Depression-era work of art comes to Huntington

More than 70 years after it was carved from California redwood and nearly a year after it was acquired by the Huntington Library, Sargent Johnson's 22-foot-long work of art has become a cause célèbre.

The work is an arching, three-panel piece that depicts animals and birds near the radiating limbs of a tree. It originally was commissioned by the Works Progress Administration and was built to screen the organ pipes at a school for the deaf and blind in Berkeley. It was acquired by the Huntington for an undisclosed sum in April.

This week, the New York Times printed a narrative of the piece's odyssey from the defunct California School for the Deaf and Blind to a University of California surplus bin — where it sold for $150 — to the hands of art collectors who recognized its value at more than a million dollars.

When Jane Todd Smith, the Huntington's Virginia Steele Scott Curator of American Art, first saw the piece, it was in the Los Angeles warehouse of Manhattan gallery owner Michael Rosenfeld, about to be shipped to New York. Talking to gallery owners and viewing private collections is part of Smith's job. She said landing the exceptional work by a noted maker of abstract and early modern sculptures was a matter of luck.

“We were just incredibly fortunate in terms of when we walked into the gallery, and the availability of the piece,” she said. “We were fortunate to be among the first people through the door.”

Huntington curators presented the piece to the Arts Collectors' Council, a group of private donors who contribute to the Huntington and vote on which pieces it should acquire. The Huntington regularly presents pieces to the group, takes in the council's advice and then matches its donations to make purchases, Smith said.

The group approved the purchase of the Johnson sculpture in late April 2011.

Johnson was an artist of African American, Cherokee and Swedish heritage who spent much of his life in the Bay Area, and who studied with sculptors Benjamin Bufano and Ralph Stackpole in San Francisco. He was among the artists paid by the federal government's Works Progress Administration during the Depression to strengthen American culture, beautify public works projects and buoy the economy.

Several twists of fate were required for Johnson's piece to be on the market. The first was an oversight on the part of the University of California at Berkeley — which had acquired the deteriorating blind school site a few blocks from its campus — that resulted in the sale of the sculpture as surplus. The second was a loophole in the law that generally bars pieces commissioned for the WPA from going into private hands.

When the Huntington bought the piece last year, it noted in a press release that it had navigated the legal issue carefully. The General Services Administration, the release stated, “made a legal and policy decision that the federal government does not retain an ownership interest in site-specific works of art where the building in which the art was located is not federal property.”

Smith said the sculpture stills bears a WPA plaque that would serve as a warning to private collectors, but that the government allowed the private transactions.

In doing so, Smith said, “I think the government's perspective is that it was meant to be work for the public [to see], and happily, we've been able to fulfill that goal.”

Smith has been curator of the Huntington's American collection, which includes furniture by Frank Lloyd Wright, paintings by Edward Hopper, Mary Cassatt and more, for 10 years. She said she would rather see Johnson's piece recognized for its artistic merit and place in history than for its messy back story, but she is glad the public has tuned in. She noted gallery space for the American collection doubled in 2009 and will triple in 2014, when the Sargent Johnson piece will take a prominent place.

“One of my hopes is that by increasing the physical space devoted to the collection, we also increase public awareness of the collection,” she said.