California Museums, Education, Cultural Institutions and the Southland

Education and Cultural Institutions

Museums

The private Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, in San Marino, contains an outstanding collection relating to English and American literature and history, as well as noted collections of European art, tapestries, furniture, porcelain, and miniatures. Famous works of art are also found in the Crocker Art Museum, in Sacramento, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and the Oakland Museum of California. In San Francisco are the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is the largest in the western United States. The Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena exhibits paintings by European masters, as well as sculptures from Southeast Asia. California's newest arts and cultural complex is the Getty Center in Brentwood overlooking Los Angeles. The center, opened in late 1997, is the new site of the J. Paul Getty Museum, which had been located in Malibu. The museum's former site still displays Greek and Roman antiquities and will reopen in 2001.

The famed California Historical Society in San Francisco and many local and regional groups maintain collections of California memorabilia. Other museums include the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, the Griffith Observatory and Planetarium, and the California Museum of Science and Industry in Los Angeles, and the San Joaquin Pioneer Museum and Haggin Art Galleries in Stockton.