It’s 2019, and we’ve got five brand new artists-in-residence at The Huntington! Dana Johnson, Nina Katchadourian, Robin Coste Lewis, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz and Rosten Woo will all be creating new work inspired by our collections, focused around the theme of “utopia.”
Nina Katchadourian has been searching for monsters in the Library—in medical texts, ancient maps, and rare books.
Her interest in the subject stems from the idea that "Monsters quite readily make people think, fearfully and somewhat negatively, of unknowns, or of the unknowable—things that, in the way they seem different from what we think we are and what we think we know, are ultimately threatening. However, I am more interested in monsters as a catalyst for the imagination, as a kind of prompt that may help us to think—hopefully—about what we still don’t know and what may not be as fixed as we think it is."
Poet Robin Coste Lewis has been researching John James Audubon's life and work, with a specific focus on the landscapes and homes he depicted in the backgrounds of his illustrations.
Writer Dana Johnson has been researching the work of Delilah Beasley, a historian and news columnist who wrote about black pioneers in her book "Negro Trail-Blazers of California.”Johnson is also interested in the historic black community Allensworth, a California town founded in 1908.
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz has been exploring the plant cryopreservation lab at The Huntington, as she is interested in the implications of creating a "Noah's Ark" of seeds. Working with botanical curators, her focus has been on the preservation of Magnolia splendens and portoricensus, two tree species that are endangered. Both are trees are native to Puerto Rico, where Muñoz is from.
Muñoz has also spent time filming in the themed, manicured gardens of The Huntington, a contrast to the native habitats of her homeland.
Rosten Woo has been researching the papers of Robert Hine, a scholar of the American West whose research focused on early utopian settlements in California. He has also been studying landscapes produced during an expedition led by John Russell Bartlett. Bartlett was hired to draw the border between Mexico and the U.S. after the Mexican American War in 1846.
Woo is interested in how these communities were formed and funded, and in exploring the relationships between "utopias" and the outside world
The Huntington is collaborating with Clockshop for the fourth year of our contemporary arts initiative /five. The project will culminate in an exhibition that opens in November 2019.
Images:
Nina Katchadourian looking at maps from “Theatrum Orbis Terrarum,” (“Theatre of the World”) by Abraham Ortelius, ca. 1606. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.
John James #Audubon, detail from “Birds of America,” 1827–38. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.
Frontispiece of #DelilahBeasley’s “Negro Trail-Blazers of California,” 1919. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz filming in The Huntington’s cryopreservation lab and gardens.
Rosten Woo looking at materials from the Robert Hine and John Rusell Bartlett papers.
