From The President’s House

Huntington President Karen R. Lawrence

Dear Friends of The Huntington —

Even while the gardens and galleries are closed to the public, the grounds bustle with activity: many on our staff are working hard — while safe distancing — to keep the botanical collections alive and healthy and to ensure the safety and protection of the art and library collections. Each and every one of us looks forward to The Huntington opening again. We are beginning to plan for just that, so we’ll be ready when it’s safe to do so.

So I write from my home, just inside The Huntington property, and while it is a great privilege to be able to still walk the beautiful grounds each day, the experience is a dissonant one, given the health and economic challenges we face individually and as a community.

Our collections tell us a lot about the history of pandemics: our Centennial exhibition, “Nineteen Nineteen,” focused an entire section on the experience of the 1918 flu pandemic in Pasadena. From the exhibition catalog, we learn that “in Pasadena, a proactive city council passed an unpopular ordinance threatening arrest to anyone who did not wear a mask in public, and the Red Cross opened an infirmary at a local middle school.” What’s striking in studying images from 100 years ago and the texts that accompanied them is the degree to which that historical experience bears on our own: Social distancing quickly became the norm; face coverings became a legal requirement in public settings; schools were closed, and gatherings were prohibited. Historians suggest that what we did then by deploying such restrictive measures helped the Los Angeles area avoid the huge losses from the disease that occurred in other major metropolitan areas across the nation. It appears a similar trend is playing out today.

In a Zoom conversation the other day with a few of our library curators, we talked about some of The Huntington’s early collections that touch on the history of pandemics — the Black Plague of the 14th century, estimated to have killed upwards of 200 million people, as well as the 17th and 18th century plagues that ravaged Europe. Newton is understood to have done some of his most important work while in isolation from 1665-6 during the plague; a half a century earlier, Shakespeare wrote King Lear during another outbreak of plague in London. Much is being written about how this time of isolation and quarantine can lead to moments of wild creativity: that is, what are you doing to be your most creative self? Joel Klein, our Molina Curator for the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, reminds us that Newton was creative before, during, and after the pandemic, and cautions that we shouldn’t feel such pressure to perform. “After all,” he says, “none of us is Newton.” Fair enough. But he does agree that it’s a fascinating time to think historically, given that we are indeed living in a historic moment.

Suddenly these stories, told in literature as well as through historical records, feel more relevant than ever. The tragic plot of Romeo and Juliet hinges on a pandemic preventing Romeo from learning that Juliet is still alive. During Shakespeare’s lifetime, the plague meant that theaters were shuttered; this, some argue, may have helped the great playwright focus his energy on writing, given that as an actor, he was unable to take to the stage himself. I learned from Vanessa Wilkie, William A. Moffett Curator of Medieval Manuscripts and British History, that our collection includes some of the most important 16th century administrative papers that tell a story about the Crown’s response to an outbreak of disease in the colonies. Governmental responses to epidemics are fascinating to compare, as are the effects of a pandemic on different segments of a population. Wilkie says, “our collections are some of the best in the world plotting that period.”

I’m reminded of the fact that we also have all the drafts of Thoreau’s Walden, focusing on his period of isolation and his writing about that experience. And, because we are the center for the study of Jack London, it’s worth mentioning The Scarlet Plague, his post-apocalyptic novel about an uncontrollable pandemic. Pandemic, not surprisingly, was something the science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler explored in her work as she examined issues of race, class, gender, and environmental degradation. Butler’s papers continue to be among the most consulted by scholars visiting The Huntington’s library.

This was not how we envisioned the second half of our Centennial celebration. And yet, the experience of this moment brings the value of this institution into even sharper relief. I imagine The Huntington’s collections becoming even more relevant in the aftermath of COVID-19, as scholars strive to make sense of the experience and examine the connection between the recent and distant past. How might our art collections be viewed and understood differently in a post-COVID world? And how do we engage around our botanical gardens, an ark of sorts, where we cultivate and display any number of species no longer readily seen in their native habitats?

We have moved quickly to share our collections digitally, through the web and social media, and we’re pleased to be able to have them circulate widely. But we know there is nothing that substitutes for being here. After all, we have this place because Henry and Arabella Huntington understood that their collections were better shared.

We look forward to seeing you as soon as it is safe to welcome you back.

Karen

Karen R. Lawrence, President
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens

Photo of Director's House, c. 1930. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.