News Release - The Huntington Announces a Year-Long Centennial Celebration to Begin in Fall of 2019

Exhibitions and other special programs will mark the celebration that will run from Sept. 2019 to Sept. 2020 | A new commemorative rose variety, 'Huntington's Hundredth,' to be unveiled Saturday, Sept. 8, 2018

SAN MARINO, Calif.— The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens announced today plans to mark its centennial with a year-long series of exhibitions and programs celebrating the impact of the research and educational institution's incomparable collections while exploring the interdisciplinary ideas that will shape the next 100 years.

To punctuate the announcement, a new variety of rose, 'Huntington's Hundredth', will be unveiled on Saturday at this year's annual Huntington Ball. The pastel yellow and orchid pink floribunda was hybridized in 2009 by Tom Carruth, The Huntington's E. L. and Ruth B. Shannon Curator of the Rose Collection and will become available for sale for the first time in January 2019.

"From the tens of thousands of researchers who have studied The Huntington's collections over the past century and the countless people their research has touched, to the millions of visitors who have explored the galleries and gardens here, this institution's reach is immeasurable," said Huntington President Karen R. Lawrence. "We are seizing this moment not only to reflect on the legacy of our past, but also to explore unexpected synergies across the library, art, and botanical collections; to steward and grow those collections; and to welcome new audiences of scholars, artists, and the public whom they will inspire. We want to encourage creative exploration of the relationship among the humanities, the arts, and nature."

It was in August 1919 that railroad and real estate businessman Henry Edwards Huntington (1850–1927) and his wife Arabella (1851–1924) drafted the trust indenture document that established The Huntington as a collections-based research and educational institution for the public's benefit. Twelve miles from downtown Los Angeles, their Gilded Age estate— one of the first cultural centers in Southern California—opened to the public in 1928. Since that time, the collections have grown exponentially, and the institution has become a premier research center and a world leader in the promotion and preservation of the humanities, and its galleries and botanical gardens have become beloved destinations to some 750,000 visitors each year. With its extensive historical and literary archives, signature holdings of European and American art, and 120 acres of astonishingly varied botanical collections, "The Huntington has, in its first 100 years, by all estimates, established itself as a vital cultural treasure," Lawrence said.

Exhibitions, Events, Outreach, and Collaborations
The Huntington's Centennial year opens in September 2019 with "Nineteen Nineteen," a major exhibition in the MaryLou and George Boone Gallery that draws from the library, art, and botanical collections to examine that historic year across the globe and the founding of The Huntington in the context of international events. In October 2019, "What Now: Collecting for the Library" opens in the Library's West Hall, the first exhibition of a two-part series highlighting a wide variety of recent acquisitions of rare books and manuscripts. Also opening in the fall of 2019 is the fourth installment of The Huntington's /five initiative, a collaboration in which contemporary artists respond to a theme drawn from The Huntington's collections, culminating in an exhibition.