Borderlands

This gallery explores trans-Pacific conversations in modern and contemporary American art through works by Asian American artists who each uniquely engage Asian diasporic identity and culture. See also works by modernists Robert Rauschenberg and Sam Francis—not artists of Asian descent, but artists who were greatly impacted by their travels across the Pacific Ocean from the U.S. to Asia and back again.

See artworks inspired by the built and natural environment, including the landscapes of the American West. On display are works by mid‑century artists such as Donald Judd, Helen Lundeberg, and Frederick Hammersley, including Judd’s tall blue Plexiglas stacks. Space is the medium for these artists, who can be found roaming the color fields and spaces between.

This gallery explores the works of such American landscape painters as Frederick Edwin Church, Martin Johnson Heade, and William Bradford who captured the vast landscapes in the farthest reaches of the Americas—North, Central, and South America. The gallery also features a special display of John James Audubon’s Birds of America from The Huntington Library’s collection, showing life-size, hand-colored prints of birds from North America.

This section highlights 19th-century American artists who sought inspiration, and often greater creative freedom, outside the United States. Many were drawn to influential movements in Europe, such as Impressionism, the Aesthetic Movement, and Art Nouveau, adapting these international styles within an American context. Featured works include paintings by such artists as John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, William Merritt Chase, and Lockwood de Forest, as well as decorative arts by Louis Comfort Tiffany and Herter Brothers. 

Drawing from the work of contemporary artist Sandy Rodriguez, this education space focuses on the links between art and the natural world. Interpretive displays and video installations explore the botanical, mineral, and animal sources of pigments and the movement of certain pigments around the globe. Names in Tongva, Nahua, Spanish, and English recognize artistic practices across cultures and time.