Past Exhibitions

This exhibition of 11 prints from The Huntington's collections complements "Revisiting The Cottage Door: Gainsborough's Masterpiece in Focus," and explores the question of whether an artwork is "by" its purported maker when it is a print.

Rare examples of early American needlework offer new insight into the lives and skills of the young women who made them.

"When They Were Wild: Recapturing California's Wildflower Heritage," showcases more than 300 items—drawings, paintings, herbarium specimens, photographs, and other objects—that trace the journey of California's plants from the flower fields into the home garden.

The works in this exhibition—studies and sketches spanning nearly three centuries—provide glimpses into how artists such as Peter Lely, Charles West Cope, and David Wilkie attempted to capture the emotive force of the human hand.

To mark San Marino's centennial year, The Huntington has mounted a special exhibition titled "Cultivating California: The Founding Families of the San Marino Ranch," on view Feb. 16–May 13. The exhibition tells the story of the Wilson, Shorb, and Patton families, who helped transform a region of one-time Spanish land grants into an agricultural paradise.

"Maurice Merlin and the American Scene, 1930–1947" brings together approximately 30 paintings, watercolors, and prints by Merlin, as well as nine works by others in his circle, to shed light on the vibrant Detroit art scene in which Merlin worked while employed by the federal government's Works Progress Administration (WPA).

In a dramatic departure from tradition, The Huntington presents the first exhibition of contemporary paintings and sculpture to be displayed inside the Huntington Art Gallery, showcasing the work of Los Angeles–based artists Lesley Vance and Ricky Swallow.

This exhibition features fifteen rarely seen works by marine artists such as John Thomas Serres, Charles Bentley, and Samuel Owen. From documentary records of important battles to dramatic, romantic views of wind-tossed ships, the images reveal a nation passing from the threat of war to command a prosperous peace.

A Strange and Fearful Interest is drawn exclusively from The Huntington's collection of photographs related to the Civil War, offering an unprecedented opportunity to bring this rare and evocative material to light.

"A Just Cause: Voices of the American Civil War" explores the war-time debate on the causes and mission of "this cruel war." The debate that began long before the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter became increasingly fierce as the war raged on and casualties on both sides piled up.

Between September 1933 and March 1934, American artist Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) traveled to Germany. First landing in Hamburg, he wended his way south to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, a village in the Bavarian Alps, producing works that captured the spare geometries of the surrounding mountains.

"Roger Medearis: His Regionalism," is an exhibition that runs from June 16 through Sept. 17 in the Chandler Wing of the Virginia Steele Scott Galleries. Drawing on the generous gifts made to The Huntington by Elizabeth Medearis, his widow, loans from private collections, and a painting borrowed from the Smithsonian, the exhibition features 36 works that demonstrate the breadth of his career.