The Huntington Launches Multiyear Initiative THIS LAND IS ...
Groundbreaking series of exhibitions, reinstallations, garden renovations, and public programs marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence
Posted on Tue., Aug. 5, 2025
Key Takeaways:
Institution-wide initiative rooted in land: Launching in fall 2025 and continuing through 2027, THIS LAND IS … is a multidisciplinary exploration of the relationship between land, United States history, and American identities, drawing on The Huntington’s library, art, and botanical collections.
Timed with the Declaration’s 250th anniversary: In 2026, The Huntington will present a major exhibition, signature publication, renovated garden space, and robust slate of public and educational programs reflecting on the nation’s past, present, and future.
Opening conversation with Ava DuVernay: The initiative kicks off with a public conversation on Oct. 22, 2025, between President Karen R. Lawrence and filmmaker Ava DuVernay about the power of storytelling to shape and broaden American histories.
Reinstallation of American art galleries: Launching in phases in September and December 2025, the reinstallation of seven galleries in the Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art continues “Borderlands”—a project begun in 2021 to expand the narrative of American art history. In March 2026, works by Laura Aguilar, Mercedes Dorame, and Sandy Rodriguez will go on view.
As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary in 2026, The Huntington is launching THIS LAND IS …, a sweeping multiyear initiative that invites visitors to reflect on the American story through the lens of land. Anchored by the tagline “Reflections for America at 250,” the initiative draws on The Huntington’s library, art, and botanical collections to reveal the relationships among land, United States history, and American identities.
The initiative’s title references the iconic 1940s folk song “This Land Is Your Land” by Woody Guthrie. The ellipsis in THIS LAND IS …invites reflection on land as both a geographical and metaphorical space of promise, struggle, and belonging.
“At a time when the public places trust in cultural institutions to help navigate complex issues, we are committed to honoring that responsibility as we reflect on the nation’s founding,” said Karen R. Lawrence, president of The Huntington. “THIS LAND IS … draws on the breadth of our collections to explore the centrality of land as both common and contested ground. The ellipsis in the title is intentional—it reminds us that the story is unfinished and that we each have a role in shaping what comes next.”
Launching in fall 2025 and continuing through 2027, THIS LAND IS … will unfold across gallery reinterpretations, a major exhibition and companion publication, a renovated garden space, public and educational programs, and a kickoff conversation between President Lawrence and filmmaker Ava DuVernay.
Kickoff Event: Ava DuVernay in Conversation with President Karen R. Lawrence
The Huntington will launch THIS LAND IS … on Oct. 22, 2025, with a public conversation between President Karen R. Lawrence and award-winning filmmaker Ava DuVernay. The event is part of “Why It Matters,” The Huntington’s ongoing series featuring President Lawrence in conversation with prominent leaders in arts and culture. Previous guests have included Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III and former University of California, Berkeley, Chancellor Carol T. Christ.
The kickoff conversation will explore the power of storytelling—how narratives about America’s past shape public memory and influence dreams for the nation’s future. DuVernay, acclaimed for her films Selma, 13th, and When They See Us, is renowned for reframing American history and amplifying stories often excluded from the historical record.
Together, DuVernay and Lawrence will examine how storytelling—on the page, on screen, and in archives—influences public understanding of America’s history and its possibilities for the future. As the United States approaches the 250th anniversary of its founding, the discussion will highlight the essential role of the humanities in civic life.
The event will be livestreamed, with public tickets available by early October.
Reimagining the American Art Galleries
The initiative launches with a phased reinstallation of the Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art, offering visitors a broad, multicultural, and eco-critical history of American art. Seven galleries will be newly interpreted to present a more expansive view of American art from the colonial period through the 19th century. The reinstallation begins in September 2025 with the 19th-century Zebulon Trickey House Mural, a landscape mural from an early New England home. Six additional permanent collection galleries will reopen in December 2025.
Funding for this exhibition is provided by the Douglas and Eunice Erb Goodan Endowment. Additional funding is provided by The Shapiro Center for American History and Culture, the Robert F. Erburu Exhibition Endowment, the Steinmetz Foundation, The Ahmanson Foundation Exhibition and Education Endowment, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, The Melvin R. Seiden-Janine Luke Exhibition Fund in memory of Robert F. Erburu, and the Boone Foundation.
This exhibition is part of The Huntington’s THIS LAND IS … initiative, which is made possible through major support from The Fletcher Jones Foundation and Stewart R. Smith, Robin A. Ferracone, Logan Smith, and Tracy Beetler through The H. Russell Smith Foundation. Generous support for this initiative is also provided by LeeAnn and Ronald Havner through the JCS Foundation.
The Huntington’s THIS LAND IS … initiative is made possible through major support from The Fletcher Jones Foundation and Stewart R. Smith, Robin A. Ferracone, Logan Smith, and Tracy Beetler through The H. Russell Smith Foundation. Generous support for this initiative is also provided by LeeAnn and Ronald Havner through the JCS Foundation.
About The Huntington
The Huntington, a world-renowned cultural and educational institution, provides transformative experiences for a community of the curious. Founded in 1919 by Henry E. and Arabella Huntington, it supports research and promotes public engagement through its expansive library, art, and botanical collections. By cultivating dynamic scholarship, creating innovative programs for students and lifelong learners, and sharing its extraordinary resources, The Huntington invites all on a journey of discovery, insight, and connection. Only 12 miles from downtown Los Angeles, The Huntington is located at 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino, California. Learn more at huntington.org.
,” a 2021 permanent collection installation that expanded the narrative of American art, the reimagined galleries will feature approximately 135 objects—including paintings, sculptures, works on paper, and decorative arts. Highlights include recent acquisitions of historic artworks by Grafton Tyler Brown, Toshio Aoki, Agostino Brunias, and Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux; rarely seen objects from the Library’s and art museum’s permanent collections; and works by such contemporary artists as Kara Walker, Nari Ward, and Todd Gray, creating dialogue between past and present.
Beginning March 22, 2026, works by three Los Angeles–based artists—Laura Aguilar, Mercedes Dorame, and Sandy Rodriguez—will further enrich the galleries. Each artist brings a distinct perspective to the California landscape and its layered histories of place, identity, and belonging.
Aguilar’s work will be featured in two special exhibitions: “Laura Aguilar: Body and the Landscape” (March 22–Sept. 7, 2026) and “Laura Aguilar: Day of the Dead” (Sept. 20, 2026–March 1, 2027). Drawn from a new acquisition by gift and purchase from her estate, these exhibitions will present evocative photographs dating from the late 1980s through the early 2000s. Aguilar’s work explores the intersections of body, identity, and place in the American West, often centering her own Chicana, queer experience.
Dorame, a 2023–24 artist-in-residence at The Huntington, will debut a major site-specific installation in the loggia titled “Deliquescence: Sites of Transformation” (March 22, 2026–March 2029). A Tongva artist, Dorame engages with cycles of dormancy and emergence through layered visual language. Her work draws upon archival photography, including images of local freshwater springs as well as sculptural, photographic, and painted elements, to explore themes of preservation, ancestral presence, and transformation.
Rodriguez, a 2020–21 Caltech-Huntington Art + Research Fellow and the 2025–26 Hannah and Russel Kully Distinguished Fellow in American Art, returns with her most ambitious installation to date (March 22, 2026–April 27, 2027). Rooted in research from The Huntington’s collections of 19th-century maps and boundary surveys, her installation will feature a monumental five-part map of the U.S., a series of plant portraits, an accordion-fold book, and a new landscape painting—all rendered on hand-processed amate-fiber paper. Known for her use of natural pigments derived from native plants and minerals, Rodriguez blends Indigenous cartographic traditions with historical research to reclaim land-based knowledge. This new body of work will connect directly with pieces by the artist already on view, deepening her ongoing investigation of border politics, ecological healing, and cultural resilience.
Finally, a new film space dedicated to the ongoing partnership with Ghetto Film School will feature the work of teenage filmmakers in dialogue with The Huntington’s American art collection.
Major Exhibition: “This Land Is …”
The initiative’s anchor exhibition, “This Land Is …,” draws on the Huntington Library’s collections, along with art and botanical collections and key loans, to explore land as a defining force in American life. The exhibition opens June 14, 2026, in the MaryLou and George Boone Gallery.
The exhibition stretches across space and time, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Coast and from well before 1776 to the 21st century. It brings together multiple perspectives that address such topics as mapping and ecology, opportunity and dispossession, and preservation and repair. The Huntington Library is one of the nation’s leading repositories for presidential and Revolutionary War–era archives as well as materials related to California and the West. A range of exhibition displays brings these strengths together, including maps, photographs, manuscripts, artworks, documents, audiovisual materials, and rare books that will combine with design and media to offer a beautiful and conflicted story of American lands and peoples.
Exhibition highlights include:
The Huntington’s rare, annotated 1776 copy of the Declaration of Independence
Unique documents from the history of surveying American lands, including hand-drawn surveys by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, a rare map of the 1760s survey of the Mason-Dixon line, and a manuscript page from Thomas Pynchon’s 1997 novel Mason & Dixon
Documents related to colonial Pennsylvania’s swindle of more than a million acres of Delaware/Lenape land in the infamous Walking Purchase
Literary evocations of land in manuscripts by Walt Whitman and Octavia E. Butler
An acoustic guitar owned by itinerant songwriter and activist Woody Guthrie and inscribed with the words “This Machine Kills Fascists,” courtesy of the Museum of Pop Culture, Seattle, Washington
A botanical and biological report on the U.S.-Mexico border following the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
Family photographs and documents by Japanese American flower farmers in Los Angeles before, during, and after their World War II incarceration
Recasting of colonial legacies by contemporary photographers, including William Camargo and Cara Romero
A companion book titled This Land Is … : Field Notes on American Ground will feature a diverse roster of writers, scholars, artists, and botanists who reflect on the theme of the land and their relation to it. Edited by Josh Garrett-Davis, H. Russell Smith Foundation Curator of Western American History, and Linde B. Lehtinen, Philip D. Nathanson Senior Curator of Photography, the volume includes a foreword by President Lawrence. Contributors include Lonnie G. Bunch III, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, with whom President Lawrence engaged in a “Why It Matters” conversation in 2022; historians Natalia Molina and Claudio Saunt; authors Terry Tempest Williams, Jamaica Kincaid, and Lisa See; graphic novelists Kiku Hughes and Julie Fiveash; and artists Sandy Rodriguez and Mercedes Dorame. This Land Is … (ISBN: 978-0-87328-274-1, $45) will be distributed worldwide by the University of Pennsylvania Press beginning in June 2026.
Oak Meadow, a Renovated Garden Space
A renovated garden space, Oak Meadow, will launch in spring 2026. This floriferous, native-plant meadow will create a living connection between the Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art, the MaryLou and George Boone Gallery, and The Rose Hills Foundation Conservatory for Botanical Science. Designed to blur the boundary between indoor and outdoor, the meadow encourages visitors to move fluidly between galleries and gardens—and to see the land itself as part of the story.
The garden will showcase California native plants alongside North American species that thrive in Southern California’s distinctive climate, as well as iconic American trees—especially oaks, the national tree. Designed as a welcoming gathering space, Oak Meadow will demonstrate how gardens can regenerate land in response to limited water resources and a changing climate.
Research, Public Programs, and Community Engagement
A suite of public programs will accompany the initiative, fostering civic reflection and cross-generational dialogue. Planned offerings include:
a symposium in March 2026 titled “Perspectives on Gardens in the American Context” and a research conference in fall 2026 held in conjunction with the exhibition
a Youth Summit in fall 2026 that highlights youth-led approaches to civic engagement through interdisciplinary research and creative projects designed to shape new American futures
a summer institute and other professional development opportunities for K–12 educators focused on interdisciplinary teaching and curriculum design
performances, conversations, artmaking, and community events for all ages in the galleries and gardens
Multilingual and digital resources will enhance access and participation, including:
cross-collection audio guides and spotlight tours
online educational resources in multiple languages
A dedicated webpage will be a one-stop destination for information on the initiative: huntington.org/this-land-is.
