Enrique Martínez Celaya's Large Outdoor Sculptures Go on View This Month

Two bronze sculptures and a painting by contemporary Cuban-American artist Enrique Martínez Celaya (b. 1964) will be installed at The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens this month. All three works are on loan to The Huntington and mark the start of a multiyear visual arts partnership with Martínez Celaya. The sculptures, The Gambler (a life-size depiction of a boy on crutches carrying a house on his shoulders) and The Landmark (a six-foot-high human head positioned on its side) will join other bronzes in a garden adjacent to the Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art on Jan. 30. The painting, The Crown, a fairy tale-like image of a boy in a forest, will be installed in the Huntington Art Gallery on Jan. 23.
As a visual arts fellow, Martínez Celaya—who is also an author, poet, philosopher, physicist, and Provost Professor of Humanities and Arts at USC—will work among The Huntington’s vast history, literary, art, and botanical collections to produce a new work or program for visitors.
“I am thrilled to be able to welcome Enrique and his works to The Huntington,” said Christina Nielsen, Hannah and Russel Kully Director of the Art Collections. “Working simultaneously as an artist and a scholar, Martínez Celaya is ideally suited to collaborate with us here—a place that features galleries of important works of art, sponsors humanities research, and whose collections speak to such topics as identity, history, memory, and nature that resonate with his work.” More…
The Huntington is located at 1151 Oxford Rd., San Marino, 12 miles from downtown Los Angeles. It is open to the public Wednesday through Monday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Closed Tuesdays. Information: 626-405-2100 or huntington.org.