FALL/WINTER 2009 A Clean Start for Rare Plants GIVING NEW LUSTER TO OLD MASTERPIECES RECONSTRUCTING ULYSSES S. GRANT The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens FROM THE EDITOR SENIOR STAFF OF THE HUNTINGTON STEVEN S. KOBLIK FUGITIVE MATERIALS President GEORGE ABDO Vice President for Advancement JAMES P. FOLSOM Marge and Sherm Telleen/Marion and Earle Jorgensen T THE SOUTH END OF THE DESERT GARDEN STANDS A REAL Director of the Botanical Gardens showstopper—the Agave mapisaga var. lisa . At its most spectacular, KATHY HACKER a giant asparagus-like stalk towers above a massive rosette of leaves. Executive Assistant to the President Agaves are monocarpic, which means they flower only once and then SUSAN LAFFERTY Adie. Years—sometimes decades—might pass before an agave begins its singular Nadine and Robert A. Skotheim Director of Education bloom. As the flower stalk, or inflorescence, reaches its full height, the plant redirects SUZY MOSER Associate Vice President for Advancement its resources from its leaves and roots to the production of seeds. The spiraling JOHN MURDOCH rosette soon collapses, leaving the slender stalk standing like a lone sentry for a Hannah and Russel Kully Director of Art Collections year or two while, with luck, a handful of the thousands of seeds take root nearby. ROBERT C. RITCHIE Agave mapisaga var. lisa specimens are not known in the wild. The variety was W. M. Keck Foundation Director of Research cultivated centuries ago in Mexico and was likely admired for its remarkable size RANDY SHULMAN and beauty. Such a lineage is a reminder of the role humans have long played as Assistant Vice President for Advancement stewards of the environment. For decades, Huntington staff and volunteers have LAURIE SOWD propagated rare and endangered plants through techniques such as hand polli - Associate Vice President for Operations nation, germination, or grafting. While in the past they might have had to wait ALISON D. SOWDEN Vice President for Financial Affairs years to harvest seeds from a plant like the massive agave, they now can produce hundreds of plants in a matter of months. In The Huntington’s Tissue Culture SUSAN TURNER-LOWE Vice President for Communications Lab, a team of volunteers is showing how tiny pieces of sterilized plant tissue can DAVID S. ZEIDBERG yield spectacular returns (page 22). Avery Director of the Library Preserving great masterpieces in the art collection can also be a battle against time. Oil paint changes as it ages. Dark colors become darker and more trans - parent, while lighter colors tend to retain all of their original intensity. Getty MAGAZINE STAFF paintings conservator Mark Leonard says that Sir Joshua Reynolds sometimes Editor used a red pigment that disappeared altogether. Known as a fugitive material to MATT STEVENS conservators, the paint may have once embellished a fair complexion but in time Designer LORI ANN ACHZET left a ghostly face on the canvas. Fortunately, Reynolds did not use fugitive materials on Sarah Siddons as the Huntington Frontiers is published semiannually by Tragic Muse , the most famous of his many paintings that eventually would become the Office of Communications. It strives to connect part of the Huntington collection. Leonard, who retires from the Getty in January, read ers more firmly with the rich intellectual life of The Huntington, capturing in news and features the has helped clean and restore nearly two dozen Huntington paintings in a unique work of researchers, educators, curators, and others collaboration between the two institutions (page 14). Often he has removed a across a range of disciplines. yellowed layer of varnish from a work to reveal the rich palette of colors that Frontiers is published through charitable gifts and advertising revenues. For information about how to remain vibrant underneath. Other times he has touched in paint to compensate support this publication, please contact Randy for a loss—a chip, a tear, or a poorly conceived treatment by a previous restorer. Shulman, Associate Vice President for Advancement, 626-405-2293 or [email protected]. Like the volunteers in the Tissue Culture Lab, Leonard does not believe he is INQUIRIES AND COMMENTS: intruding or intervening in any way but rather is carrying out a form of steward - Matt Stevens, Editor Huntington Frontiers ship. When visitors see a Reynolds painting, he says, they shouldn’t see Mark 1151 Oxford Road Leonard. “My job is to disappear,” he says. He has done his job effectively, yet San Marino, CA 91108 [email protected] his presence will be felt for years to come. Unless otherwise acknowledged, photography provided MATT STEVENS by The Huntington’s Department of Photographic Services. Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792), Sarah Siddons as the Tragic Muse (detail), Printed by Pace Lithographers, Inc. Opposite page, upper left: City of Industry, Calif. 1783–84. Bottom: Agave mapisaga var. lisa . Photo by John Sullivan . Right: Ulysses S. Grant. From General U. S. Grant: The Soldier, Patriot, and Statesman (Boston: U.S. Instantaneous Photo Co., 1885). © 2009 The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. All rights reserved. Reproduction or use of the contents, in whole or in part, without per mission of the publisher is prohibited. [ VOLUME 5, ISSUE 2 ] Contents FALL/WINTER 2009 HISTORY, RECONSTRUCTED 8 Moving beyond a caricature of U. S. Grant By Joan Waugh FINISHING TOUCHES 14 Getty paintings conservator Mark Leonard recalls some brushes with greatness By Matt Stevens A CLEAN START 22 Propagating rare plants in The Huntington’s Tissue Culture Lab By Traude Gomez Rhine 14 22 8 DEPARTMENTS WORK IN PROGRESS: Center of a movement By Kevin Leonard 4 BOOKER CLUB: Fact-checking fiction 7 IN PRINT: Recommended reading 28 HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS 3 [ WORK IN PROGRESS ] Beyond the Headlines PRESERVING A HISTORIC COMMUNITY by Kevin Leonard recently drove south from downtown Los Angeles along Central Avenue and saw only a few remnants of what was, from the 1920s through the 1940s, the famed cultural center of the West’s largest African American community. When the Harlem Renaissance began, the intersection of 12th Street Iand Central Avenue was the heart of the community. Now that stretch of the avenue is lined by factories, warehouses, and parking lots. By the 1940s, the hub of African American Los Angeles was the intersection of Central Avenue and 42nd Place. The structure that once housed the Dunbar Hotel—built to host the 1928 NAACP national con vention—still stands there, but the clubs, theaters, and shops that served African Americans are gone. The transformation of Central Avenue reflects many of the historical developments that have remade Los Angeles since World War II. The transformation of Central Avenue reflects many of the historical developments that have remade Los Angeles since World War II. Industry pushed south from downtown, displacing the people who lived and worked there. The construction of the freeway put a nearly block-wide concrete structure over the street and brought incessant traffic noise into the homes and yards of nearby residents. The neighborhood’s composition changed in part because African Americans’ efforts to end housing discrimination largely succeeded in the decade following World War II, perhaps most notably through the legal battles waged by Los Angeles attorney Loren Miller, who teamed up with partner Thurgood Marshall in the 1940s to fight racially restrictive housing covenants before the U.S. Supreme Court. As African Americans moved into other neighborhoods, immigrants from Mexico and Central America took their places. Although many African Americans lost contact with the Central Avenue district when they moved elsewhere, a number 4 Fall /Winter 2009 of community leaders worked to preserve and improve this historic neighborhood. When I began my research into race relations in Los Angeles after World War II more than a decade ago, I thought that I would focus mostly on discrim - ination in housing and employment, police-community relations, and electoral politics. Articles in the weekly African American newspapers, however, led me in a dif ferent direction. The California Eagle (published between 1951 and 1964 by the polymath Loren Miller, who success - fully blended careers in journalism and the law), the Los Angeles Sentinel , and the Los Angeles Tribune ran numerous articles and editorials that drew attention to hazardous sites and eyesores in the neighborhood. They reported explosions, drownings, and an outbreak of rabies in 1955 and 1956 that spread throughout the Eastside. The city’s mainstream media largely ignored the impact of these events on African Americans, but local black newspapers told stories about the many community members whose demands indicated that the roots of the environmental justice movement in cities like Los Angeles date back to the 1940s and 1950s. my one-year fellowship, I will attempt to find out what The black newspapers are essential sources for Miller decided not to publish in The Eagle , since he and any scholar interested in the history of African other prominent African Americans wrote privately to one Americans in Los Angeles. However, newspapers another about environmental conditions in the Central are inherently filters; they include only items that Avenue district. And although it is tempting to lament the editors and publishers consider newsworthy. absence of more archives like those of Miller, I have also Archival collections such as the Loren Miller learned to find traces of the old Central Avenue in the papers at The Huntington contain equally papers of elected officials of the era, especially since African important source material. This year, during American activists corresponded frequently with them, Left: Loren Miller served as editor of The California Eagle in the 1950s. Also a successful lawyer, he went on to sit on the Superior Court bench for the county of Los Angeles (1964–67).