Opening Hours
Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Rare Books
Farm voices
Image not available
Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Image not available
Visual Materials
The C.C. Pierce collection constitutes one of the most important collections of historical photographs of early California and Los Angeles extant. The collection of 10,100 prints was assembled by Charles C. Pierce, a photographer and long-time operator of a thriving Los Angeles photographic business. The collection is divided into nine topical headings devised by Pierce; these include Los Angeles Historical; Indians; Missions; California cities, counties, etc.; Industries and Agriculture; Transportation; Natural History; Art and Architecture; and Miscellaneous Scenery. Within these large sections are smaller categories that focus on the history, landscape, people, civic and cultural events, built environment, and development of Southern California and the Southwest from approximately 1845-1930. Of particular interest are the various Indian tribes depicted as well as all twenty-one of the California Missions.
photCL Pierce
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Rare Books
The Responsive Eye, an exhibition of more than 120 paintings and constructions by 99 artists from some 15 countries, documents a widespread and powerful new direction in contemporary art. These works exist less as objects to be examined than as generators of perceptual responses in the eye and mind of the viewer. Using only lines, bands and patterns, flat areas of color, white, gray or black or cleanly cut wood, glass, metal and plastic, perceptual artists establish a new relationship between the observer and a work of art. These new kinds of subjective experiences, which result from the simultaneous contrast of colors, after-images, illusions and other optical devices, are entirely real to the eye even though they do not exist physically in the work itself. Each observer sees and responds somewhat differently.
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