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| Judy Chicago, Pasadena Lifesavers, 1970. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Art Collectors' Council, with additional support from the Douglas and Eunice Erb Goodan Endowment Fund, Art Acquisition and Exhibition Endowment, and the Virginia Steele Scott Foundation |
funded by its Art Collectors' Council: a Judy Chicago acrylic painting from the
Pasadena Lifesavers series; a cityscape of 17th-century London by Dutch artist Thomas Wijck; a 33-ft. handscroll by Qing painter Zhao Yuan; a tapestry by Raqib Shaw. These follow Art Collectors' Council gifts of
a Carpeaux bust and a Grafton Tyler Brown landscape announced this August.
In addition, Deborah and Jay Last have donated sculptures by Jacques Lipchitz, Henry Moore, Harry Bertoia, and Tony Berlant; and works on paper by James Whistler, John Sloan, Andy Warhol, and Frank Stella.
The Judy Chicago painting, the institution's first work by the artist, is the latest in a string of acquisitions honoring artists who had special relationships to the Huntington or Pasadena (others being Robert Rauschenberg, Kehinde Wiley, and Betye Saar). Chicago had a studio in Pasadena, and the
Pasadena Lifesavers series is a pivot of Chicago's development, poised between minimalism and feminism. Chicago studied auto detailing in order to create sleek, spray-painted surfaces. The O forms represent orgasms and the artist's awareness of being "multi-orgasmic." She also said the colors create an illusion of shapes that "turn, dissolve, open, close, vibrate, gesture, wiggle." The Huntington painting measures 28 in. square.
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| Henry Moore, Three Points, 1939–1940, cast before 1949. Tate, London |
Deborah Last and Jay Last have donated a selection of Modern sculpture and prints.
Three Points is one of Henry Moore's smallest and most experimental sculptures (it's barely 7 inches across). The three thorn-like forms approach but don't touch. The work has been understood to express menace and the anxieties of the modern age. Moore modeled it out of beeswax as war loomed. He cast it on his private kiln in easily melted lead. This led to small editions in iron and bronze (shown is a version at the Tate). Moore compared the near touch to Michelangelo's God and Adam; a car's spark plug; and the School of Fountainbleau painting of
Gabrielle d'Estrées and Her Sister in which the sister pinches Gabrielle's nipple while bathing.
Three Points is the Huntington's first Moore sculpture, but the institution has about 330 of the artist's etchings, lithographs, and drawings, donated by the Philip and Muriel Berman Foundation.
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| Jacques Lipchitz, Man With Guitar, 1920. Montreal Museum of Fine Arts |
The 1920
Man With Guitar is among the most abstract of Lipchitz's several treatments of the classic Cubist theme. It was issued in an edition of 7 in bronze. The Huntington says it's the institution's first major Cubist work. Lipchitz, a refugee from the Nazi regime, qualifies as an American artist, but
Man With Guitar is an early work made in Paris.
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| Zhao Yuan, Searching for Flowers at Heyang or The Handsome Third-Ranked Scholar (small detail), about 1804. The Huntington. Art Collectors' Council, with additional support from the Schweppe Art Acquisitions Fund, Kirsten Hansen and Allen Shay, June and Simon Li, Wendy Munger and Lenny Gumport, Margaret F. Leong and Michael P. Checca, the Douglas and Eunice Erb Goodan Endowment Fund, Robert Ronus, and Tim and Lisa Sloan |
Searching for Flowers at Heyang augments the Huntington's small collection of Chinese paintings of gardens. It doubles as a portrait of scholar Jin Chunbo. The scroll has over 40 calligraphic inscriptions.
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| Raqib Shaw, The Perseverant Prophet, 2024. The Huntington |
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| Thomas Wijck, A View of the Thames at Westminster on The Lord Mayor's Day, 1673–1674. The Huntington, Art Collectors' Council, with additional support from the Adele S. Browning Memorial Fund |
The Shaw tapestry and the Wijck painting are on view in the Huntington Gallery. Other works will appear in a suite of reinstalled Virginia Steele Scott Galleries that are to open Dec. 7, 2025.
Comments
> painting from the Pasadena
> Lifesavers series....a tapestry
> by Raqib Shaw.
The contemporary piece at least has a local angle, but the Shaw work, displayed in the mansion's main stairwell, makes me wonder if people in today's world of museums, particularly ones in LA, feel if only older styles and older periods of art are focused upon, that will make their institution seem less relevant, less interesting or somehow less popular.
I thought the Met was caught up in some of that, but their overall special, temporary exhibitions of older, traditional art makes LACMA (and even the Getty too---although a bit less so) during the past 5-10 years seem like the Barstow Municipal Art Gallery and Home-Craft Boutique.
However, LACMA's new show titled "Deep Cuts: Block Printing Across Cultures" seems to straddle both modern and old. But that exhibit doesn't do enough to offset their endless number of displays of contemporary artists and contemporary artworks.