The Huntington Library, Art Gallery and Botanical Gardens opened to the public in San Marino, California, on January 27, 1928. Created from Henry E. Huntington and Arabella Huntington's estate and collections, the institution combined a research library, art gallery, and botanical landscape on an unusually ambitious private foundation model. Contemporary coverage described the opening as a major cultural event for greater Los Angeles, and later summaries note that the art displays included eighteenth-century British portraits and French tapestries. The opening gave public form to one of the great American collections assembled from the transatlantic art market of the Gilded Age and early twentieth century.
The Huntington became a defining Southern California art and research institution.