Archer Milton Huntington

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Archer M. Huntington, around 1900

Archer Milton Huntington (born March 10, 1870 in New York , † December 11, 1955 in Bethel (Connecticut) ) was an American multimillionaire, philanthropist , museum founder, poet, bibliophile and Hispanist .

life and work

Archer M. Huntington was the son of the future art collector Arabella Huntington and the stepson of her future husband, the railroad magnate Collis P. Huntington , and thus one of the richest heirs of his time when he died in 1900 as heir to the Southern Pacific Compagny .

Even as a teenager, Huntington was fascinated by Spanish culture while traveling with his parents to Spain and Mexico. He learned Spanish and Arabic, with the support of his parents, collected books, manuscripts, coins, ceramics and textiles and trained himself to be a Hispanic and private scholar. His marriage to a cousin in 1895 failed because his wife did not understand his passion for studying and collecting.

In 1904 he founded the Hispanic Society of America (which took over the magazine Revue Hispanique published by Raymond Foulché-Delbosc in 1905 ) and had a museum and library built for it in New York, Audubon Terrace , and later also buildings for the American Numismatic Society ( 1907), the American Geographical Society (1911), the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1921–30) and from 1915 to 1922 the Museum of the American Indian of the Heye Foundation (now part of the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC) , as well as a church, the "Our Lady of Esperanza Church" (1909-12). He had the Spanish painter Joaquín Sorolla paint the building of the Hispanic Society .

He also founded the Mariners' Museum in Newport News and the Brookgreen Gardens Sculpture Garden in South Carolina, and founded the United States Poet Laureate in 1937 .

In 1923 he married the sculptress Anna Hyatt Huntington , who shared his tendency towards seclusion.

Huntington published poetry in English and Spanish. He financed numerous facsimile editions of Spanish texts, was a translator and editor of old Spanish texts and, overall, a unique promoter of Hispanic studies in the United States.

Huntington was honorary doctor of several universities in the United States (including Yale 1897, Harvard 1904, Columbia 1907) and in Spain, member of numerous academies and societies including the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1911), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1918 ) and the American Philosophical Society (1930), as well as numerous medals. A chair at the University of Madrid is named after him. At the University of Texas at Austin , the art collection he founded in 1927 had been called the Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery since 1980 ; in 1997 it was renamed the Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art . The American Numismatic Society awards the Archer M. Huntington Medal , one of the highest honors in the field of numismatics .

Publications (selection)

Hispanic Studies

  • (Ed. And translator) Poem of the Cid reprinted from the Unique Manuscript at Madrid, with translation and notes . 3 volumes, New York 1897–1902 (Reprints 1908, 1921, 1965)
  • A note-book in Northern Spain . New York 1898 (reprinted La Coruña 2011) (travel report)
  • Collection of Spanish Documents Manuscripts in the British Museum . New York 1903
  • Initials and miniatures of the IXth, Xth and XIth centuries, from the Mozarabic manuscripts of Santo Domingo de Silos in the British Museum . New York 1904

Poems

English

  • The Lace Maker of Segovia , New York 1928
  • The ladies of Vallbona , London 1934
  • A Flight of birds , New York 1938
  • Spain and Africa , New York 1943
  • Turning pages , New York 1950
  • Collected verse , New York 1953
  • The torch bearers , New York 1955

Spanish

  • Rimas , New York 1936
  • Recuerdos , New York 1949
  • Versos , New York 1952

literature

  • The Hispanic Society of America. Museum and Library collections. Handbook , New York 1938
  • Estudios hispánicos. Homenaje à Archer M. Huntington , Wellesley, Mass. 1952
  • José García Mazás: El poeta y la escultora. La España que Huntington conoció , Madrid 1962
  • Beatrice Gilman Proske: Archer Milton Huntington , New York 1963
  • Richard L. Kagan: Spain in America. The Origins of Hispanism in the United States , Urbana 2002
  • Mary Mitchell, Albert Goodrich: The Remarkable Huntingtons. Chronicle of a Marriage , Newton, Conn. 2004
  • The Hispanic Society of America. A centennial celebration, 1904-2004 , New York 2004
  • Melvin Duane Davis: Collecting Hispania. Archer Huntington's quest to develop Hispanic collections in the United States , Dissertation University of Alabama 2005
  • Héctor Fernández Bahíllo: España en la vida y obra de Archer Milton Huntington (1870–1955) , PhD thesis Valladolid 2009
  • Shelley Bennett: The art of wealth. The Huntingtons in the Gilded Age . Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino 2013, ISBN 978-0-87328-253-6

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Members: Archer Milton Huntington. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed April 5, 2019 .
  2. ^ Member History: Archer M. Huntington. American Philosophical Society, accessed October 6, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Huntington, Archer Milton
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Huntington, Archer M.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American multimillionaire, philanthropist, museum founder, bibliophile and Hispanist
DATE OF BIRTH March 10, 1870
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH December 11, 1955
Place of death Bethel (Connecticut)