Extraordinary Folk Art on View at The New Fielding Wing at the Huntington
The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens
1151 Oxford Road, San Marino, CA
626-405-2100
- Joseph Proctor (attributed, active, 1860), Still Life with a Basket of Fruit, Flowers and Cornucopia, 19th century. Oil on canvas, 46 × 48 × 1 1/2 in. Jonathan and Karin Fielding Collection. Photo by Fredrik Nilsen, courtesy of The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.
Jonathan and Karin Fielding have been collecting Americana with a passion. Their more than 700 examples of American paintings, sculpture, furniture, ceramics, metal, needlework, and related decorative arts is widely regarded as one of the most significant of its kind in the United States. Visitors to The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, a collections-based research and educational institution just outside Los Angeles, will have the opportunity to see 200 examples from their collection in the exhibition Becoming America: Highlights from the Jonathan and Karin Fielding Collection, currently on view at The Huntington.
- Unattributed, Windsor Low Back Settee, ca. 1760–1780. Wood with black and green paint, 30 × 81 × 24 in. Jonathan and Karin Fielding Collection. Photo by Fredrik Nilsen, courtesy of The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.
The exhibition inaugurates the new Jonathan and Karin Fielding Wing, named for the lead donors to the $10.3 million building project. An 8,600-square-foot addition to the Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art, and designed by Frederick Fisher and Partners, the new Fielding Wing features eight new rooms for art display as well as a stately glass entrance and lobby on the south side of the building that mirrors those on the north side. The new entrance, along with a the reconfiguration of some of the rooms in the existing building, has improved visitor flow and made entering the galleries more inviting.
- Artist Unknown, Early Portrait of a Woman with a Bowl of Cherries, ca. 1770–1780. Oil on panel, 28 × 23 × 2 1/2 in. Jonathan and Karin Fielding Collection. Photo by Fredrik Nilsen, courtesy of The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.
Some of the objects in the exhibition are promised gifts. With the additions to the collection and expansion of the galleries, The Huntington is now home to one of the largest displays of historic American art in the western United States. Says Jonathan and Karin Fielding, “We hope the new wing will give visitors the pleasure of seeing and learning about this intuitive, inventive art, the product of an optimistic and earnest young America.”
- Unattributed, Pair of Canvas Work Pockets, ca. 1775. Wool, linen and cotton canvas, 20 × 26 × 1 1/2 in. Jonathan and Karin Fielding Collection. Photo by Fredrik Nilsen, courtesy of The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.
For more information, call 626.405.2100 or visit www.huntington.org.
Related examples of American painting, sculpture, furniture, ceramics, metal, needlework can be found on Incollect. See also the related listings below.
