Huntington Art Gallery.(Current and coming)

The fruits of a two-year, $20 million renovation and reinstallation program will be unveiled this month at the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, the venerated institution established in 1919 by Henry E. and Arabella Huntington in San Marino, California. The Huntington's 1911 Beaux-Arts mansion, which houses the art gallery and is the centerpiece of the library, has undergone a major facelift. The exterior has been stripped of layers of paint and refinished, and the heavy wire mesh window screens that protected the interiors from the effects of the fierce Southern California sun have been replaced by striped awnings, a common architectural feature in grand houses of the 1920s.

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The changes on the interior are even more substantial. The ground floor has been rearranged to evoke the style of the house as it was decorated for the Huntingtons by Duveen Brothers of London with important examples of French furniture and tapestries, English portraits, and Persian carpets. On the second floor, the valuable collections of French decorative arts and eighteenth-century British paintings--Blue Boy by Thomas Gainsborough and View on the Stour near Dedham by John Constable are the most famous examples--will be united for the first time under one roof in a series of new galleries. One highlight is ...