A day at The Huntington Pt. 1

One of the main purpose of our visit to L.A. this time was to visit the Huntington, a complex with the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens.  We spent a full day there as guests of a friend who has a membership with its accompanying privileges - skipped the lineup and walked right in.  Still we found ourselves short of time to see everything we wanted to see, not to mention exhaustion in the L.A. heat - we could easily have spent at least another day there. We had to skip some of the galleries because there just wasn't time to appreciate the art fully so we decided to focus on what is unique to the Huntington - the Desert Garden, the Huntington Library Exhibit and the Chinese Garden.  I will cover the Chinese Garden in Part 2 of this post.

We started at the Desert Garden because this is one of the more unique gardens and also to try and catch it in the softer morning light.  But the L.A. sun was already high up in the sky at opening so it probably made no difference.  In hindsight, I would have done the Chinese garden first as it was very crowded by the time we got there at midday.  

The Desert Garden was amazing with all kinds of exotic desert plants.  You can see some of them below.  I apologize for the paucity of captions mainly because not everything in the garden is labelled.  Not being a botanist or even a gardener, I just took photos of what has visual impact for me.

Panorama of the entrance to the Desert Garden

This tree looked like a deer with antlers

Cacti - the round ones are quite common in Southern California but the tubular shaped ones in this planting are rather unusual.

From the Desert Garden we moved through to the Japanese Garden, starting with the bamboo forest.

Stunning art installation "Red Earth" by Lita Albuquerque, 2020 - a boulder with red pigment in the midst of the bamboo grove.  From the artist:  “2020 is the year of perfect vision. We are in a time of expanded perception where we are shifting from a perspective that is human to one of the human in the cosmos. I have placed ‘Red Earth’ in this intimate setting... to represent the earth—the heart even—of the planet in its stillness."

A few of the many beautiful bonsais in the garden

The Zen garden beside the entrance to the formal Japanese gardens

Bird's eye view of the Japanese Garden

This hummingbird appeared 10 feet in front of us on our way to the Desert Garden - I had to scramble to adjust my camera settings to catch it, barely...

Elegant staircase inside the Art Museum

Giant Peony tree on the grounds

The Huntington Library exhibit hall.  Many original manuscripts on exhibit including the Gutenberg Bible and the Canterbury Tales.  One piece I found particularly interesting was this arrangement of a music score for a quartet below.  The music is arranged so that each player seated in front of the shared book can read the score.

This Audubon drawing also caught my eye especially after the recent viral video of a eagle battling a fox for a rabbit.  Also reminded me of the Audubon at the Toronto Reference Library!

 

This lovely statue of Artemis (goddess Diana) adorns one of the hallways, there was no moon for her to point the arrow at but there was a skylight right above her.  I actually prefer the back of the sculpture - the curve of the body was more elegant.

The formal gardens

Next post:  the Chinese Garden, "Liu Fang Yuan, 流芳園, or the Garden of Flowing Fragrance, one of the finest classical Chinese style gardens outside of China" as described on the Huntington website - and I agree.