[photo credit: The Huntington]
The exhibition, titled “This Land Is …,” opens June 14 in the MaryLou and George Boone Gallery and runs through January 11, 2027. It draws on The Huntington’s library, one of the world’s great independent research libraries, with some 11 million items spanning the 11th to 21st centuries along with its art and botanical collections, to examine how land claimed, cultivated, and contested has shaped American life from before 1776 to the present.
“The Huntington Library is one of the nation’s leading repositories for historical Americana, from presidential and Colonial–era archives to materials on California and the West,” said Sandra Brooke Gordon, the Huntington’s Avery Director of the Library, in a press release announcing the exhibition. “With these extraordinarily deep and broad collections, The Huntington is uniquely positioned to tell American stories, bringing forward disparate historic voices to enlighten the national conversation.”
The show takes its name from Woody Guthrie’s iconic song “This Land Is Your Land,” and among its most striking objects is a 1936 acoustic guitar owned by the itinerant songwriter, inscribed with the words “This Machine Kills Fascists,” on loan from the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle. Other highlights include a hand-drawn survey of Mount Vernon by George Washington, a garden design for Monticello by Thomas Jefferson, manuscripts by Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes, and contemporary photography by Cara Romero of the Chemehuevi nation.
The exhibition is organized into six thematic sections Roots, Uprootings, Amendments, Edge Effects, Disturbances, and Regenerations that link ecological phenomena to cultural and historical meaning. Cocurated by Josh Garrett-Davis and Linde B. Lehtinen, the show spans from precolonial America to the 21st century.
“Like the nation’s history, the title ‘This Land Is …’ is open-ended and unfinished,” said Garrett-Davis, the H. Russell Smith Foundation Curator of Western American History, in Huntington’s press release. “The same land may represent opportunity or dispossession, ownership or exclusion, nourishment or loss.”
“Both in the Declaration’s time and our own, the ideals of life, liberty, and happiness are intertwined with place,” said Lehtinen, the Philip D. Nathanson Senior Curator of Photography, in the same release. “A view that includes both landscapes and people can reveal new ways of understanding nature and nation, now and for the future.”
The exhibition anchors a broader, multiyear initiative that includes public programs, educator training, a youth summit, and a community festival on June 28. A companion book, “This Land Is …: Field Notes on American Ground,” with contributors including Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III and author Lisa See, will be published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in June and priced at $45.
The opening arrives during the most transformative period at The Huntington since railroad magnate Henry E. Huntington purchased the San Marino estate in 1903 and he and his wife, Arabella, signed the trust indenture creating the institution in 1919. The Huntington has begun a $126.6 million renovation of its original Library building, designed by architect Myron Hunt, a project of its president, Karen R. Lawrence, called “the most ambitious building project in Huntington’s history” in a Huntington press statement. The project, known as the Library/Art Building or LAB, will modernize 83,000 square feet of space and add a new gallery focused on the history of science and an 8,000-square-foot expansion of its conservation studio. The Library Exhibition Hall is temporarily closed during construction; the rest of the campus — 130 acres of botanical gardens encompassing more than a dozen themed gardens, along with art galleries and ongoing exhibitions — remains fully open.
Huntington and Caltech, whose campuses sit less than a mile apart, have been intertwined since astronomer George Ellery Hale encouraged Henry Huntington to transform his private estate into a public research institution more than a century ago. The institution is promoted by Visit Pasadena as a featured attraction of the area. The exhibition is sponsored by Pasadena law firm Hahn & Hahn LLP.
“This Land Is …” is one of several exhibitions on view this year. “The eight directions of the wind: Edmund de Waal at The Huntington” features site-specific installations across the Huntington Art Gallery, Chinese Garden, and Japanese Garden through October 26. “Laura Aguilar: Body and Landscape” presents the Chicana artist’s photographs through September 7. Works by Sandy Rodriguez, a former Caltech-Huntington fellow, run through April 2027. Mercedes Dorame’s “Deliquescence: Sites of Transformation,” a site-specific installation by the Tongva artist, is on view through 2029.
The Huntington is open Wednesday through Monday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and is closed Tuesdays. Adult admission is $29 Monday through Thursday and $34 Friday through Sunday, on holidays, and during peak seasons, which include the Fourth of July week beginning June 26. Children under 4 are admitted free; youth ages 4 to 11 pay $13 to $15; seniors, students, and military pay $24 to $28. Reservations are required on weekends, holidays, and peak seasons. Reduced admission of $3 is available through the Museums for All program for SNAP EBT cardholders. Free Day admission is offered on the first Thursday of every month; tickets are released the last Thursday of the prior month at 9 a.m. and go quickly. Parking is free. Tickets and information are available at huntington.org or by calling 626-405-2100.
The Declaration copies were printed in the summer of 1776. The nation that printed them turns 250 next month. The institution that holds them just across the border from Pasadena is using them to ask what the land those founders claimed has become, and for whom.
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens Hours: Wed–Mon, 10 AM–5 PM (closed Tuesdays) Venue: 1151 Oxford Rd., San Marino, CA 91108 (adjacent to Pasadena) Cost: $25–$34 depending on day; free for children under 4 Link: https://www.huntington.org/
