SAN MARINO, CA.- The Huntington announced today that it will become the permanent home of the L.A. Louver Archive & Library, a landmark gift preserving more than five decades of documentation related to Southern California contemporary art and cultural history.

“This extraordinary gift aligns seamlessly with The Huntington’s mission to preserve collections of lasting cultural significance, provide access to them, and help generate new knowledge,” said Karen R. Lawrence, president of The Huntington. “The L.A. Louver Archive & Library expands our ability to tell the story of Los Angeles as a global center of creativity, advancing our commitment to scholarship and public engagement across disciplines.”

The extensive archive and library will be fully transferred by 2029. In the meantime, Huntington and L.A. Louver archivists and librarians are collaborating to process and prepare the collection for future accessibility.

L.A. Louver History

Founded in 1975 in Venice, Calif., by Peter and Elizabeth Goulds, L.A. Louver has been one of Southern California’s most influential galleries of contemporary art. It was among the first to foster dialogue between the region’s artists and the global art world.

Over nearly half a century, the gallery has presented more than 660 exhibitions and helped organize more than 125 museum shows. Its innovative programming included experimental group exhibitions of the 1970s—including “This Knot of Life,” “The British Picture,” “Painting Language,” “American European,” and “Poem Makers”—and the Rogue Wave series of emerging-artist shows in the 2000s.

The Archive

The L.A. Louver Archive & Library includes a wide range of materials:

Founding documents from 1975, early exhibition records, and oral histories
Correspondence, photographs, publications, and flyers documenting the gallery’s work with artists, collectors, and institutions
Letters and materials related to artists including David Hockney, Leon Kossoff, Edward and Nancy Kienholz, Alison Saar, Gajin Fujita, Richard Deacon, and R.B. Kitaj
Administrative files, day planners, and photographs mapping the gallery’s daily operations
Records of collaborations with such institutions as MOCA, LACMA, and Getty
Documentation of international projects and major sales, including Hockney’s A Bigger Grand Canyon and Edward and Nancy Kienholz’s installation Five Car Stud

Including handwritten, printed, and digital formats, the archive offers a comprehensive record of the artistic, curatorial, and institutional practices of L.A. Louver and its role in Los Angeles’ rise as a global cultural hub.

Context Within The Huntington

The L.A. Louver gift complements the Huntington Library’s extensive holdings in California and Anglo-American cultural history. It also strengthens holdings in postwar Southern California art and business, including the recently acquired archives of photographer Gusmano Cesaretti and artist Don Bachardy, and the architectural records of such firms as Buff, Smith & Hensman.

“The L.A. Louver Archive & Library offers an unparalleled record of Southern California’s artistic and cultural life, interwoven with vital Anglo-American connections,” said Sandra Brooke Gordon, Avery Director of the Library at The Huntington. “This gift will enrich the Library’s holdings in literature, art, business, and cultural history, providing scholars with new insights into Los Angeles as a city of tremendous creativity. Peter and Liz Goulds’ vision and meticulous documentation make this collection both unique and transformative for understanding the broader cultural fabric of our region.”

Over the past decades, the Huntington Library has acquired many archives documenting LA cultural life during the last 50 years, and L.A. Louver artists intersect across these collections. L.A. Louver represented many artists from the Ferus Gallery, founded by Ed Kienholz, Walter Hopps, and Shirley Hopps. Walter Hopps dated Eve Babitz, who was famously photographed at the Marcel Duchamp retrospective exhibition curated by Hopps at the Pasadena Art Museum. Babitz was a lifelong friend of Ed and Paul Ruscha. Hockney, a close friend of Isherwood and Bachardy, was a portraitist like Bachardy. Poet Will Alexander, though an outlier, shares Surrealist lineage with the Goulds and Babitz and has long served as poet-in-residence at Beyond Baroque—the Venice literary arts center founded at nearly the same time as and just one mile from L.A. Louver.

The Huntington’s Art Museum, renowned for its strength in British and American art, provides a resonant context for the L.A. Louver Archive & Library. Documentation within the archive reflects the Goulds’ long-standing relationship with Hockney, a central figure in both British and Los Angeles art. The Huntington is home to Hockney’s Tree on Woldgate, 6 March (2006), and collaborations with such U.K. artists as Raqib Shaw and such LA artists as Betye Saar make this new acquisition a natural extension of the institution’s collections and programs.

“The L.A. Louver Archive & Library captures the vital history of contemporary art in Los Angeles, documenting how artists and ideas here have resonated internationally,” said Christina Nielsen, Hannah and Russel Kully Director of the Art Museum at The Huntington. “By preserving this record, The Huntington is not only strengthening the connection between our Art Museum and Library but also ensuring that future generations can study the innovation and experimentation that have defined Southern California’s artistic landscape.”

The Future of L.A. Louver

While preparing its archive for The Huntington, L.A. Louver will continue its legacy of experimentation and scholarship, while increasingly based out of its Jefferson Boulevard facility. The gallery is shifting toward a flexible business model focused on private dealing, consulting, research, and projects, while continuing to develop institutional exhibitions, manage major commissions of new work, and expand secondary market sales, specialized collections development, and advisory services.

“Our collaboration with The Huntington allows us to give thanks to the City of Los Angeles, which some of the world’s preeminent artists, scholars, and curators have called home,” said Peter Goulds, founding director of L.A. Louver. “Liz and I started L.A. Louver in 1975 with a mission to show Southern California artists in an international context, and to introduce international artists to this region. For more than five decades, we have witnessed our region’s contributions to national and global arts and culture flourish in unprecedented ways, and we have been grateful for the opportunity to participate in this transformation. The Huntington is the preeminent repository of cultural life in Southern California, and we strongly feel the institution’s stewardship of the L.A. Louver Archive & Library will aid in telling our story and Los Angeles’ story for generations to come.”