16 | JUNe 30, 2016 - July 6, 2016
education COLUMNS
BeaconMediaNews.com
Laura Skandera Trombley Marks First Year at The Huntington By may S. ruiz The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino is a venerable institution beloved by residents in the San Gabriel Valley, recognized by scholars all over the world, and visited
by tourists of every color and stripe. At the heart of this landmark foundation is Dr. Laura Skandera Trombley, who took over as its eighth president (and the first woman to hold the title) in July of last year. She oversees an organization with so many
moving parts that perfectly coalesce to make The Huntington run as smoothly and seamlessly, as it is beautiful and breathtaking. Two weeks before commemorating her first full year at The Huntington, Dr. Trombley remarks on the past 11 and a half
months, “It’s like discovering the wonderful contents of a treasure box – from the people, to the objects, to the gardens. The Huntington has the most amazing way of revealing itself like the petals of a flower. You see that the totality of it is stunning, but the real beauty
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comes in the particulars. I’ve spent the year just looking at it a little more deeply than I have ever had before … and that has been really incredible for me.” Like most people living in the area, Dr. Trombley is no stranger to the place. She remembers that as a child, she walked through the rose garden with her mother and went to tea. Years later she came back to The Huntington as a young scholar, researching for her doctoral thesis. “I felt this strong connection to it and I thought my experience was atypical. But I soon learned that it’s not. In fact I’ve met families who’ve volunteered at The Huntington for three generations; we have someone who has been actively volunteering for 54 years. That a quarter of a million people have the same robust ties to The Huntington – that this is so widely shared – was something that I could not have anticipated,” Dr. Trombley observes. Dr. Trombley has fully immersed herself in the operations of The Huntington. She has worked alongside volunteers to prune and deadhead the roses in the garden, met school buses as they arrived for tours, and wrapped gifts during the holidays. She says, “I don’t want to just sit in my office; part of the fun is engaging with people here.” And as Dr. Trombley did in her previous post, she intends to make The Huntington a model of environmental responsibility. She states, “We are moving strategically towards sustainability – analyzing how much water and power we consume and looking at how we can use less of both. “In fact, we will be a beta site for cutting-edge drip irrigation systems that are astoundingly sophisticated – they are all computer-controlled and can actually sense when it’s time to water. We’re considering installing low-flow toilets across the board and maybe generating our own power.” Ten months ago, Dr. Trombley embarked on a mission to make The Huntington a food destination. She explains, “The thing that’s interesting, and at the same time is complex, is that we have so many constituents when it comes to food. We have children who want grilled cheese sandwiches, tater tots, and mac n’ cheese; adults who want an authentic fine-dining experience, with chefs designing their meals; our staff who want organic food and pre-prepared meals they
Laura Trombley. - Photo by Meeno
can take home so they won’t have to go to the market and cook dinner from scratch.” Dovetailing with this project is an expansion of their dining venues to accommodate the sheer number of people who visit. Dr. Trombley reveals they are building a second restaurant in the Chinese Garden – the Garden of Flowing Fragrance. When asked what vision she wants people to have at the mention of The Huntington, Dr. Trombley laughs and protests, “I think it would be almost impossible for me to name just one. We have The Huntington rose, ‘The Blue Boy,’ Mark Twain’s manuscript of ‘The Prince and the Pauper.’ What I’ve learned is that everyone has a different mental image of it. But one thing that comes to mind above everything is that it’s a kind and gentle place where people are treated very, very well. And it’s a place where you could just have a sense of spontaneous exhaling and, at the same time, an inhaling of creativity. I think that’s the most special aspect of The Huntington,” Dr. Trombley opines. The Huntington is an institution that evokes as many different feelings and emotions as the tourists and visitors who come to experience it. And just as Dr. Trombley discovered when she came on board a year ago, every single person who steps into this wondrous oasis retains a deep connection to it. While locals happily share The Huntington’s vast treasures with the thousands who come to visit annually, they are fiercely protective as they are intensely proud of this national treasure in their midst. They are also absolutely certain that in Dr. Trombley’s accomplished stewardship, The Huntington will thrive and flourish for centuries to come.