$10-million gift for Huntington

The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens has received $10 million from the Rose Hills Foundation to help restore the Huntington Gallery, built in 1910 as the home of Henry E. and Arabella Huntington. The gift, to be made in $2-million installments over five years, will pay half the cost of the $20-million renovation project.

“This is an extraordinary gift for us,” Steven Koblik, Huntington president, said Thursday. “Not only is it wonderfully generous but it’s a strategic way of strengthening the Huntington as a whole by restoring this landmark building.”

Funds provided by the Los Angeles-based foundation will be used to repair the structure of the Beaux Arts mansion, designed by architects Myron Hunt and Elmer Grey, and to upgrade seismic, electrical, environmental and fire-prevention systems. The building has been improved over the years, but subsequent deterioration and water damage now threaten the collection of British portraits and European paintings, furniture, silver and ceramics.

The gallery will close in the fall; construction is expected to begin next year. Throughout the project, a selection of artworks customarily displayed in the historic gallery -- including the Huntington’s trademark paintings, Thomas Gainsborough’s “The Blue Boy” and Sir Thomas Lawrence’s “Pinkie” -- will be moved to the new Lois and Robert F. Erburu Gallery of American Art, which will open in late May.

-- Suzanne Muchnic