By Yunkyo Kim, AsAmNews Intern
Starting Oct. 9, tourists and residents in Southern California can visit the 11.5-acre expansion of Liu Fang Yuan, The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens.
Now at 15 acres, the recent Western and Northern expansion establishes the Garden of Flowing Fragrance as one of the largest classical-style Chinese gardens in the world. Visitors to San Marino will now be able to enjoy a new Stargazing Tower, penjing court and other botanical attractions.
Since its beginning, Liu Fang Yuan has been a “world-class attraction” and a “focal point” of cultural education that celebrates Ming Dynasty’s garden building, The Huntington President Karen Lawrence said during the museum’s Oct. 2 virtual press conference.
Still, the road to completion has not been easy.
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Even though the exhibit has been decades in making, the opening of the new areas of the garden was further postponed for over five months due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, Lawrence said.
“This day is the culmination of a 33-year project, from vision to reality,” Lawrence said. “I feel very, very fortunate to be here today to witness and acknowledge the fruits of those who took the long view.”
Lawrence also recognized the retirement announcement of botanical gardens director James Folsom, citing him as instrumental to the vision and development of Liu Fang Yuan. Folsom gave a presentation on the garden’s evolution, comparing before-and-after pictures of the 15-acre landscape.
The building of the garden started in collaboration with Chinese design and construction companies, Phillip Bloom, Chinese Garden’s curator, said. The garden itself was completed in three phases, each ending in 2008, 2014 and now. It also involved around 150 different Chinese artisans, 150 docents, thousands of donors and “innumerable” laborers, he added.
The buildings within the gardens are combinations of Chinese classical styles and Western engineering, Bloom said. The Flowery Brush Library, or Bi Hua Shu Fang, incorporated Chinese traditional aesthetic but was built with anchored steel frameworks to conform to California’s seismic standards for earthquake safety. This infrastructure is the same case for all the other buildings in the garden, he said.
“So really, these buildings end up being kind of a remarkable combination of Western and Chinese engineering as well as Western and Chinese construction,” Bloom said.
Another purpose of the garden is to bring together nature and culture for education, Bloom said. The Huntington is unique in that it incorporates diverse programming and initiatives, he added. The garden also hosts an artist-in-residence annually, leading to the production of operas, visual arts and more.
The garden also has educational value beyond the San Marino area, Bloom and Folsom said. There have been interests in recreating a garden similar to Liu Fang Yuan from other regions in the United States, Bloom said, and Chinese scholars are studying the pattern of Chinese garden recreations in North America.
As the museum looks ahead, it has a lot of plans to expand the exhibition. For now, visitors will need to comply with safety requirements, and the museum has mapped a pathway that ensures they will flow through the garden without saturating the space, Bloom said.
The garden also contains new indoor facilities that will remain closed until further notice. The library, an art gallery, casual restaurant and other facilities may open as the environment becomes safer for indoor activities.
In many ways, the completion and opening of Liu Fang Yuan is a new beginning, museum leaders acknowledged.
The Huntington just concluded its centennial celebrations consisting yearlong programming and events. The opening of the expansion is a symbolic new chapter in the museum’s history.
“This is not the end, this is the beginning,” Folsom said. “We have put this garden together to engage you, to engage the public and many different kinds of discussions, realizations, opportunities, changes in your own lives. This now becomes a platform of through which we will engage the community. So the work just now starts.”
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