HUNTINGTON LIBRARY ADDS TWO WORKS TO COLLECTION

Karen Wada reports in the Los Angeles Times that the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens has added two works to its collection: an untitled screen for a pipe organ made of redwood, by Sargent Claude Johnson, and Harlem Flats (Back Lot Laundry), 1907, by Ernest Lawson. Lawson’s painting adds to the Huntington’s collection of pieces by “the Eight,” a group of antiacademic American artists whose output eventually inspired the Ashcan school. Johnson’s screen is the first major artwork in the Huntington’s collections by an African-American artist. Said Jessica Todd Smith, chief curator of American art, “These are extremely important acquisitions that help us tell a more complete story about American art made in the first half of the twentieth century.”