Past Exhibitions

Henry Huntington and Armand Hammer never met each other, but the two businessmen had at least one thing in common: they both established great art collections that form the core of major museums in Los Angeles. In an exciting "meet-up" of sorts, 15 important works from the Hammer Museum take up temporary residence at The Huntington, offering visitors the unprecedented opportunity to enjoy masterpieces from both collections in one place.

Three recently acquired works of 20th-century British art are the centerpiece of a small focus exhibition titled Blast! Modernist Painting in Britain, 1900–1940.

More than 200 works from Jonathan and Karin Fieldings' collection of 18th- and early 19th-century American artworks bring insights into American art practice and culture of the time.

Photographs made by Japanese-American photographer Yasuhiro Ishimoto (1921–2012) of architecture by early 20th-century designers Charles Sumner Greene and Henry Mather Greene will be on public view for the first time in the United States in this focused loan exhibition. Ishimoto turned his lens toward the Greenes' work in 1974, producing a suite of images for the Japanese design magazine Approach.

In a wide-ranging examination of the evolving role of the national parks in American life, The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens will commemorate the centennial of the U.S. National Park Service in exhibitions that run consecutively from May 2016 through February 2017.

As you explore The Huntington's galleries and gardens you will encounter those familiar little figures: playful young boys who feature frequently in works of art. Whether carved in stone or painted on canvas, they are so common that we take them for granted. But what exactly are they?

During the only West Coast stop on a national tour, The Huntington's presentation of "The Artist's Garden: American Impressionism and the Garden Movement, 1887–1920" showcases a hand-picked selection of 17 paintings from the exhibition that originated at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Crowds are the temporary groups that strangers form. They take shape at baseball games and in subway stations, at patriotic parades and in angry riots.

This exhibition presents a more personal side of British portraiture. A wide-ranging selection of small-scale portraits in various media shows how artists from the mid -18th to the early 20th centuries portrayed subjects well-known to them in the prevailing artistic styles of the day.

As one of the first Chinese Americans admitted to the State Bar of California, Y.C. Hong was a major figure in the Los Angeles Chinese community during the period of the Chinese Exclusion Act, a federal law in effect from 1882 to 1943 that prohibited the immigration of Chinese laborers to the United States.

The 25 works on view in "American Made," ranging in date from 1700 to 1868, will be familiar to many visitors who have enjoyed them in the Scott Gallery in the past. Among them are paintings by the most influential American artists of the period, such as Benjamin West, John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart, and Frederick Edwin Church, along with representative pieces of furniture, silver, and sculpture.

During the 18th and early 19th centuries, the medium of drawing became a thriving industry for British artists, publishers, and draftsmen alike. Caricature was one of the most popular genres in this expanding field.