The Haggin Museum is an art museum and local history museum in Stockton, California, located in the city’s Victory Park. The museum opened in 1931. Its art collection includes works by European painters Jean Béraud, Rosa Bonheur, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Jean-Léon Gérôme, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, landscapes by French artists of the Barbizon school, and sculptures by René de Saint-Marceaux, Alfred Barye, and Auguste Rodin. The museum also features several works by Hudson River School and California landscape painters, including the largest collection of Albert Bierstadt works in the region, and in 2017 a dedicated gallery was dedicated to displaying the largest public collection of original artworks by J. C. Leyendecker.
History
Upon formation in 1928, the San Joaquin Pioneer and Historical Society listed several objectives in its Articles of Incorporation: to develop educational facilities for the study of history, to collect documents and articles of historical interest, and to establish and maintain a museum where such items could be stored and displayed. Stockton native Robert McKee and his wife, Eila Haggin McKee, offered the group $30,000, with two stipulations: that the museum is named in honor of her late father, Louis Terah Haggin (the son of James Ben Ali Haggin), and that it includes galleries to house her parents’ art collection.
Upon her death in 1936, though she never visited in person, Eila Haggin McKee left the institution $with 500,000. Further, to honor her memory, Robert McKee donated funds for the building’s first edition, including storage space on the ground floor, a vestibule, and a large gallery on the second. When it opened in December 1939, the room now known as the McKee Gallery contained paintings, furniture, and decorative art from the couple’s New York residence and overlooked the rose garden.
Past Galleries
The Pioneer Room, the principal history gallery during the museum’s early years, displayed artifacts and archival material collected since 1868 by the San Joaquin Society of California Pioneers. The Victorian furnishings of the Jennie Hunter Rooms evoke life in the Central Valley during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The contents were bequeathed to the museum by Miss Jennie Hunter, a local rancher, an alumna of Mills College, and Daughter of San Joaquin County Pioneers, with the proviso that they are displayed just as they had been arranged in her home. The result is an almost uncanny peek into the past.
Art Galleries and Collections
Eila Haggin McKee’s grandfather, the gold Rush tycoon James Ben Ali Haggin, collected art to decorate the walls of his 61-room Nob Hill mansion. However, her father, Louis Terah Haggin, and her mother, San Francisco socialite Blanche Butterworth Haggin, assembled most of the Haggin Collection. Louis and Blanche spoke fluent French and maintained a residence in Paris, where they entertained artists, writers, and European nobility. Their growing collection filled their San Francisco, Paris, and New York City homes. EZ Stockton Junk Removal
Address: 1201 N Pershing Ave, Stockton, CA
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