Connecting with the Legacy of Sam Maloof HENRY HUDSON’S FIRST VOYAGE the HUNTINGTON REVIVES the RANCH
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SPRING/SUMMER 2009 Connecting with the Legacy of Sam Maloof HENRY HUDSON’S FIRST VOYAGE THE HUNTINGTON REVIVES THE RANCH The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens The Huntington Library, Art Collections, FROM THE EDITOR and Botanical Gardens TAKING MEASURE SENIOR STAFF OF THE HUNTINGTON STEVEN S. KOBLIK President GEORGE ABDO Vice President for Advancement ITH THE REOPENING OF THE VIRGINIA STEELE SCOTT JAMES P. FOLSOM Galleries of American Art in May, The Huntington has Marge and Sherm Telleen Director of the Botanical Gardens combined two buildings—the Virginia Steele Scott Gallery KATHY HACKER and the Lois and Robert F. Erburu Gallery—into one Executive Assistant to the President Wexpanded space for displaying its growing collection.Visitors who choose to view SUSAN LAFFERTY Nadine and Robert A. Skotheim Director of Education the works chronologically might end their visit by walking through the doorway of a large room and seeing Sam Maloof’s Double Music Stand and Musician’s SUZY MOSER Assistant Vice President for Advancement Chair (1972) and the monumental Free Floating Clouds (1980) by Sam Francis . JOHN MURDOCH The massive canvas by Francis—a recent acquisition measuring 10 by 21 Hannah and Russel Kully Director of Art Collections feet—takes up a fair amount of space in a transformed venue for American art ROBERT C. RITCHIE that is more than double its previous size. The scale of Maloof’s furniture seems W. M. Keck Foundation Director of Research to take advantage of the new surroundings; the woodworker made the stand with LAURIE SOWD two racks at the request of his client, a violist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Associate Vice President for Operations who wanted to accommodate a second musician. Even the chair comes with ALISON D. SOWDEN plenty of leg and elbow room. Vice President for Financial Affairs While there is more than enough open space to view the massive Francis SUSAN TURNER-LOWE Vice President for Communications painting unobstructed, curators Jessica Todd Smith, Kevin Murphy, and Harold DAVID S. ZEIDBERG Nelson—along with exhibition designer Stephen Saitas—invite visitors to Avery Director of the Library allow more than one work to occupy their lines of vision as they walk through the galleries. Sam Maloof was mindful of the connections between seemingly disparate MAGAZINE STAFF works. The woodworker, who died May 21 at the age of 93, was a passionate Editor collector of all kinds of art in various media—ceramics, glass, paintings, sculpture, MATT STEVENS and folk and tribal art. Writer Joyce Lovelace (page 12) met with Maloof in Designer January when he was still busy at work, reminiscing about past projects and his LORI ANN ACHZET friendships with clients and fellow artists. With his loan of the music stand and chair, along with some works that he collected over the years, Maloof shared a Huntington Frontiers is published semiannually by the Office of Communications. It strives to connect legacy that celebrates the sense of community that can be found in making and read ers more firmly with the rich intellectual life of The Huntington, capturing in news and features the enjoying art. Maloof’s double music stand—functional for a solo performance work of researchers, educators, curators, and others or duet—serves to remind viewers of the woodworker’s individual mastery of across a range of disciplines. his craft and the collaborative spirit that infused it. INQUIRIES AND COMMENTS: Matt Stevens, Editor MATT STEVENS Huntington Frontiers 1151 Oxford Road San Marino, CA 91108 [email protected] Unless otherwise acknowledged, photography provided by The Huntington’s Department of Photographic Services. Printed by Pace Lithographers, Inc. City of Industry, Calif. © 2009 The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. All rights reserved. Reproduction or use of the contents, in whole or in part, without Opposite page, upper left : Karl Benjamin (b. 1925), Number 4 , 1968, oil on canvas, gift of Donald M. per mission of the publisher is prohibited. Treiman, in memory of his mother, Joyce Treiman. Right : Detail from a crate label for Cactus Brand Oranges, Highland Fruit Growers Association, printed by Western Lithographic Co., 1916. Bottom : Detail from Thomas M’keevor, A Voyage to Hudson’s Bay, During the Summer of 1812 (London, 1819). [ VOLUME 5, ISSUE 1 ] Contents SPRING/SUMMER 2009 12 NORTHERN EXPOSURE 7 Henry Hudson’s first journey to the North Pole By Peter C. Mancall MAKING CONNECTIONS 12 The craftsmanship of Sam Maloof lends something special to the Scott Galleries of American Art By Joyce Lovelace BACK TO THE FUTURE 18 Reviving a working ranch at The Huntington By Matt Stevens 7 18 DEPARTMENTS ON REFLECTION: History as obsession By William Deverell 2 FRESH TAKE: Waterford Wedgwood in the red By Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell 5 IN PRINT: Recommended reading 24 HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS 1 Fueled by Obsession BALANCING THE ROLES OF FATHER AND HISTORIAN by William Deverell T HOME ONE AFTERNOON, I ASKED MY Over the next 48 hours that well and that beautiful little eight-year-old daughter to cut out a large circle, girl in a pink dress would become known across the nation paper-doll style, and she obliged. It’s the kind and the world. of art project she likes to do. When Helen held I’m obsessed with the Kathy Fiscus story. On more than Aup her craftwork, I caught my breath. At 14 inches in diam - one occasion, I’ve strapped my son John onto the back of eter, the circle was the size of the mouth of the well that my bicycle and ridden over to San Marino High School. It’s Kathy Fiscus fell into 60 years ago. It’s one thing to know there, beneath the western end of the football field, where the dimensions; it’s something else entirely to see them the well once snaked down hundreds of feet into the earth. before your eyes. When I drive my car along the backstreets of San Marino Perhaps you know the story. Late one spring afternoon north of Huntington Drive—Robles, Santa Anita, Winston— in 1949, three-year-old Kathy was playing with her sister I think of Kathy Fiscus. When I look at my children, I think and two cousins in the field adjacent to her family’s home of Kathy Fiscus. in San Marino. All of a sudden, the older children noticed Obsession works to the historian’s advantage. It fuels that Kathy had disappeared. They quickly realized that she research. A few years ago I started exploring the story, poring had tumbled down an old well that lay hidden in the weeds. over newspaper clippings, land deeds, and irrigation maps 2 Spring /Summer 2009 [ ON REFLECTION ] that showed wells peppered all over the San GabrielValley. ing to help, labored alongside heavy machinery in the fever - I visited water companies, and I talked to people who knew ish rescue attempt. Fireman uncoiled an air hose down the a great deal about wells. I found out that a work crew well in hopes of supplying Kathy with oxygen. Water seeped employed by Henry Huntington’s Land and Improvement again and again into the rescue shafts and had to be pumped Co. dug the ill-fated well way back in 1904, probably to out. The shafts threatened to cave in more than once, as draw water out of the robust Raymond Aquifer to water workers fought against big boulders and the sandy, wet soil nearby citrus trees. The well, and the land it watered, were of San Marino. Hundreds, and probably thousands, of people later sold. The well eventually fell into disuse, and a wooden streamed to the site, some just because they were curious, cap was placed atop it. But that cap had been knocked loose by a plow or a mower not long before Kathy’s terrifying Kathy Fiscus with her older sister, Barbara, in a family photograph the year plunge on April 8, 1949. before her death. The rescue scene (opposite) on April 9, 1949, the day after Mere facts seem woefully inadequate when woven with Kathy fell into a well in San Marino. Both photos courtesy of Rick Castberg . the compelling narrative of the event. When rescuers arrived at the scene, Kathy’s faint cries could be heard deep in the well. Her mother and her aunt called down to her. “Can you hear me, Kathy?” “Are you standing up, Kathy?” “Are you lying down, Kathy?” Hundreds, and probably thousands, of people streamed to the site, some just because they were curious, others to keep silent vigil as the work continued. Rescuers determined that Kathy had fallen 90 feet. Given that tiny opening at the well’s mouth, getting her out was going to be extraordinarily difficult. Rescue efforts pro - ceeded along two paths: one laborious, the other more or less just strange. While machinery and men dug two pos - sible rescue holes adjacent to the well, experts proposed, contemplated, and abandoned other strategies. Maybe a giant suction device could pull her up. Maybe the well could slowly be filled with water—or sand—and Kathy would somehow magically float to the surface. Or perhaps a dwarf, a jockey from Santa Anita, or a circus thin man could be lowered head first in order to reach Kathy nine stories below. Those schemes weren’t going to work. Nor was Kathy able to loop around herself the slip-knotted ropes lowered down to her. She would have to be dug out from where she was trapped. For 48 hours, well over a hundred men, almost all of them volunteers who had shown up at the site want - HUNTINGTON FRONTIERS 3 [ ON REFLECTION ] others to keep silent vigil as the work continued.