadena community leader and organizer whose civic work has focused on connection, recovery, and purposeful engagement. A former Pasadenan, she made Altadena her home in 2011, where she spent the next 15 years deeply involved in community life. She played a central role in crisis communication and community coordination after the fire, helping residents navigate loss while fostering collaboration among neighbors, small businesses, and local organizations throughout the recovery period. She is a firm advocate for community-based initiatives that bring people together with purpose and meaning, including the Altadena Forever Run, which reflects her belief that shared action – like running together – can be a powerful force in healing and resilience.
Ethan Marquez is a 26-year veteran of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department with a career spanning custody, patrol, training, and command assignments. He was on the scene during the Eaton Fire, playing a critical role in emergency response and community coordination. In August 2025, he was promoted to Captain of Altadena Station, where he continues to emphasize operational excellence, public safety, and community partnership. A dedicated endurance runner and philanthropist, he runs marathons while pushing his son in a wheelchair to raise awareness and funding for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy research, using running as both advocacy and a deeply personal expression of service.
“The Altadena Forever Run is about honoring what we’ve lost, supporting those still recovering, and reaffirming our commitment to one another,” state Knapp and Marquez. “After the Eaton Fire, our community showed that resilience isn’t just about rebuilding homes, it’s about standing together, staying connected, and moving forward with purpose. This run reflects the heart of Altadena: strong, compassionate, and forever connected.”
The course passes through neighborhoods and foothill corridors impacted by the fire, featuring on-course storyboards that highlight survivor experiences and ongoing recovery efforts. Organizers say one of the most meaningful aspects of the event is the regional turnout, with runners traveling from across Southern California and beyond to stand in solidarity with Altadena residents.
Community leaders and first responders are expected to attend – including Robert Luna and Kathryn Barger. The Los Angeles Laker Girls will also be on site to cheer on runners and support the event atmosphere. The Altadena Forever Run is supported by corporate and community partners, including SoCalGas, GoFundMe, East West Bank, First City Credit Union, and Toyota of Pasadena.
Proceeds from the event directly support Altadena residents who continue to face housing instability and are seeking viable pathways to rebuild and return home. Although the emergency response has ended, many residents continue to recover in the long term with limited resources.
But through the tireless efforts of dedicated individuals and the support of the community, Altadenenas will get through this unfathomable tragedy and get back on their feet stronger than ever before.
“Radical Histories: Chicano Prints from the Smithsonian American Art Museum,” makes its West Coast debut at The Huntington’s Marylou and George Boone Gallery from Nov. 16 to March 2. Curated by E. Carmen Ramos, forming acting chief curator and curator of Latinx art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the exhibition features 60 dynamic works by nearly 40 artists and collectives that trace more than six decades of Chicano printing as a form of resistance, community building and cultural reclamation.
Commencing with the late 1960s Delano Grape Strike, the precursor to the United Farm Workers (UFW) labor union, the prints in “Radical Histories” depict momentous events in the history of community activism and the formation of collective identity. Chicano artists used silkscreens, posters, and offset prints to mobilize communities – often with barbed wit, lively colors, and evident urgency.
The exhibition is arranged in five thematic sections: “Together We Fight,” “¡Guerra No!” (No War!), “Violent Divisions,” “Rethinking América,” and “Changemakers.” Each section highlights how Chicano artists have used the accessible and reproducible medium of printmaking to confront injustice, affirm cultural identity, and engage in transformative storytelling.
Installation photo courtesy of The Huntington
Section 1: Together We Fight
The opening section explores how the UFW, cofounded by César Chávez and Dolores Huerta, collaborated with visual and performance artists to support the fight for farmworkers’ rights. Key labor actions inspired a wave of Chicano art that functioned as both political expression and tangible solidarity. Artists adopted the UFW’s iconic black eagle, embedding it in posters, prints, and murals that raised awareness and helped fund the movement. The union’s visual language extended beyond its own campaigns, appearing in advocacy materials for the Texas Farm Workers Union and the Cannery Workers Committee in Sacramento.
Section 2: ¡Guerra No! (No War!)
Since the 1960s, Chicano graphic art has played a vital role in advancing antiwar resistance. These works serve as rallying cries, counternarratives to mainstream media, and spaces of reflection. Chicano artists have used print and poster art to critically examine U.S. military interventions in Vietnam, El Salvador, Chile, Iraq, and elsewhere.
Section 3: Violent Divisions
The U.S.-Mexico border has been a central theme in Chicano art. Printmaking has enabled Chicano artists to raise awareness about the experiences of immigrant communities because it is affordable and prints are easily distributed. Recurring iconography – such as the monarch butterfly, a symbol of natural migration – challenges the notion of geopolitical boundaries. Figures like the Virgin of Guadalupe and ancient Mesoamerican goddesses appear as powerful cultural symbols.
Section 4: Rethinking América
This section presents works that broaden historical narratives by including perspectives rooted in resistance and cultural reclamation. The artists drew inspiration from revolutionary figures and movements to create narratives that center Mexican American and Indigenous perspectives. Using mapmaking and record forms like the ancient Mesoamerican codex, Chicano artists also created speculative past and present narratives to reimagine social landscapes.
Linda Zamora Lucero, América, 1986, screenprint on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Gilberto Cardenas and Dolores Garcia. | Photo courtesy of The Huntington
Section 5: Changemakers
Portraiture is a cornerstone of Chicano art, used to educate audiences and celebrate both cultural icons and overlooked figures. Artists often base their portraits on documentary photographs, transforming black-and-white images into vivid prints that honor the subject’s life and legacy. Featured changemakers include political prisoners, activist leaders, attorneys, actors, and artists—individuals who challenged the status quo and shaped history.
By email, Dennis Carr, Virginia Steele Scott Chief Curator of American art, and Angélica Becerra, Bradford and Christine Mishler Associate Curator of American Art – also the venue curators – discuss the exhibition’s origins, its relevance, and viewer takeaways.
“Radical Histories was organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum to highlight the central role Chicano artists have played in shaping American visual culture,” begins Carr. “The exhibition began touring nationally in 2022 following its debut at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and The Huntington is presenting its first West Coast exhibition.”
“While the core exhibition is drawn from SAAM’s collection, our presentation places particular emphasis on Los Angeles as a vital center of Chicano printmaking,” Carr clarifies. “To honor that history, The Huntington commissioned a new mural by Los Angeles–based artist Melissa Govea, created in collaboration with Self Help Graphics & Art, a community print studio that has supported Chicanx and Latinx artists since 1973.”
Melissa Govea’s mural. | Photo courtesy of The Huntington
“Through this partnership, we commissioned Melissa Govea, a Los Angeles–based artist who is Chicana and Purépecha,” explains Carr. “Govea began her career as a muralist and is known for work that honors community, ancestry, and cultural memory. Rather than giving her a specific direction, we invited her to respond to the themes of the exhibition. The result is a dedicated gallery featuring a new mural, a sculptural installation, and print-based works that together reflect multiple dimensions of her practice. This marks the first time her work has been presented in a museum context.
“Her mural, titled ‘Sangre Indígena’ (Indigenous Blood), draws on portraits of friends, collaborators, and cultural leaders who have shaped her life. The work recognizes the generations of artists, organizers, and knowledge-keepers who came before her, while affirming the presence, agency, and creativity of those shaping Los Angeles today.”
Installation Photo courtesy of The Huntington
It would be an oversimplification to say how many works in the exhibition are from L.A. artists, as Becerra explains.
“Many artists in ‘Radical Histories’ have deep ties to Los Angeles, whether they lived, studied, printed, organized, or collaborated here. The most meaningful connection is through Self Help Graphics & Art, which offered open studio access, mentorship, and a collaborative printmaking environment to generations of Chicano and Latinx artists.
“Artists such as Barbara Carrasco and Ernesto Yerena Montejano continue to live and work in L.A., and their practices remain rooted in local community networks. So rather than thinking in terms of birthplace alone, it’s more accurate to say that Los Angeles is one of the central homes of Chicano printmaking, and the exhibition reflects that history.”
Installation photo courtesy of The Huntington
Asked if the exhibition has taken greater meaning now with ICE raids targeting Hispanic communities and looking Hispanic or Latino is enough to get one handcuffed and thrown into a detention camp, Becerra replies, “The themes in ‘Radical Histories’ are both longstanding and timely. Chicano printmakers have historically used posters and prints to address labor injustice, state violence, displacement, and the struggle for belonging – issues that continue to resonate today.”
Becerra says further, “What museums like The Huntington can offer is space: a place to look closely, process, reflect, and connect personal experience to shared history. These works remind us that art has always been a tool of community care and resistance.”
As for the viewer takeway, Carr states, “We hope visitors come away with a deeper understanding of how Chicano artists have used printmaking to organize, to tell stories, to build community, and to assert cultural identity. And we hope they see that art is not separate from daily life – it is a tool for resilience and collective meaning-making.”
“In addition to the exhibition itself, The Huntington will host public programs, bilingual gallery talks, and hands-on workshops in collaboration with local artists and partners,” adds Carr. “A major highlight will be Historias Radicales: Latinx Identity and History in Southern California, a two-day conference on December 5–6, connecting the exhibition to The Huntington’s co
Jan Brueghel the Younger. Flowers in a Gilt Tazza, c. 1620. | Photo courtesy of The Norton Simon Foundation
October 24, 2025 marks the 50th anniversary when the Pasadena Art Museum was renamed Norton Simon Museum. It is only fitting then that 50 years to the day, the museum will debut the exhibition called “Gold: Enduring Power, Sacred Craft.” On view in the lower level exhibition wing through February 16, 2026, it explores the artistic and cultural function of gold in 57 objects drawn from the museum’s American and European and South and Southeast Asian collections.
The objects in this exhibition were crafted from metal excavated from mines across three continents and transported over vast regions, often in the form of currency. In the hands of trained craftspeople, this processed gold was transformed into jewelry that adorned Roman patrician women or spun into thread that was then woven into textiles for elite patrons in Europe and Asia.
Co-curated by Maggie Bell, Norton Simon Museum’s associate curator, and Lakshika Senarath Gamage, assistant curator, “Gold: Enduring Power, Sacred Craft” being the exhibition during the 50th anniversary celebration came about serendipitously. They had been contemplating to collaborate on an exhibition that would bring the Asian collection and the American and European collection together. When they began this project two years ago, they realized there was a common element in the artwork they were looking at.
Rembrandt van Rijn, The Goldweigher, 1639. | Photo courtesy of The Norton Simon Foundation
“As we were looking at the objects in our collections, a theme emerged and we realized we talk about gold across mediums – tapestries, sculptures, painting, works on paper – as an opportunity to get to know and celebrate the collection,” Bell begins. “We systematically went through all the objects that had gold as a medium. At the same time we started thinking about the way gold as a metal interacted with other medium and also what gold means symbolically, even to representations of gold in thread or in paint. There are so many ways to approach this subject. There are things in the exhibition which don’t actually have gold in them but evoke ideas and associations with gold.”
Later in the process they realized the exhibition they had been planning was going to be completed around the same time as the museum’s 50th anniversary celebration. And it was a happy coincidence because the milestone is traditionally symbolized by gold.
“With the story we wanted to tell together, we started with about 200 possible objects,” continues Bell. “We got to know these objects and started doing research. And one of the best things that happened in the process is that I learned so much from Lakshika about her collection and the stories and themes that we can tell together. In conversation with each other and through research we narrowed them down. There were only a certain number of objects that would tell that story clearly and we consolidated them to the 57 that visitors will see in the exhibition.”
“We want to explore gold as a medium but also as an idea,” Bell states. “We want to show the ways in which gold as a material physically does endure for millennia, hence the title. Also, it has a grasp on our imagination globally; visitors will see in the geographical range of these objects that gold really has so much power as a medium.”
Gerard David, The Coronation of the Virgin, Maria in Sole, c. 1515. | Photo courtesy of The Norton Simon Foundation
The exhibition is divided into three themes: power, devotion, and adornment. The 57 objects represent about 17 countries across four continents, spanning from 1000 BCE to the 20th century.
“Through these works we explore how gold traveled across land and sea, how it was crafted, and how it has been imbued with special meaning, particularly with devotion,” explains Gamage. “This is possibly the first time South and Southeast Asian art are displayed together with American and European collection in the special exhibitions galleries. I do want to emphasize that this is not a comprehensive picture of gold because we are drawing solely from the Norton Simon Museum collection and these objects were mostly sourced by Norton Simon himself.”
Museumgoers will find a clean, front-facing plan and objects displayed on tables in the center instead of against the wall. The first gallery focuses on power, the second on devotion, and the third contains jewelry and the smallest objects. Interior walls and display stands are painted red, inspired by a lot of the images in the space. The lighting will be different in each gallery.
Asia: China, Tibet, Headdress, 20th century. Gold Metal with semiprecious stones. | Photo courtesy of The Norton Simon Foundation
Gamage elaborates, “Visitors won’t see any artwork on the peripheral walls and it’s a deliberate design choice to give prominence to the objects. Maggie and I worked very closely with the designers to create an exhibition that felt meaningful to visitors. The layout allows them to create their own pathways and gives them the freedom as they walk around to see these connections with their own eyes. And rather than separating them into just Asian and European, we wanted the objects to have interesting sightlines so visitors can see Asian objects visually interacting with American and European objects. That highlights function and meaning, whereas a division by geography and time loses those meaningful trajectories.”
A map at the entrance indicates where the objects originated and where the gold came from. In the first gallery, the very first object visitors will see is a bovine sculpture from 18th century China.
Asia: China, Tibet; Asia, Nepal, Bovine, 18th-19th century. Gilt-copper alloy. | Photo courtesy of The Norton Simon Foundation
“We chose this because it is associated with strength, power, and resilience, and possibly tied to ancient Chinese feng shui tradition,” explains Gamage. “The function is not exactly known because not much research has been done about this object. The practice itself remains unclear but the charging bull has long been viewed as an auspicious symbol of prosperity and abundance.”
One of the foremost European objects in the first gallery that addresses the power of gold – both as an economic material as well as a symbolic medium – is a portrait of Sir Bryan Tuke, who was appointed treasurer and secretary of Henry VIII’s royal household in 1528.
“This is a copy after a painting by Hans Holbein the Younger, a German artist primarily for the court of Henry VIII,” Bell describes. “Holbein was both a painter and a jeweler and was renowned for designing jewelry for Henry VIII and his wives, and incorporating those designs into the portraits he did of the people in Henry VIII’s court. Because Holbein was a 16th century artist and this was done in the 17th century, it’s possible that Tuke’s descendants commissioned the new portrait to hang in their home as a reminder of their own connections to the Court of Henry VIII in the previous century.”
Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of Sir Bryan Tuke, c. 1527. | Photo courtesy of The Norton Simon Foundation
“It’s very true to the original Holbein portrait especially in the way that the cross jewelry is hanging around Bryan Tuke’s shoulders,” explains Bell. “It’s very conceivable that Tuke designed this hefty gold cross himself. I really like this image because a treasurer gets the economic power of gold; it also has an interesting symbolism around the use of gold in this portrait. When this was painted Tuke had just recovered from a really serious illness. It has additional meaning because gold was associated with longevity and good health since it never tarnished.”
In the second gallery, objects on devotion and the sacred role of gold in making art are displayed.
“It was a really fascinating theme to think through with Lakshika because gold has different meanings in Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism that is very complex,” Bell declares. “For example, in the Christian tradition, gold is incorporated into images of religious figures as a way to honor them. But it also becomes a bit tricky because poverty is such an ideal in Christianity, so integrating gold undermines the value of poverty as a Christian virtue.
“But in Buddhism, there is the tradition of genuine sacrifice that comes from giving gold as a gift. It was really interesting to think through those ideas with Lakshika in terms of using gold to craft religious images and the different symbolic and devotional implications that they have.”
Workshop of Cornelis Engebrechtsz, The Adoration of the Magi, c. 1520. | Photo courtesy of The Norton Simon Foundation
One of the first European displays in the second gallery is a painting called “The Adoration of the Magi.” It is a scene showing the three kings who traveled from the four known corners of the world – Asia, Europe, and Africa – to honor the Son of God with extravagant gifts of frankincense, myrrh, and gold..
“What I found interesting that I didn’t realize, is that in a lot of these images from the 16th and 17th century, Christ is shown interacting with this pot of gold,” says Bell. “I find that thought-provoking because, at the same time. the Holy Family was also honored for their poverty. Christ was born in a manger, surrounded by farm animals but he was being honored with gold and he’s reaching out for the gold, and in some paintings even holding the gold coin.”
A South Asian object in the second gallery is the sculpture of Indra – the Hindu god of storms, thunder, and lightning, and was historically the king of gods.
Asia: Nepal, Indra, 13th century. Gilt bronze. | Photo courtesy of The Norton Simon Foundation
Gamage states, “Indra is in this particular posture called the ‘Royal Ease.’ He wears a very distinctive Nepalese crown and he also has a horizontal third eye that clearly tells us that this is the god Indra. There are various ceremonies that are very specific to the veneration of Indra, particularly in the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal.”
In the third gallery, called adornment, objects are mostly jewelry. The one object from the Asian collection is a bracelet made of pure gold dated 1000 BCE – the oldest object in the exhibition. It is from the Uragu Kingdom, which is modern Turkey, Armenia, and part of Iraq.
Asia: Urartu, Bracelet with Animal Head Terminals, c. 1000 BC. Gold. | Photo courtesy of The Norton Simon Foundation
“We have an eclectic group of ancient European objects,” enthuses Bell. “There are two Egyptian cats that we’re really excited about. These were on trend for collectors in the 1960s. We have figurines of various goddesses decorated in gold in someone’s home as talismans. We have this fantastic pair of earrings which are hollow inside but made of pure gold. They’re beautiful! It’s a testament to the power of gold – it doesn’t tarnish even after millennia. We were desperately trying to find photos of Jennifer Jones, Norton Simon’s second wife, wearing these to some events. But we have not been able to verify this.”
Europe: Roman, Pair of Earrings, 3rd century CE. Gold. | Photo courtesy of The Norton Simon Foundation
The Gold exhibition will feature four technical stations, created by the museum’s conservator, behind the two large tapestries. Bell expounds on the reason for this.
“We’re thinking about gold as a material and we had no idea about the many ways gold can be manipulated to become ink, paint, thread, leaf, or something you can melt. There are so many things you can do with gold. It’s alchemical in a real sense. We kind of condensed them into these four major techniques that you see throughout the show: gold leaf on painted wood panel, gold threads, gold paint, and gilded cast metal – which is the majority of the work that Lakshika is displaying from the South and Southeast Asian collection. So we’re very grateful to our conservator and we hope they will enhance the exhibition experience for our visitors.”
Giovanni di Paolo, Branchini Madonna, 1427. Tempera and gold leaf on panel. | Photo courtesy of The Norton Simon Foundation
Asked if they learned something when they worked on the exhibition they didn’t know before, Bell replies, “Training our eyes to recognize the different techniques was a skill I didn’t have before. That was something we acquired through looking at objects to get a sense of ways that gold paint or gold leaf could be applied. And also, just understanding the complexity of gold as the material resource in the world. What’s it meant to get from a mine or a river into the hands of the artist is extraordinarily difficult to understand, and I was very humbled by that research.”
Gamage echoes Bell’s sentiment “One of the most interesting things I learned is a very deep appreciation for those artists who used gold in magical ways we would never even have imagined. For example, to see how gold was coiled and wrapped around another thread and how it was used in a tapestry, cut silk embroidery; or in painting as gold leaf. Today, we have this state-of-the-art technology and are capable of so many modern and technological marvels. But to know that humans were capable of such intricate and extraordinary artistry was deeply humbling, to mimic Maggie’s words. That level of technical expertise and finesse they had – and that they did by hand – is something that still amazes me.”
Rendering of the Norton Simon Museum’s main entrance and pedestrian walkway. | Image courtesy of ARG and SWA
The Norton Simon Museum’s 50th anniversary celebration will include a community weekend, which is free to the public, to be held on November 7, 8, and 9. There will be exhibitions, various activities, live music, and the unveiling of the improvement project.
A book called “Recollections: Stories from the Norton Simon Museum” is also available for purchase. A fascinating read, it contains essays penned by former and current staff about some of the paintings, sculptures, and artworks in the museum’s holdings.
In the book’s introduction, Emily Talbot, Vice President of Collections and Chief Curator, recalls the museum’s history. Maggie Bell traces Tiepolo’s “Allegory of Virtue and Nobility’s” acquisition and journey to Pasadena. Talbot lets us in on the little-known friendship between Norton Simon and abstract expressionist artist Helen Frankenthaler. Dana Reeb’s essay informs us Simon amassed one of the largest and most important Goya print collections in the world. Likewise, Lakshika Senarath Gamage reveals how Simon assembled the largest body of Chola period bronzes that allowed him to wield the most influence in this area of the art market.
Recollections. | Photo by May S. Ruiz / Hey SoCal
Rachel Daphne Weiss explores the collaborative purchase of Poussin’s “The Holy Family with the Infant St. John the Baptist and St. Elizabeth” between Simon and the Getty. Leslie Denk writes about Cary Grant’s gift to the museum of Diego Rivera’s painting “The Flower Vendor.” Gloria Williams Sander gives us an insider look at how the right frames present paintings to their best effect. Bell’s second essay sheds light on how the West Coast exhibition “Radical P.A.S.T.: Contemporary Art and Music in Pasadena, 1960-1974” explored Pasadena’s role as a generative hotbed of contemporary art. John Griswold, Head of Conservation and Installation, discusses the museum’s collaborative approach to conservation.
Gloria Williams Sander reflects on the moment Photography became accepted in the art world as a medium worthy of collecting and exhibiting. Alexandra Kaczenski uncovers the legacy of Printmaking in Los Angeles. Gamage’s second essay examines Architect Frank Gehry and Los Angeles County Museum of Art Curator Pratapaditya Pal’s vision for the Asian galleries and the arrangement of the objects displayed within. The last essay by Griswold and Talbot talks about the Norton Simon Museum’s loan exchange program, which gives museumgoers the opportunity to view significant artworks from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Musée d’Orsay.
Norton Simon’s extraordinary art collection has been a Pasadena treasure since its founding. It has magnificently lived up to the purpose Simon envisioned when he assembled one of the finest European and South and Southeast Asian masterpieces in the world. In the capable hands of the museum’s stewards and curators, Simon’s legacy will continue to enrich our lives and flourish well into the next 50 years.
A work in The Huntington’s new exhibition is by Janet Harvey Kelman, “Stories from Chaucer Told to the Children” with pictures by W. Heath Robinson, London: T.C. and E.C. Jack, 1906, gift from Donald Green. | Image courtesy of The Huntington
The Huntington Library is renowned for several iconic pieces — the Gutenberg Bible, the Ellesmere Chaucer manuscript, and Shakespeare’s Folio, to name just a few. Visitors expect to see them individually at their usual spot.
Soon these exceptional items will be displayed at The Huntington Mansion alongside other important objects that reveal surprising connections and untold stories in a series called “Stories from the Library.” The inaugural show, on view from June 21 through Dec. 1, will feature Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” and later iterations of the work, and the visionary figures who shaped Los Angeles.
“The Tales Through Time” commences with The Huntington’s Ellesmere Chaucer manuscript, an elaborately decorated work created between 1400 and 1405. The most complete and authoritative version, it is presented together with later iterations of the work to illustrate how creators like writers, artists and printers — collectively and individually — changed the tales textually and visually over five centuries of retellings.
“Los Angeles, Revisited” explores ways in which architects, planners, business owners, and activists have contended with a constantly evolving city like Los Angeles. The show is anchored by the 1902 design plans for L.A.’s first skyscraper Braly Block, conceived by architect John Parkinson.
Sandra Brooke Gordon, the director of the library, states, “Drawn from across the library’s vast holdings, each rotation in this series centers on a single item making a star turn — a destination object — placed in conversation with other selections. These exhibitions highlight the interrelatedness, beauty, and power of the library’s collection of approximately 12 million items, while encouraging visitors to make new and inspired connections.”
Vanessa Wilkie, senior curator of medieval manuscripts and British history and head of library curatorial, and Steve Tabor, curator of rare books, co-curated “The Tales through Time.” By email, Wilkie talks about how the series originated, how they prepared the exhibition, and what she hopes visitors take away from it.
“While the mansion was built first, Henry Huntington had the Library constructed beginning around 1919, relatively early in his collecting,” Wilkie says. “So in a sense, he always envisioned that his library collections would be displayed independently of his other collections. I’ve always appreciated this idea — that books, archival documents, photographs, prints, and manuscripts deserved their own celebrated space.”
Just as necessity is the mother of invention, complications engender improvisations, as Wilkie discloses. “When the institution decided it was time to end the long run of the library’s Main Hall exhibition, ‘Remarkable Works-Remarkable Times,’ we were all committed to keeping library collections on view with the understanding that we logistically couldn’t take down an exhibit and have an exhibit in the same space. We saw this logistical challenge as an opportunity!
“The Art Museum generously offered to open two gallery spaces to the library. It was an obvious choice to put library collections in the historic ‘Large Library’ but our collections contain over millions of flat works — like photographs, architectural drawings, maps, and drawings. The Large Library doesn’t allow for anything to be hung on the wall, so the Focus Gallery was offered as a second location to showcase more of our collections … to tell more stories from the library.
“The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer,” Hammersmith: Kelmscott Press, 1896, from the Sanford and Helen Berger Collection. | Image courtesy of The Huntington
“Curators immediately saw this as an opportunity for unexpected pairings of exhibits, which made us all the more eager to think in unexpected ways,” continues Wilkie. “We are mindful that visitors always love to see some favorite pieces, like the Gutenberg Bible and the writings of Octavia Butler, and we envisioned this exhibition series as an occasion to bring in some of those beloved hits while also giving visitors a chance to get to know other parts of our magnificent collections. Our hope is that people come to see what they already love but leave thinking about a favorite piece in a new way or, better yet, having seen something they never expected!”
Asked what motivated their decision to center the exhibit around Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, Wilkie replies, “The Ellesmere Chaucer is one of The Huntington’s most famous manuscripts; it is gorgeous, but it is also perhaps the most influential work in the English-speaking world. ‘Stories From the Library’ is a rotating exhibition series that does something new for our collections, so we liked the idea of starting with a book people already know quite well and framing it in a completely different way than how visitors have seen it over the past twelve years. We actively chose not to think about ‘The Canterbury Tales’ in a singular historical context but rather wanted to think about how the Ellesmere Chaucer brought individual tales together and then what the visual and textual trajectories for those tales were.”
While the sheer number of items in the library’s collection could have posed a challenge when deciding which piece to showcase in the inaugural exhibition, the curators knew exactly what to launch with.
“Beginning with ‘The Canterbury Tales’ gave us a fairly focused starting point, and then we just followed the pilgrims through our collections!” declares Wilkie. “We have some 15th century manuscripts with copies of individual tales, so we plotted those through time and then narrowed back down when we realized our collections could easily fill multiple galleries.”
“The Chaucer display is paired with ‘Los Angeles, Revisited,’ an exhibition about the shifting real and imagined landscapes in L.A.,” Wilkie explains. “No other place in the world could offer that pairing with these stellar pieces; it is the past and present colliding in spectacular ways! When curators are thinking about exhibitions in this series, we’re also thinking about how they’ll be paired and recognize that their sum is greater than their individual parts — although their individual parts are also pretty special.”
The Ellesmere Chaucer manuscript. | Image courtesy of The Huntington
Visitors to The Huntington can expect to see “Stories from the Library” for a while.
“We anticipate the series running for three or four years and have paired-exhibitions planned that can take us far beyond that,” discloses Wilkie. “Each exhibition will run for six months, but we’ll turn pages or swap out entire pieces at the three-month mark. Library materials are extremely sensitive to light, so while we want to keep exhibits up to give visitors a chance to see them, we also need to be mindful of the physical needs and constraints of fragile collections.”
“Most people are introduced to ‘The Canterbury Tales’ as a singular canonical text, but this exhibition is a chance for people to break it down and see how it has changed, or not changed, over the centuries,” Wilkie says. “That also demonstrates how unstable the concept of a canonical work really is. Throughout the series, we hope people will be invigorated by seeing beloved favorites alongside never-before-exhibited items, in spaces they don’t typically see library collections. Change isn’t easy, but it can also give us a fresh perspective.”
“Los Angeles, Revisited” is curated by Erin Chase, the library’s associate curator of architecture and photography. She discusses the anchor piece of the exhibition, what other materials will accompany it, how she planned the show, and the visitor takeaway.
John Parkinson, architect, Building for Southern California Savings Bank (Braly Block), elevation to Spring Street, 1902, ink on tracing cloth. | Image courtesy of The Huntington
“The 1902 design plans for L.A.’s first skyscraper is part of a larger recent acquisition made by the Huntington which is the archive of the architecture firm of John and Donald Parkinson,” Chase begins. “It has never been shown in a museum or library before so it’s very exciting to be able to show it to the public.
“Also included in the exhibition is a variety of materials from across the Huntington’s library collections,” adds Chase. “Everything from an 1888 early birds-eye-view map of East Los Angeles to architectural drawings of iconic L.A. buildings like the Braly Block and Googies coffee shop, to historical and contemporary photographs and manuscripts by literary figures such as Eve Babitz and Christopher Isherwood.”
Explains Chase, “This is a small jewel-box exhibition with a hefty theme so striking the right balance was important. Los Angeles lacks the centrality and layout of most traditional American cities and it’s what makes us unique. I wanted to celebrate the city and the visionaries who believed in its promise, but it was also important to address some darker parts of our past including redevelopment and the displacement of families as a result. Additionally, L.A. has always served as an unwitting muse for artists. So it was important to include people like Ed Ruscha and Gusmano Cesaretti who have helped us make sense of our urban landscape from a visual perspective.
“I hope visitors get a deeper understanding of some of the issues architects, planners, business owners, residents, and activists contended with in the 20th century,” Chase says. “L.A. grew rapidly between 1900 and 1950 and this exhibition just begins to touch on major issues that have impacted the urban landscape such as architecture, transportation, and redevelopment. Most of all, I hope they enjoy seeing some of the extraordinary drawings and photographs from the Huntington’s archives up close. Many of these have never been on view before, so this is a great opportunity to catch them.”
“Stories from the Library” will be an eye-opener for many of us who have not fully appreciated the expanse and significance of The Huntington Library’s holdings. Until now the drawing of the groundbreaking Braly Block has never been displayed in an exhibition. It’s going to be so much fun to discover what surprise each show brings.
Mansheng Wang works on “Without Us.” | Photo courtesy of Mansheng Wang/The Huntington
“Wang Mansheng: Without Us,” an immersive installation that explores the interconnections between humans, flora, and fauna through contemporary art and classical concepts of nature, unveiled at The Huntington on May 17. On view through Aug. 4, 2025 in the Studio for Lodging the Mind 寓意齋 – a gallery within The Huntington’s renowned Chinese Garden – the exhibition features 22 hand-painted delicate silk panels that invite visitors to enter a luminous, meditative landscape.
Created by Mansheng Wang, the 2025 Cheng Family Foundation Visiting Artist in the Chinese Garden, the paintings in traditional and black walnut ink depict intricate scenes of trees, rocks, water, and other natural elements – some inspired by The Huntington’s Chinese Garden, Liu Fang Yuan 流芳園, the Garden of Flowing Fragrance.
The panels – arranged in singles, diptychs, triptychs, and a quadtych – are Wang’s vision of the natural world. Suspended from the gallery’s ceiling, they invite visitors to animate the installation as they walk around and become part of the landscape.
Installation view of “Wang Mansheng: Without Us.” | Photo by Linnea Stephan / The Huntington
Wang isn’t a stranger to the Chinese Garden at The Huntington; he has participated in several calligraphy shows, but this is his first solo exhibition at the gallery. During a walkthrough of the installation, he recounts his initial conversation with Phillip E. Bloom – curator of the exhibition, the June and Simon K.C. Li Curator of the Chinese Garden, and the director of the Center for East Asian Garden Studies – his vision for the installation, and his work process.
“In 2020, Phillip invited me to be The Huntington’s Visiting Artist at the Chinese Garden and I was thrilled!” began Wang. “I like to put my hands in the soil and I’ve been gardening almost 30 years. Coming to The Huntington for the first time about 10 years ago felt like being in heaven; I was so jealous of all the gardeners who work in this beautiful place.”
“Phillip was already familiar with my work, which is primarily about nature,” continues Wang. “Doing a larger-scale project was something we had discussed for some time, but everything was delayed by the pandemic. That extra time actually allowed me space to think and prepare. In early 2024, Phillip confirmed that an exhibition would be possible, so I wrote a proposal for an installation with silk panels. He liked the idea, and we introduced it to the Huntington exhibition team.”
The exhibition’s title comes from a unique perspective. Wang explains, “’Without Us’ imagines a world without humans. Of course, gardens are man-made. I’d visited the Huntington several times over the years to study its rich variety of trees and plants. ‘Without Us’ includes inspiration from these wonderful collections but the work’s scope is broader in that it incorporates my experiences in traveling and hiking in many different places.”
Installation view of “Wang Mansheng: Without Us.” | Photo by Linnea Stephan / The Huntington
“Right before working on this exhibition, I did a show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art,” relates Wang. “Because of the pandemic I couldn’t bring the paintings back to China to mount them so the works were displayed on unmounted silk. And that sparked the idea to use transparent silk and hang the paintings in the middle of the gallery to make it more interesting.”
“To prepare for this installation, I created a small model of the works,” Wang says further. “I chose very thin silk so visitors can view the paintings from both sides – it created an extra angle to view nature. I used narrow, tall panels for mountain peaks and broader sets for a lotus pond or an expanse of woods and hills. You walk in and view an almost three-dimensional landscape and see details – tress, plants, animals, insects, birds. Some are from a distance, like the lake and a far-away mountain. Because of the light there’s slight movement, making the installation magical and dreamlike. ”
He transformed his Hudson Valley studio to prepare and work on the paintings. Describes Wang, “I built a large wall with moving wood panels so I could change the size of the board. Then I installed metal sheets on the wood and covered them with silk canvas. I used magnet to keep the silk in place because its thin and slippery. I hadn’t used much silk in my work until recently so I took notes and wrote my experience – like how the brush felt on it. Most of the time I worked on the wall, but I used too much ink and it would drip and stain the wall. So I would sometimes move the canvas on a large table.”
“The work also required me to step back at least ten feet away after a few brushstrokes – even after adding just two leaves to it. I used three ladders with various height to reach different areas; I had to keep going up and down the ladder and stepping back to view the whole picture. I put in a lot of steps, it was like working out in the gym,” Wang says with a chuckle.
Mansheng Wang working on “Without Us.” | Image courtesy of the artist / The Huntington
Originally, Wang planned to paint 28 panels, but he had to scale it down to 22 to fit the gallery space and allow visitors sufficient distance to view the artworks. He started thinking about what he wanted to paint and began practice work in 2020. But the actual painting only commenced in 2024 and ended early this year.
The first two panels in the exhibition are his tribute to the silkworm. Enlightens Wang, “This is the first painting I worked on in 2022. It’s called ‘The Silkworm and the Mulberry Tree’ and is my homage to the silkworm. The silk industry is a major component of China’s economy. Chinese people have been writing on silk for 6,000 years and this material is very valuable to them – it’s their source of livelihood.”
Visitors to the gallery will walk around the silk panels as they would on a trail leading up to the peak of the mountain. Wang says, “After you hike through the landscape and walk up this mountain, you think you’ve reached the summit. But there are more peaks beyond and you see a cascading waterfall, creating a large body of water and running through all the 22 panels in different forms – a smaller waterfall, stream, creek, lake, and even the mist on the mountain.”
‘Without Us’ is Wang’s exhortation for us to consider the consequences of our actions – the harm they inflict on our planet. “When I was little we were taught that we are superior beings because we can make tools,” expounds Wang. “As I got older, I realized how the growth of technology gives humans greater power to cause damage to nature. While we used shovels and saws before, we can now utilize machines to cut down a 200-year-old tree in minutes. Even more worrying is that we’re able to create nuclear weapons which could ultimately destroy ourselves and this earth.”
Installation view of “Wang Mansheng: Without Us.” | Photo by Linnea Stephan / The Huntington
Through his exhibition Wang also wants to remind us of the importance of water and conserving this precious resource. He declares, “These plants and animals are what makes earth special – and it’s all because of water. It’s what nourishes us and keeps all these beautiful things in nature alive. But people are the ones using it the most – we drink it, we cook our food, we take showers, we flush our toilets, we wash our cars, and so on. And we all know that California has constant water shortage and is prone to drought. On top of that, we pollute the water.”
On the walls of the gallery, visitors will find excerpts copied from Wang’s calligraphy taken from classical Chinese literature, featuring the writings of scholars, poets, and philosophers, including Confucius 孔子 (551–479 BCE), Zhuangzi 莊子 (4th century BCE), and Laozi 老子 (6th century BCE). Many of the passages refer to the ancient Chinese concept of guan 觀 – to observe and appreciate nature by emptying the mind and allowing the natural world to enter.
“As you walk through the space, you get a different angle to look in and view the area,” explains Wang. “I hope people who come to see the paintings also read the texts to enjoy and be inspired by. Moreover, the texts provide viewpoints from which to observe the paintings.”
Lastly, Wang clarifies, “Although the title of this piece is ‘Without Us,’ many people were involved. They encouraged me along the way and helped with the details needed to realize this project, from the curatorial team to the preparators and installation team to the registrars, security staff, and many more. I am grateful for their enthusiasm, support, and guidance.”
Installation view of “Wang Mansheng: Without Us.” | Photo by Linnea Stephan / The Huntington
Mansheng Wang joins a remarkable company of visiting artists in The Huntington’s program, as Bloom reveals when he speaks about the initiative. “In 2012 we received a gift from the Cheng Family Foundation to endow a program to bring in artists to the Chinese Garden every year or two to create a new work in response to the site. We have hosted musicians, playwrights, performance artists, and now painters. The most recent before Mansheng was someone named Zheng Bo, who is a performance artist. He created a series of exercises and led visitors in doing them in the garden.”
Suspending artworks from the ceiling isn’t something totally new, discloses Bloom. “It’s the first time we’re hanging artworks from the ceiling but in our last exhibition called ‘Growing and Knowing in the Gardens of China,’ we had a reproduction of an artwork hang from the ceiling but it served more as a spatial divider. That was the first time we used this hanging system, which was practice for this installation. Our experts knew what to do.”
Asked if an artist is given a mandate on what to create, Bloom replies, “Each time is different. Of course, we have some sense of the artist’s work beforehand. Through a series of conversations, we come up with a project. The one major exception was when we commissioned an artist specifically to make a video that’s permanently on display in the restaurant in the garden, but which we’ve also shown in some exhibitions. In this case, Mansheng and I came up with a project that would fit the gallery.”
Installation view of “Wang Mansheng: Without Us.” | Photo by Linnea Stephan / The Huntington
“Mansheng has a very scholarly approach to painting, which I admire,” pronounces Bloom. “He knows the history of painting so well, and he responds to art history in very thoughtful ways in his works. Visually, I love the sense of dynamism in his paintings of rocks and trees, which he creates in part by using brushes that he himself makes from reeds. But most importantly, perhaps, he and his wife Helena Kolenda are wonderful people. It is very pleasant to work with them, and to talk with them about art, nature, and society.”
“We have been discussing this project for about five years, so I had some sense of what the project would involve,” Bloom states. “He sent me updates regularly on his progress, including photos and videos. I was amazed by the detail of the works as well as by how completely they immerse a viewer. But it was not until we installed them in the gallery that I really could feel how successful and compelling ‘Without Us’ actually is.”
Bloom expresses what he thinks people will find engaging about the silk panels. “I think visitors will be struck by how beautiful the installation is. When you enter the gallery, it almost feels as though you have entered a lantern. The silk is so perfectly illuminated, and the light interacts with the ink and silk in such striking ways.”
“But more importantly, as visitors actually take time to look at the panels, they really will feel as though they are walking through a pristine, natural paradise – a world that humans have not disturbed. However, by walking through the panels, visitors themselves will disturb that world: the panels sway in response to visitors’ movement,” concludes Bloom. “I think it is impossible not to interact with this artwork without reflecting simultaneously on how spectacular nature is and how deeply we humans are intertwined with it.”
“Flashes of Light,” a new musical by Billy Larkin and Ron Boustead, makes its world premiere at the Sierra Madre Playhouse from May 25 through June 9, 2025. Directed by Jon Lawrence Rivera, founding artistic director of Playwright’s Arena, the production is about visionary inventor Nicola Tesla and his muse Electra, the formidable goddess of storm clouds.
Set against the backdrop of the industrial revolution in New York City in the late 1800s, the story follows inventor Nikola Tesla, guided by Electra, who sends him visions of groundbreaking inventions during lightning storms. Their connection amps up when Tesla’s rivalry with Thomas Edison intensifies during the “War of the Currents,” a battle that shaped the world’s electrical future. As Tesla and Electra become obsessed with pushing the envelope of scientific discovery, a star-crossed love story fraught with peril unfolds as the line between science and mythology begins to blur.
Bringing together mythology and science, romance and historical fiction, “Flashes of Light” is a brilliant idea in musical theatre. The music’s heartfelt lyrics, soaring vocals, and haunting melodies blending jazz, pop, and rock, bring this fantastical story both tragic and divine to life.
Co-creators Larkin and Boustead discuss by email the origins of this collaborative work, the choice of venue, and the audience takeaway.
“Billy became fascinated with Nikola Tesla – this mysterious figure – so critical in the development of our modern technology, yet so underappreciated in the mainstream of American history,” begins Boustead. “Tesla was known to experience flashes of light and blinding headaches throughout his life, which were most likely migraines, but we attributed his malady to the overwhelming influence of Electra, Goddess of the storm clouds. Naturally, her power would be a lot for a mortal to endure.”
Thomas Winter as Nikola Tesla. | Photo courtesy of M. Palma Photography
“Also, the obsessive Tesla never married or was known to have a partner, so the idea of including Electra as his muse gave us a romantic storyline to add to the narrative,” Larkin adds.
While integrating myth or folklore with a factual figure and moment in science might seem conflicting, mythology is very much intrinsic to theatre, as Larkin and Boustead explain. “Mythology has been a staple of theater since its beginning, and crafting this tale became a catalyst to do a deep dive into some of the more compelling figures of Greek and Roman myth. Electra answers to a council of gods, more senior than herself.”
“Naturally, Athena – known for her wisdom, power, and morality – leads the council,” Larkin and Boustead clarify. “Prometheus, who had given mortals the gift of fire, is on hand to guide Electra in her mission to assist humans in the development of electricity. And Dionysus is an amusing addition to the council, with his drunkenness, his humor, and the sibling rivalry he shares with his sister, Athena.”
Teasing out the story, Larkin and Boustead relate. “Nikola Tesla leaves his homeland in Serbia with a head full of ideas about how to best distribute electricity for homes and factories at the dawn of the industrial revolution. He lands in New York where he becomes a rival to the great Thomas Edison in the ‘war of the currents,’ a contest between Edison’s direct current method, and Tesla’s alternating current.
“Along the way, Tesla interacts with prominent figures in 19th century finance and industry, like J.P. Morgan and George Westinghouse, and befriends the first American celebrity – the one and only Mark Twain. Through every challenge, Tesla is being assisted in his groundbreaking inventions by Electra, heard and felt only by him, during lightning storms. Like all interactions with the gods, theirs is a star-crossed relationship, with profound and tragic consequences.”
Devyn Rush as Electra and Thomas Winter as Nikola Tesla. | Photo courtesy of M. Palma Photography
Asked why they chose to debut their production in an intimate setting, Larkin and Boustead reply, “In April of 2024, we performed a concert of songs from our show at the El Portal Theatre in Noho, which we filmed. A friend of mine, who attended the concert, happens to be on the board of Sierra Madre Playhouse, and brought our project to the attention of Matt Cook, the artistic director. Matt thought ‘Flashes of Light’ would be an exciting addition to their 2025 calendar and approached us about staging our first run in their 99 seat theater setting. We love the historic and intimate vibe of SMP, and find it a welcoming atmosphere to get our production on its feet.”
Musicals normally require an orchestra – which the Sierra Madre Playhouse couldn’t accommodate – so they had to improvise. “Our score is built around a full jazz-rock band,” describe Boustead, “Because of the size limitations of the stage at SMP, we determined that the best approach for the music was to use the hybrid combination of Billy at the piano, assisted by tracks covering the rest of the orchestration.”
All 26 songs in the show are original and co-written by Larkin and Boustead in the course of eight years. However, many other beloved songs ended up on the cutting room floor, otherwise their show would be three hours long.
Devyn Rush as Electra. | Photo courtesy of M. Palma Photography
The co-creators dream that their show will one day be staged at larger venues but, for right now, they are happy to debut it in the San Gabriel Valley.
Larkin and Boustead emphasize, “Like any other musical theater creators, we imagine a trajectory that takes our project to larger venues next, with the ultimate goal of becoming a smash Broadway hit show, and eventually a touring company. But for now, we are singularly focused on making this version the very best it can be, given the time, budget, and space considerations available.”
“We hope audience members will gain a clearer appreciation for the tremendous contributions that Nikola Tesla made to our modern world,” pronounce Larkin and Boustead. “ We have been faithful to much of the history and science as it really happened, but we believe that the way we’ve told Tesla’s story will move audiences – sometimes to laughter, sometimes tears – but in the end to appreciate the value of one man’s life.”
“Tesla’s story is one that explores themes of science, mythology, genius, madness, immigration, friendship, romance, and ultimately legacy,” Larkin and Boustead declare as a final note. “It’s one that resonates with anyone who strives to leave the world a better place than they found it.”
These topics are as realistic as they are fantastic, as relatable as they are aspirational. “Flashes of Light” promises to be a little show with huge potential to reach great heights. And we in the San Gabriel Valley are so fortunate to be the very first ones to see it launch.
In L.A. County, freeways are a ubiquitous part of our surroundings. It’s hard to imagine a time when we traveled the expanse of the region on city streets. As population increased and more cars traversed the roads, freeways were constructed to make driving safer for people and areas more accessible.
The 110 Freeway, more popularly known as the Pasadena Freeway, is one of the oldest (if not the first) freeways in the United States. The first section – the Arroyo Seco Parkway – opened to traffic in 1938 and the rest of the throughway opened in 1940. Today, there are several freeway interchanges that connect Los Angeles to various parts of California and to other states.
Countless buildings were demolished to make way for the construction of these freeways. The book “Los Angeles Before the Freeways: Images of An Era 1850-1950” gives a lush, visual tour of a Los Angeles that no longer exists – one of elegant office buildings and stately mansions that were razed in the name of “progress.” Originally published by Dawson’s Book Shop in 1981, it has become a cult classic among L.A.’s architectural historians.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay
Gorgeous black-and-white photos from Arnold Hylen that capture a forgotten era are showcased in the book. It has an original essay by the photographer that provides historical background and context for the time period. This new edition from Angel City Press, to be released on March 25, contains additional, never-before-seen photographs from Hylen and newly unearthed information from historian Nathan Marsak on these lost architectural treasures.
The stunning photography recalls an era when downtown Los Angeles was unspoiled by wide-scale redevelopment and retained much of its original character. Each page offers a glimpse of what the city used to be, before some of its architectural jewels were destroyed for the newer, more modern city that would soon follow.
Marsak graciously agreed to be interviewed by email about how he became an L.A. historian – despite not being a native Angeleno – and the upcoming book “Los Angeles Before the Freeways” and why it’s important to get it republished.
“I was born and raised in Santa Barbara, and Los Angeles was like a weird, distant backyard,” he began. “Our television stations were all out of L.A. so I became obsessed with, for example, commercials for Zachary All and Cal Worthington. Then we’d go to LA and it was so different from the picture-perfect neighborhoods of Santa Barbara; in the 1970s Los Angeles was pretty treeless, covered in billboards, blanketed in smog. Like a dying civilization, but with so many insane neon signs, so much bizarre architecture. The whole of the city was fantastical like Disneyland, albeit a giant, grimy, dystopic version of Disneyland.”
California State Building on First Street. | Photo by Arnold Hylen / Courtesy of Angel City Press
The career choice, however, was preordained. Marsak explained, “My father was a historian and I follow in his footsteps. While other parents took their kids to baseball games, I was being led through Florentine museums or the cathedrals of France. I would have been destined to become a historian no matter where I landed, but I’m very glad my home became Los Angeles.”
Taking up roots in L.A., though, wasn’t always part of Marsak’s plans. He disclosed, “In the early 1990s, I was out in Wisconsin, going to graduate school and doing architectural history. But the lure of Southern California pulled me back, especially after I saw the ’92 riots on TV. I packed my things, and read Raymond Chandler and James Ellroy to acquaint myself with my new home, and moved to East Hollywood and began looking for ‘Old L.A.’
“Sometime in the mid-90s, I was in a downtown bar talking up the old timers about lost Los Angeles and one of them said ‘you know there was a guy who took photos all around here back in the fifties, and he published a coupla books of them’ — referring of course to Arnold Hylen – and I immediately began combing the bookstores until I found Hylen’s 1976 Bunker Hill book, and his 1981 Los Angeles Before the Freeways.”
L.A. historian Nathan Marsak / Photo courtesy of Angel City Press
And reading those books became the impetus to discover the architectural history of his adopted home.
“I loved Hylen’s Freeways book, and used to drive around with it on my lap like a Thomas Guide of phantom Los Angeles,” said Marsak. “And because so few copies existed – Dawson’s Book Shop only printed 600 of them in 1981 – I made it my mission to reprint it.”
“But for all of Hylen’s groundbreaking research, as included in his indispensable essay, there were unanswered questions,” continued Marsak. “I wanted to flesh out the buildings with the addition of their architects and construction dates. Naturally, as well, I wanted the images to be larger, and clearer, and that would require being in possession of the original negatives, which I finally managed to purchase in 2016. Each negative strip had three images, so sometimes there were alternate angles or shots of something not in the book. I was thrilled to be able to include some of those never-before-seen captures.”
Amestoy Block on Main and Market | Photo by Arnold Hylen / Courtesy of Angel City Press
The original version of Hylen’s book contained 116 photos and the expanded new edition of “Los Angeles Before the Freeways” has 143 images. Hylen began taking photographs downtown about 1950. The majority of his output occurred between 1955-1960, but there are images in the new book that date to as late as 1979, according to Marsak.
“This is not a book about buildings that were only lost to freeways,” Marsak clarified. “It also includes some structures that were demolished when the Hollywood Freeway made its easterly path through Fort Moore hill, and of course there are some images of the Harbor Freeway as it was constructed west of Bunker Hill. But most of the structures contained herein were lost to parking lots, or the expansion of the Civic Center. An accurate number for how many structures were razed because of freeway construction would be difficult to gauge, but a safe bet is about 1,000.”
The road to getting the book republished was long. Marsak related, “I established contact with Hylen’s family about 2006, and by the time I acquired rights and negatives, in 2016, I was already working on my Bunker Hill book for Angel City Press, so ‘Freeways’ took a back burner. I began writing the captions and scanning the ‘Freeways’ negatives in early 2022, which was about two years of work before I handed Angel City Press a completed manuscript in 2024.”
Marsak added, “I hope readers take away that there were first-rate domestic and commercial structures by top-flight architects in the 19th century. Naturally, the fact that the majority of the structures featured have been wiped away, I also hope causes readers to become active with preservation in their communities.”
Through this book, Marsak would also like us to have a better appreciation for the city.
“There’s more to Victorian L.A. than just the Queen Anne houses on Carroll Avenue or at Heritage Square – which are great, don’t get me wrong! – but we once had an incredible collection of Romanesque Revival, Italianate, and other styles blanketing the city in general, downtown in particular,” emphasized Marsak.
Unfortunately, these magnificent edifices didn’t survive the wrecking ball and – but for the images in the book – no trace of their past existence remains.
“Very few people in postwar America were interested in architectural salvage from Victorian buildings,” Marsak lamented. “The Magic Castle, though, utilized parts of structures for its fanciful interior. And of course, most famously, two houses from Bunker Hill were moved to Montecito Heights as the first structures in the Heritage Square project. But they were sadly burned to the ground not long after their relocation.”
It’s a disgrace that the inspired works of eminent architects had to be sacrificed in the service of building something as pedestrian as a parking lot. Fortunately, we’re now repurposing the ruins of significant structures. Many interior decorators and designers are sourcing demolished materials to integrate into new construction to imbue character and a distinctive look. It’s one way to ensure that torn down buildings are given a second life
About 10 years ago, Lauren Yee watched an LA Band called Dengue Fever at an outdoor music festival. That singular event inspired her to write a play called “Cambodian Rock Band” and it debuted in 2018 at South Coast Repertory in Orange County.
“Cambodian Rock Band” has since been staged in various iterations at different venues. The show makes its return to Southern California from Feb. 13 to March 9 in the David Henry Hwang Theatre at East West Players in Los Angeles — not too far from Long Beach, which is home to the largest Cambodian population outside of Cambodia.
This part-play, part-rock concert tells the powerful story of a Khmer Rouge survivor returning to Cambodia after three decades. As his daughter prepares to prosecute one of the regime’s most notorious war criminals, they must confront their shared history through the healing power of music.
East West Player’s production marks director Chay Yew’s 13th collaboration with the theater, bringing his signature vision to an extraordinary ensemble. He directed the world premiere of “Cambodian Rock Band” at South Coast Repertory and the off-Broadway run at Signature Theatre.
The cast, many of whom were part of the original world-premiere production, includes Kelsey Angel Baehrens as Neary/Sothea, Abraham Kim as Rom/Journalist, Tim Liu as Ted/Leng, Jane Lui as Pou/Guard, Joe Ngo as Chum and Daisuke Tsuji as Duch.
Speaking by phone, New York-based playwright Lauren Yee talks about the genesis of “Cambodian Rock Band,” what compels her to write, and her work process.
“I fell in love with Dengue Fever’s music — it was infectious, and fun and joyful,” begins Yee. “They play their own take on music inspired by the Cambodian rock scene of the ’60s and ’70s. So I went on a deep dive into their musical influences and learned about those musicians, a lot of whom were killed or died during the Khmer Rouge’s takeover of Cambodia in the early ’70s. It was shocking to me that not only the people, but this whole branch of musical history had been under attack. I thought, ‘there’s a play somewhere in here and I want to write it.’”
Shown from left to right: Joe Ngo as Chum, Tim Liu as Leng, Kelsey Angel Baehrens as Sothea, Jane Lui as Pou, and Abraham Kim as Rom perform “One Thousand Tears of a Tarantula” by Dengue Fever. | Photo Teolindo / East West Players
For a long time, Yee just contemplated about what that play might be. Then in 2015 she was commissioned by South Coast Repertory to write a play for them and she started working on what was to become “Cambodian Rock Band.”
Yee relates, “In the development process I brought on an actor named Joe Ngo, who I knew from Seattle, and it just so happened that his parents were survivors of the Khmer Rouge. And he played the electric guitar! It went from being a play about music to a play where the actors should play their instrument. He has just been the heart and soul of the show. He premiered the play at South Coast in 2018 and he’s basically been performing the role on and off for the past seven years. His involvement with the play is turning ten this year and he’s coming back to his home base of Southern California to perform the play at East West Players.”
“For a playwright, it’s a dream to have actors who have such a long relationship with a single work,” enthuses Yee. “Usually theaters bring in the actors for a month of rehearsals and a month of performances, and the actor may never touch the play again. But to be able to have these actors come back, like Daisuke Tsuji, Jane Lui, Abraham Kim, who were in the original cast at South Coast and two other actors — Kelsey Angel Baehrens and Tim Liu — join the show having done previous iterations of it, is a beautiful homecoming and something very rare in theatre.”
A Chinese American, Yee has written several Asian-centric comedies and dramas. One of her earlier plays was a comedy called “Ching Chong Chinaman” that featured the Wongs, a Chinese American family, in which she skewered every cliché about Asian American identity. More recently, she wrote a drama titled “The Great Leap,” about an American basketball team that traveled to Beijing in 1989 that explored the intersection of identity and politics and the cultural and political risks of speaking out.
I ask if she writes Asian plays because she’s Asian or because she wants to see more Asian representation in theatre, Yee responds, “I think it’s both. First and foremost, I’m a human who loves theatre so I think my plays represent a wide range of topics, ideas, and characters. But one thing I can offer the theatre world that I’m very proud of, is that I write great roles for Asian American performers where they get to play basketball or shred on an electric guitar and do really cool things and play the villain.”
“Sometimes parts of the plays I write reflect my own lived experience and family history,” continues Yee. “And also, over the years, I find I’ve been really interested in unpacking Communism in Asia in the 20th century and its collision with Western culture. It sounds very dry, but to me it’s about ‘What is it like when something seemingly Western as basketball collides with China?’ ‘What is it like when you’re living in a world that has outlawed Western music and then you hear electric guitar?’ as in ‘Cambodian Rock Band.’ I find those clashes incredibly interesting.”
And Yee doesn’t shirk from sensitive topics as she did with “Ching Chong Chinaman.”
She explains, “’Ching Chong Chinaman,’ which I wrote almost 20 years ago, is very close to my own family experience. It shines a light on how others thought of Chinese Americans and Asian Americans at a time when it wasn’t on people’s radar. Stop AAPI Hate was not a thing yet. We were just coming off seeing Asian Americans as this model minority and no one was talking about how we’re viewed and what language is being used against us.”
“For me, that was the right title for the play because I think it’s important that we don’t ignore the things that are traumatic — like charged language,” Yee adds. “We shouldn’t pretend that everything’s okay; we have to confront them.”
Shown from left to right: Joe Ngo as Chum, Kelsey Angel Baehrens as Sothea, Tim Liu as Leng, Jane Lui as Pou, and Abraham Kim as Rom. | Photo by Teolindo / East West Players
According to Yee, she doesn’t have a fixed idea if a play she’s writing is going to be a comedy or a drama.
“Each play is like a kid: the child is born and you don’t know their personality, what they’re going to be like,” enlightens Yee. “But as you begin to spend time with them you see how they speak and communicate. In all of my plays there’s the vein of humor that runs throughout; there’s something deeply, painfully funny in them. I think drama and comedy exist in that same human experience. I really can’t separate the two.”
While most of Yee’s plays have been universally praised by critics, she’s a little shy when it comes to reviews.
“I can write a play and two different people can have totally different opinions about what they think of it or how the play should have gone,” Yee says. “I’m most invested in listening to the voices that are closest to the creative process.”
As for the audience takeaway, Yee observes, “I’m really excited for whatever the audience takes away. I think it’s going to vary based on who you are and your experiences with the music and its history. For those new to this history, I want to incite you to dig deeper and learn more; to think about the power of art, and the threat of oppressive regime, and what can happen when things change.
“And for people who are closer to the material, who know the music or maybe are familiar in a personal way with the event, I hope you’re able to celebrate that music, and reflect on your own history, and share some of your own experiences with people you love. What I found with this play that has been so moving is to hear people — especially from the Cambodian community — say ‘I went through that, or I didn’t experience exactly that, but I’m going to tell my kids about what happened to me.’”
In parting, Yee declares, “I’m so excited to be part of East West Players’ 60th anniversary. Throughout the 20th and 21st century, they have been a leader in championing AAPI voices and it’s really an honor to be part of Lily Tung Crystal’s inaugural season. I think ‘Cambodian Rock Band’ is a joyride — the music is electric, the performers are amazing. It’s a show that lifts you up on your feet despite it all.”
Those who have been fortunate enough to see Yee’s plays will tell you that she creates intensely heartbreaking plays that bring the audience to tears and hysterically funny ones that have people laughing their heads off. “Cambodian Rock Band” is another one of her works that’s certain to elicit a strong emotional reaction.
Originally published on 6 December 2022 on Hey SoCal
The Scholart Selection, an art space located at the San Gabriel Mission District, held its inaugural show from Nov. 18 to 20 – in time for the holiday shopping season – with an exhibition and sale of hats, glassware, and ceramic items made by Pasadena artist Cissy Li. Also featured were vintage costume jewelry from the showroom owner’s private collection.
A former haute couture runway model, Li graced the catwalk for Europe’s renowned fashion houses. She followed that illustrious career with yet another artistic endeavor – artisanal milliner (read related article here) – creating bespoke headwear for friends. Then she expanded into making glass and ceramic art ware, which she displayed at her spring show this year (read my article here).
Plates with an over glaze of famous oil paintings and 22K gold band | Photo by May S. Ruiz / Hey SoCal
According to Li, she wasn’t asked to make anything special for Scholart Selection’s maiden event. She says, “Cindy [the art space’s founder] trusted me to come up with something and told me not to work too hard; she reassured me that we had enough items to show. So I made 16 plates for the gallery opening – they are one layer of clear glass with an over glaze of famous oil paintings and 22K gold band.”
That confidence in Li’s ability is high praise from someone she hasn’t known very long. She discloses that they met through a friend they both know. “I then invited Cindy to my friend Yenfu Guo’s exhibition called GAME at Seasons LA. After some lengthy and wonderful conversations, we became friends. I invited her to my workshop to show her how to make glass art work. She was very interested and, maybe impressed, so she asked me to be her new art space’s first guest artist. I was so thrilled!”
Cissy Li (at left) and Cindy Wang (right) | Photo by Lingxue Hao / The Scholart Selection
It isn’t the first time that Li has partnered with a gallery and she absolutely enjoys the experience. She enthuses, “This is a wonderful way to show people your ability! And I had a great time working with Cindy. I learned so much from her – she is so smart and hands-on – and I would love to collaborate with her again!
Li’s recollection about how they became acquainted is echoed by Cindy Wang, Scholart Selection’s founder, who graciously speaks with us during the showroom’s opening. Scholart’s Space Manager Dodonna Jen acts as interpreter to facilitate the interview.
Wang relates, “We met at a friend’s party about six months ago and we hit it off. I’ve met a lot of artists in my life and I felt I connected with Cissy as one artist to another. I saw her work and how passionate she is about her art. I also admire how meticulous she is in keeping her workshop neat and organized.”
The decision to ask Li to be her first guest artist wasn’t an impulse but a deliberate choice. Wang explains, “Cissy is a dear friend of mine and I have a great understanding of her creative process. Since our opening exhibition is a three-day event amidst the holidays, the hand-crafted hats, ceramics, and glassware with their beautiful colors are very fitting to share with everyone during the Christmas season. I truly commend Cissy for her dedication and hard work and all the hours she puts in to perfect each and every piece of her art.”
Vintage costume jewelry and hats | Photo by Lingxue Hao / The Scholart Selection
Vintage costume jewelry pieces accompanied the magnificent Cissy Li creations. They were from Wang’s private collection gathered from her travels in Europe and were available for purchase. However, the cameos were only on display because she’s loathed to part with them. She states, “There’s so much history and stories behind the cameos and I’m not ready to give them up just yet.” Perhaps one day.
While at first glance, the vintage jewelry is reminiscent of Old Hollywood glamour, Wang didn’t necessarily pick from that particular era, fashion, or style. She sees the value of the costume jewelry based on their beauty, quality, and workmanship.
Cameos in Cindy Wang’s collection | Photo by May S. Ruiz / Hey SoCal
Wang reiterates, “That’s why I call the space Scholart Selection – the art pieces we exhibit, from jewelry to ceramics, have been selected to reflect the best of artists’ work. What I’m sharing with people are what I personally picked, not random items.”
Because she was born and raised in Beijing – which has a long and storied art and culture history – Wang was drawn to the arts early on. She reveals, “I majored in interior design and also studied advertising at university. After graduating, I started a media company. My husband and I have an extensive range of art collections, including traditional Chinese ceramics, calligraphy and paintings; Japanese wood-block art; and numerous antique and vintage cameos. The Scholart Selection is not my first art space. I’ve owned an antique shop for several years in Beijing that showcases all kinds of art.”
“When I’m not working on an exhibition, I enjoy creating content for my art channel, as well as traveling to various countries to visit local galleries and artists’ studios or even antique shops,” adds Wang. “I always believe that the best way to learn is to see and experience.”
Wang had been living in the United States for three years when she founded the company in 2012 as a channel for art. She originally called it The Scholar but eventually renamed it Scholart (a portmanteau for scholar and art) Selection. It then became obvious that she needed a space for her to realize her desire to share the knowledge she gained and learned through the years.
While she is an Arcadia resident, she chose to open her showroom in San Gabriel. She says, “The San Gabriel Mission area is a historical landmark and when I saw it, I knew it was the perfect place for an art space!”
Cindy Wang (at left) and Dodonna Jen (right) | Photo by Lingxue Hao / The Scholart Selection
Discovering the perfect space to open its doors to the public took some time and doing, though. Dodonna Jen explains, “Cindy found this space in September last year and there had been a lot of back and forth with the landlord and property manager. We leased the spot in February then went through extensive planning and renovations. All the renovations were completed in August so we literally just moved in.”
And Wang and her team hit the ground running. After Li’s show, Scholart Selection will welcome in December the next artist – A Japanese American artist who will share his experience growing up in Los Angeles through his artwork.
“Our current plan is to hold eight to ten exhibitions for 2023,” Wang divulges. “We are now lining up both local and international artists. Our regular exhibitions run about a month long while smaller shows and pop-up events go on for about a few days.
“Whatever the scale of the exhibition, The Scholart Selection always encourages everyone to walk into the art space and feel the spectacular visual gratification that makes you want to keep coming back to experience art in person, as well as relax, muse, and have a good time,” asserts Wang.
Determining whom to invite to exhibit their artwork at Scholart Selection involves analyzing the artist’s oeuvre. Wang declares, “First of all, when we look into an artist, it’s not only my personal understanding of them but also our entire team’s evaluation. We see their artwork, the style and the story that they wish to tell. Of course, the initiative for us to work with an artist is the artist’s perception, with sensitivity to the current culture and society. The process of collaborating with artists and selecting the artworks is always the most fun part. Working with artists always brings me into contact with a wealth of outlook on the world.”
Beautiful glassware in striking colors | Photo by Lingxue Hao / The Scholart Selection
“We are not limited to a certain art form, because art has no boundaries,” Wang clarifies. “This is also the reason why The Scholart Selection does not categorize itself as a gallery but, instead, as an art space. We welcome various art forms, such as movies, music, photography, and different ways of artistic expression. We would love to devote ourselves to creating opportunities for talented artists.”
That Wang asked Cissy Li as their inaugural artist demonstrates her and Scholart Selection’s commitment to that mission, along with showcasing only the best in their field. And the reception from guests did not disappoint.
“We put in a lot of time and effort for this event – from decorating to designing and from invitations to coordination.” Wang concludes, “We wanted to give our guests a welcoming and warm experience. It was definitely successful; we were overwhelmed!”
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Wang and Li created an event people enjoyed going to because they curated pieces to mirror their kindred spirit and passion for art. The exhibition set the benchmark for Scholart Selection’s upcoming shows. It’s a tough act to follow, but Wang is sure to invite only consummate professionals like her who can top that feat time and time again.
Originally published on 15 October 2019 in the Pasadena Independent, Arcadia Weekly, and Monrovia Weekly
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens | Courtesy photo
The year 1919 was significant for so many reasons but none would affect the art scene and cultural life of the San Gabriel Valley more than the founding of the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. And we have Henry and Arabella Huntington to thank for bestowing on us their incomparable legacy.
An exhibition called ‘Nineteen Nineteen,’ which opened September 21 and will be on view through January 20, 2020, at the MaryLou and George Boone Gallery showcases 275 items from Henry and Arabella Huntington’s vast collections, some of which have never been displayed.
Co-curators James Glisson, interim chief curator of American art, and Jennifer Watts, curator of photography and visual culture, led a team from the three divisions and went through the institutions massive storehouse of 11 million items. The objects in the exhibition range from posters from the German Revolution, abstract art, suffragist magazines, children’s books, aeronautic manuals, self-help guides for soldiers returning home from World War I, and a book hand-printed by Virginia Woolf at her kitchen table. The thread that ties them all together is that they were all acquired in 1919.
During a preview of ‘Nineteen Nineteen,’ Glisson and Watts walk members of the press around the Boone Gallery to show the items, explain their significance, share their experience, and add their personal insights.
“This project took about two and half years from the very beginning to the end,” begins Glisson. “I went through, probably, 3,000 items, but it could have been more. And a lot of time was spent finding things from 1919 that were interesting, because there were a lot of stuff that weren’t,” he adds with a laugh.
“Or visually compelling,” inserts Watts. “Gathering these things was incredibly labor intensive but fun at the same time. I have to point out, though, that we had research assistants, interns, and grant assistants who did a lot of work – it was a collective endeavor. It involved every curatorial staff across all divisions – the library, the art museum, and the botanical gardens. We knew some things to look for and others were hunches. We asked our colleagues for assistance and they came to bat. They helped us find things we never would have unearthed on our own.”
The ‘1919’ Exhibition at The Huntington | Photo by Brianna Chu / Beacon Media News
Glisson expounds, “Often, it was ‘There’s this great thing, I think it’s from 1919;’ ‘Oh yes, it is.’ This is where the process was different. We knew where we wanted to take it but until we gathered the material together, we couldn’t tell a story. We didn’t know what the story was before we had the material. The verbs came when this checklist was two-thirds through – and we knew what the themes would be and gave it some shape. As Jennifer said before, we had to just be incredibly open to where the material was taking us. It’s like, we see a piece and we say ‘What does this mean?’ Or, sometimes, it’s ‘This is interesting, what is it?’”
“I like to take the analogy of when you look at a centennial and think of the founders, and you put them at the top of your pyramid,” explains Watts. “We decided to invert the pyramid, and put the context and the year at the top. Most of the time, when you’re doing an exhibition, people come up with an idea and they look for the material to support it. We flipped it and said ‘Let’s look at the material and figure out what the bigger ideas and themes are.’”
The exhibition that Glisson and Watts created from that starting point, which Glisson describes as ‘From the global to the local’ is organized around five broad themes – Fight, Return, Map, Move, and Build.
William Allison Sweeney, History of the American Negro in the Great World War, 1919, Cuneo-Henneberry, Chicago | Photo by Brianna Chu / Beacon Media News
Glisson elucidates, “We wanted to harness the large number of 1919-related items here into something provocative, allowing the visitor to interpret the period in a fluid way. Rather than telling a neat, resolved story, we tried to capture the jarring experience of life during a year that everyone understood was an inflection point for world history. Empires had fallen in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Millions had died fighting and in a flu pandemic. Delegates at the Paris Peace Conference tried to sew a tattered world back together. Like today, people felt that irrevocable change was underway. The issues of 2019 – immigrant detention, women’s rights, and the fight for a living – were equally pressing in 1919.”
As detailed in a news release from The Huntington’s Communications Office, the ‘Fight’ section of the exhibit shows that, while the war might have officially ended in 1918, other battles raged on in Los Angeles, the rest of the nation, and Europe. A global influenza pandemic killed millions of people, claiming three percent of the world’s population. Laborers agitated for better pay and safe conditions. Rumors about a Bolshevik plot to upend the U.S. government led to a Red Scare. Violence erupted in a season described as ‘Red Summer’ for its deadly riots and lynchings of African Americans. In 1919, the bill that would clinch American women’s right to vote passed in the Senate, and temperance advocates won their fight for prohibition. Modern artists and writers responded to the tremors of the age, including the carnage of world war, by breaking with convention and tradition.
Items in this section include: German posters related to social and political upheaval; original photographs and materials documenting the flu pandemic here in Pasadena; national strikes and labor unrest; U.S. Marshal records (including mug shots and probation letters from German citizens jailed in Los Angeles during the war); and objects that tell the story of the fight to ratify the 19th amendment.
Victory Loan Flyers, ‘The Spirit of America’ Lithograph, and ‘Americans All’ lithograph | Photo by Brianna Chu / Beacon Media News
The ‘Return’ portion focuses on the immediate aftermath of the Great War, when millions of men and women – including 200,000 African America soldiers – headed for home. Survivors sought to understand and memorialize the war’s events through personal reminiscence and published accounts. Artists, some of whom served overseas, interpreted what they had seen, while others found inspiration in canonical tradition and myth. Popular music and illustrated books also offered safe harbor in tumultuous times.
Materials from this segment comprise: Liberty Loan posters; soldiers’ recollections; a rare Edward Weston portrait of dancer Ruth St. Denis; Cyrus Baldridge’s illustration ‘Study of a Soldier;’ and John Singer Sargent’s ‘Sphinx and Chimaera,’ which depicts a mythological scene.
John Singer Sargent’s ‘Sphinx and Chimaera’ oil on canvas | Photo by Brianna Chu / Beacon Media News
In January 1919, President Woodrow Wilson and Allied heads of state gathered at the Paris Peace Conference to make new maps of a changed world. The carving up of ancient empires created new nations in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Africa, while regional promoters published maps to highlight Southern California’s capacity for growth. High above Los Angeles – at the Mount Wilson Observatory – the world’s largest telescope was on a nightly quest to chart the universe. In a world turned upside down, maps offered a welcome measure of predictability.
What the charting of territory that occurred that year meant and its resulting significance are explored in the ‘Maps’ section. On view is a first edition of ‘Traite de Paix,’ the Treaty of Peace signed at Versailles on June 29,1919, with a map showing new territorial configurations; an album of autograph signatures gathered at the Paris Peace Conference by T.E. Lawrence, otherwise known as Lawrence of Arabia; rare maps depicting population, transportation, and demographic data in Los Angeles and the nation at the time; and original astronomical photographs of the moon and constellations.
Huntington was obsessed with maps | Photo by Brianna Chu / Beacon Media News
While working on this project, Glisson and Watts found out that Huntington was obsessed with maps. She says, “If you think about it, it’s not that surprising given that he was probably one of the most influential people in setting the course of how our sprawling city came to be. We discovered the spectacular 39-foot long Pacific Electric linen map that shows the real estate holdings contiguous to the line which is part of Huntington’s development scheme. People may not realize that while the Pacific Electric was a component of the world’s largest transportation network at the time, it really was a loss leader for Huntington. He was most interested in getting people to the communities that he’d developed – Huntington Beach, San Marino, Glendale.
“This is a one-of-a-kind map and has never before been exhibited. It is an incredible document – you could see the level of detail on it. Every redaction, every addition is recorded by him. It would have been something that the engineers – and Huntington with them, because he was very detail-oriented – would be poring over. I like to call this the papyri of transportation. It basically shows the Pasadena short line, which was one of the first lines that Huntington put in to the Pacific Electric system and it goes from Old Town Pasadena all the way to the edge of downtown Los Angeles.”
This Pacific Electric map display also falls under the ‘Move’ portion of this exhibition, which examines the ways 20th century technologies – planes, trains, and automobiles – propelled a society on the go. Henry Huntington’s network of streetcar lines brought Angelenos from ‘the mountains to the sea’ and to far-flung deserts and farms. A burgeoning national road system made automobile travel possible and pleasurable as never before.
Also taking the spotlight in this section is the interstate automobile adventure of five friends, including famed aviator Orville Wright, assembled in a rare photographically illustrated volume titled ‘Sage Brush and Sequoia;’ works by T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf, published by Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s Hogarth Press.
The last portion of the exhibition, ‘Build,’ focuses on Henry E. Huntington and the institution he created. In 1919, Huntington announced what some, including his New York librarians, had begun to suspect. He planned to load boxcars with the ‘world’s greatest private library’ – some 120,000 volumes – and send it off to the country’s western shores. By then, the property’s palm, desert, rose, and Japanese gardens were planted under the guidance of William Hertrich, Huntington’s landscaper. The mansion, designed by Myron Hunt, was completed in 1910. With the construction of the library building, the keystone fell into place for what would become the beloved tripartite institution we know today.
The George Washington Wall installation | Photo by Brianna Chu / Beacon Media News
A George Washington Wall – an installation of paintings – is also part of the exhibition. “This little section is an homage to Huntington’s own collecting and what he was doing in 1919,” Watts elucidates. “In 1919, he purchased four stunning portraits of George Washington, including the most famous one by Gilbert Stuart. Why was be buying portraits of George Washington in 1919? Firstly, it was the trend. There were a lot of things coming on the market then and George Washington was the most iconic figure at that stage of America. And, perhaps, because Huntington did this audacious thing of locating this giant institution and collection on the West Coast, for which he took a lot of criticism that he was taking what was considered the cultural patrimony of America and Europe and exporting it to this cultural wasteland of Los Angeles. I think Huntington wanted to ensure this institution took its rightful place in the cultural landscape and who better to do that than George Washington, the first in the hearts of his countrymen? And, of course, it also demonstrates Huntington’s admiration for first founders.”
Beautiful Medieval books | Photo by Brianna Chu / Beacon Media News
In December of 1919, Huntington invited members of the prestigious New York Authors Club to his Fifth Avenue home. At that exclusive event, he shared with them 35 treasures in which he took special pride.
Watts declares, “This was significant for a couple of reasons – we had very little understanding of what he liked or favored. We know what his collecting interests were but we don’t know what his personal favorites were because he didn’t write or talk about them. This group of objects gives us a little insight as well as showcases his overarching collecting interest. Out of these 35 items, we chose some things that we thought were really outstanding and not generally on exhibition. They include: Benjamin Franklin’s handwritten autobiography; Maj. John Andre’s Revolutionary War-era maps; the first Bible printed in North America in a native language, which is also called the Eliot Indian Bible after the Englishman who translated it; and Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman’s four-part memoir never before examined by scholars. The pages open to the redaction pertaining to his mental illness which ran in his family.”
Rounding up the exhibition are displays related to the make-up of this institution. Says Watts, “One of the things I like to tell people is that in 1907, at the beginning of Huntington’s collecting career, there was a big article in the New York Times about the most important collectors in the country and Huntington appeared nowhere. In 1919, when this institution opened, he was called one of the world’s greatest collectors, having one of the world’s best private libraries. How did Huntington do that? He was a consolidator and amalgamator – he bought huge libraries all at once. He had purchased four of the libraries that were mentioned in the 1907 article. We included several book bills to show the range of people he was dealing with and also the kinds of things he was buying. A favorite of mine is the one from Rosenbach, who was one of his major dealers. He delivered $121,000 worth of Shakespeare’s works to the San Marino estate. That gives you a sense that he purchased aggressively.”
Myron Hunt presentation drawing, ink on linen | Photo by Brianna Chu / Beacon Media News
“Among the many surprising things we learned, we determined that in the early years he was planning on importing all sorts of seeds and plants not as a collector but to landscape his real estate holdings,” Glisson discloses. “He was trying to figure out what would work here and it evolved into a teaching collection, something akin to what Harvard was doing in his botanic garden. The other thing that was really fascinating was that in the beginning he thought he could finance this whole enterprise entirely on citrus. Through all sorts of formulation of various fertilizer and types of trees, Hertrich was able to tell Huntington which are the best varieties and how much they’re making. Unfortunately, citrus isn’t the most reliable revenue source and, on top of that, 1919 was a bad year for citrus. Huntington ultimately had to sell some properties to finance this place. In 1919, Huntington had 600 acres; today his estate has 207 acres.”
Watts leads us to a small section, explaining, “This is a kind of homage to Hertrich. Here we see some of the early photographs of the property that he took and his little notebook with a listing of birds which Arabella loved – there was an aviary here with 500 birds. Hertrich, in addition to overseeing the citrus and the grounds, also had to keep track of all the birds. A favorite of Arabella’s was the toucan and we have an original citrus crate label with a toucan, the only one we know that exists.
“We also found something interesting – the vast labor force that actually made this place come to be was not well represented. Although they didn’t necessarily go around taking pictures and keeping documents of their workers, we were able to find payroll records. We discovered that a third of the work force during the time were Mexicans from Mexico or Spanish, and they were paid significantly less than the European and American work force. It wasn’t surprising, but we’re starting to have scholars weed through and work with those documents that were heretofore unexamined.”
“And what would a show about Huntington be without talking about how much he was worth in 1919? He was worth $69 million that year and we have these preprinted ledgers and balance sheets, which he kept month by month, that showed his assets.”
“I will finish with a picture of Henry and Arabella – seen here as a young woman, not the woman we have come to think of as Arabella Huntington, the dowager wearing a widow’s veil,” pronounces Watts. “She was very much behind the scenes of this enterprise and was, in many ways, a huge force to be reckoned with. Her interests, as you may know, were in French decorative art and British portraiture, which he went on to collect later in time.
“When you exit the exhibition, you’ll see this great quote by Herman Hesse which we felt is emblematic of this project and of the year 1919: Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world’s phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again.”
Asked what he learned about Huntington that he didn’t know coming into this project, Glisson replies, “I haven’t been here that long so I didn’t know a great deal beforehand. In reading reminiscences about him and what people said, my takeaway is that he was someone who believed in trusting other people and he was very optimistic. He was always telling his staff to trust people to do the right thing. I thought that was very significant and interesting for a tremendously successful businessman and it suggests he must have found people he trusted and liked and then let them do their job. And that, to a large degree, is how you run a grand institution. In a sense, he clearly wasn’t that interested in being a book collector in 1905 or 1906 and then he got interested and focused on it. When it came to the grounds, his landscaper Hertrich suggested that they be systematic about it and create a scientific botanical garden like Harvard and he agreed right away. So there’s trust and this openness and a kind of capriciousness that, I think, shaped what we are today – an art museum, a botanical garden, and a library – which is a kind of unlikely combination.”
Displays in the ‘Return’ section | Photo by Brianna Chu / Beacon Media News
I inquire what they want people to get from the exhibition. Watt responds, “I always want people to leave with a sense of curiosity and wonder. For me, it was important that people understand the depth and wealth of our collection, that we’re an active research institution where scholars come in every day to study these materials, and that we have an active, vibrant collection which continues to grow.
Glisson says, “One, I hope that people, particularly those from L.A. and Southern California, come to the show and are surprised. Two, I hope they find something that they want to learn more about. And three, I hope they find something in the show that speaks to their own experience which, I think, is pretty likely because there’s all sorts of materials. Those are my hopes, and the biggest one is just for visitors to be very surprised.”
German Revolution Photos | Photo by Brianna Chu / Beacon Media News
As for his favorite display among all the objects, Glisson reveals, “I love this red poster. Visually, this just jumps off the wall. It’s an incredibly powerful thing. And then there’s the text – Achtung! Stehenbleiben verboten! Auf Zusammenrottungen wird rucksichtslos geschossen – which translates to ‘Warning! Stopping is prohibited! Crowds of rioters will be indiscriminately shot.’ My German isn’t so good and I kept reading it and wondered about it. It turns out that this poster would have been printed during the German Revolution in January 1919, and it was posted on a government building with armed soldiers watching around it. Talk about this poster being a snap shot of history and how improbable that it got all the way from Berlin, maybe from the Reichstag, to Los Angeles.”
That Henry E. Huntington had chosen to establish the institution that would bear his name in the San Gabriel Valley in 1919, when he could have done so anywhere in the United States, was quite improbable as well. It might have been seen by some as a foolhardy decision at the time, but we want to think it proved to be a stroke of genius!
A San Gabriel Valley Inquirer 