The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens CALENDARCALENDAR March/April 2017 March/April General Information Telephone: 626-405-2100 Website: huntington.org Admission: Members: Free. Non-Members adult rates: Weekdays $23. Weekends $25. (See website for dis counted senior, group, and children’s rates.) Admission is free to all visitors on the first Thursday of each month with advance tickets. Hours: Open 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Wednesday through Monday. Closed Tuesdays and major holidays. Dining: The 1919 café serves light meals and refreshments. Tea is served in the Rose Garden Tea Room. For tea reservations, call 626-683-8131. Enjoy Chinese cuisine in the Chinese Garden’s Freshwater Dumpling and Noodle House and specialty coffees in the Red Car coffee shop. Huntington Store: Open 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Wednesday through Monday, the store carries a variety of books, prints, note cards, jewelry, UNIQUE EDITION OF JOHN MUIR’S home decor, toys, and gift items related to The Hunt ington’s collec tions. Pur chases help finance the institu tion. Store information: 626-405-2142. WRITINGS ACQUIRED elebrate spring with your family or friends by enjoying an elegant Lisa Blackburn, Editor/Photographer Easter Brunch at The Huntington on Saturday and Sunday, April New acquisitions also include a sumptuous monograph on camellias, a manuscript Lori Ann Achzet, Designer Thea M. Page, Contributing writer C 15–16, under the dome of the beautiful Rose Hills Foundation containing lectures by a close member of Galileo’s circle, and other works. Garden Court. Take a stroll in the gardens while you’re here—the roses will be coming into bloom—and see what’s new in the galleries and Senior Staff exhibitions. Visit our website for Easter Brunch details and reservations. he Huntington has acquired a unique 10-volume huntington.org/easter. edition of William Frederic Badè’s The Writings Laura Skandera Trombley of John Muir (1916–24) that incorporates 260 President T On the cover: Charles Reiffel’sBit of Silvermine – The Old Farm House (detail), 1916. The painting original photographs—most of them taken by Herbert Catherine Allgor is a recent gift from Sandra and Bram Dijkstra. See related article on page 9. Back cover: Spring W. Gleason, a nature photographer who inspired the work Nadine and Robert A. Skotheim peonies in the Chinese Garden. See what else is in bloom on page 12. Director of Education of Ansel Adams. This deluxe edition is an important addition to The Huntington’s extensive collections in early Larry J. Burik environmentalism and early California photography, Vice President of Facilities Follow us! Find links to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, YouTube, Vimeo, iTunes, and it underscores the role of fine art photography in James P. Folsom SoundCloud and the Verso blog at huntington.org the preservationist cause. Marge and Sherm Telleen / Marion and Earle Jorgensen Director of the Botanical Gardens The items were purchased in January at the 20th annual meeting of the Library Collectors’ Council, a Steve Hindle W. M. Keck Foundation Director of Research group of 43 families who assist in the development of the collections by supporting acquisitions. Margaret Irwin Chief of Staff The Council also purchased A Monograph on the Genus Camellia (1819) by Samuel Curtis. The outsize Mitchell Morris volume contains sumptuous hand-colored aquatint Chief Information Officer exhibitions plates after watercolors by Clara Maria Pope (d. 1838), Coreen A. Rodgers one of a small number of women in England who pursued Anne and Jim Rothenberg Vice President “Becoming America: Highlights from the for Financial Affairs Jonathan and Karin Fielding Collection” an artistic career in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The Monograph is a landmark work of horticultural Kevin Salatino Ongoing | Scott Galleries, Fielding Wing Top: The deluxe edition of The Writings of John Muir includes 260 original photographs, literature that contains what are probably Pope’s underscoring the role of fine art photography in the preservationist cause. Above:A Hannah and Russel Kully Director Monograph on the Genus Camellia contains sumptuous illustrations by Clara Maria Pope. of the Art Collections “Real American Places: Edward Weston and Leaves of Grass” best-known botanical illustrations. Randy Shulman Through March 20 | Scott Galleries, Chandler Wing Additional purchases included a manuscript, ca. items—including rare books, individual manuscripts, Vice President for Advancement 1680, comprising the texts of lectures given by Carlo archival collections, and photographs—and spent “Orbit Pavilion” Rinaldini, a member of Galileo’s close circle; an nearly $3.9 million doing so,” said David Zeidberg, 2017 • APRIL | MARCH • CALENDAR Susan Turner-Lowe Extended through Sept. 4 | Celebration Lawn Vice President for Communications unpublished manuscript on the divinity of Christ, Avery Director of the Library. “We are enormously and Marketing penned around 1794 by Lewis Nicola, a Revolutionary 1 “A History of Whiskers” grateful to the Council for their generous support over War officer; and a genealogical roll of arms from the David S. Zeidberg Through March 7 | Huntington Art Gallery, Works on Paper Room the years.” Avery Director of the Library Elizabethan era. “Octavia E. Butler: Telling My Stories” “During the past two decades, the Library Collectors’ Read more about these acquisitions and see additional Opens April 8 | Library West Hall Council has helped us acquire more than 100 significant photos at huntington.org/LCC. On display in the exhibition will be one of the pages plot develops around two shape-shifting—and of motivational notes she frequently wrote to help herself sex-changing—characters, Doro and Anyanwu. The stay focused on her goals. “I am a Bestselling Writer. I exhibition will include notes Butler made about the write Bestselling Books…. Every day in every way I am two characters as she worked to develop them. researching and writing my award winning Best selling Even given the extremes of imagination, Butler Books and short stories…. Everyone of my books reaches sought to meticulously research the science in her fiction, and remains for two or more months at the top of the traveling to the Amazon to get a firsthand look at bestseller lists…. So Be It! See To It!” biological diversity there in an effort to better incorporate In 1975, she sold her first novel,Patternmaster , to biology, genetics, and medicine in her work. Climate Doubleday, quickly followed by Mind of My Mind and change concerned her, as did politics, the pharmaceutical Survivor; the trio comprise part of her “Patternist” series, industry, and a variety of social issues, and she wove depicting the evolution of humanity into three distinct them all into her writing. “Her stories resonate in very genetic groups. A review on display in the exhibition powerful ways today,” said Russell. “Perhaps even more lauds Patternmaster for its well-constructed plot and so than when they were first published.” progressive heroine, who is “a refreshing change of pace After Butler’s death, The Huntington became the from the old days.” recipient of her papers, which arrived in 2008 in two file By the late 1970s, she was able to make a living on cabinets and 35 large cartons, comprising more than her writing alone. She won her first Hugo award in 1985 8,000 items. By the time the collection had been processed for the short story “Speech Sounds,” followed by other and catalogued, scholars were already clamoring for awards, including a Locus and Nebula. access. In the past two years, the Octavia E. Butler archive The exhibition will include examples of journal has been used nearly 1,300 times—or roughly 15 times entries, photographs, and first editions of her books, per week—making it one of the most actively researched including Kindred, arguably her best-known work. The archives at The Huntington. TELLING MY STORIES book is less science fiction and more fantasy, involving an African American woman who travels back in time The Huntington presents the first major exhibition to the horrors of plantation life in pre-Civil War on the life of award-winning author Octavia E. Butler Maryland. “I wanted to reach people emotionally in a way that history tends not to,” Butler said about the book. Published in 1979, Kindred continues to new exhibition opening this spring examines the life and command widespread appeal and is regularly taught work of celebrated author Octavia E. Butler (1947–2006), in high schools and at the university level, and is the first science fiction writer to receive a prestigious A frequently chosen for community-wide reading MacArthur “genius” award and the first African American programs and book clubs. woman to win widespread recognition writing in that genre. Beyond race, Butler explored tensions between the “Octavia E. Butler: Telling My Stories” opens April 8 in the sexes and worked to develop strong female characters, West Hall of the Library and continues through Aug. 7. Butler’s a hallmark of her writing. But she also challenged literary archive resides at The Huntington. traditional gender identity. Bloodchild, for example, “She was a pioneer, a master storyteller who brought her is a story about a pregnant man, and in Wild Seed, the voice—the voice of a woman of color—to science fiction,” said Natalie Russell, assistant curator of literary manuscripts at The Huntington and curator of the exhibition. “Tired of stories featuring white, male heroes, she developed an alternative narrative from a very personal point of view.” Butler, a Pasadena, Calif., native, told the New York Times in a 2000 interview: “When I began writing science fiction, when I began reading, heck, I wasn’t in any of this stuff I read. The only black people you found were occasional characters or characters who were so feeble-witted that they couldn’t manage anything, anyway.