Haggin is area’s cultural diamond

By Jana Saastad
News-Sentinel staff writer

If museums are living textbooks of mankind’s history, then the Haggin Museum in Stockton is a runaway best seller.

Housed in a 34,000-square-foot edifice smack dab in the middle of Victory Park, the Haggin from the outside is interesting, but not stunning like the Louevre in France or as beguiling as the Guggenheim in New York City.

It’s a nice building with lots of natural brick, Corinthian pillars, urn-like planters and thousands of flowers, but it’s evocative of an educational institute rather than that of a grand old dame.

Regardless of facades or expectations, the Haggin is a cultural diamond in the rough for San Joaquin County residents. It pays homage to art, anthropology, technology, agriculture, local history and the human spirit.

“There’s a sense of it being a real treasure,” said Susan Benedetti, museum librarian, archivist and editor at the Haggin Museum. “One of the things we hear over and over again from visitors is ‘I can’t believe this is here.’”

The three-story museum is visited by 60,000 people annually and docents give tours to some 10,000 students and adults.

Privately funded, the Haggin hangs primarily 19th-century American and French paintings and decorative arts, which is appropriate since San Joaquin County was coming of age during the tumultuous Romantic era.

The museum began as a ode to local history in 1928 by the San Joaquin Pioneer and Historical Society. Robert Tittle McKee and his wife Eila Haggin McKee aided the group with funds for an art gallery and donated pieces of art.

The museum opened its doors to the public June 14, 1931. An expanding collection has led to several additions throughout the years.

The Haggin collection includes more than 70 paintings including works by French artists Paul Gauguin, Rosa Bonheur and Pierre Auguste Renoir. Albert Bierstadt, George Inness and Julian Rix are some of the American artists represented at the Haggin.

The art collection in the Louis Terah Haggin Galleries (one of the main rooms) is not to be taken lightly. It’s both an important and stunning display of humanities.

The spacious hall is sparsely adorned with paintings or “snapshots” of life a hundred years past. A grand piano sits at the north end of the room occasionally used for afternoon concerts. An attractive tapestry rug monopolizes a great deal of floor space. Other than that, it’s all about the art.

“The Nymphaeum,” by William Bouguereau of France, is a nod to the Renaissance Era with its portrayal of voluptuous nude women.

Daniel Ridgway Knight dabs in realism with his “Noonday Meal.”

Auguste Rodin’s bronze sculpture “The Athlete,” brilliantly captures the human machine at its finest. There’s more great art in this room and its adjoining wing and is worth the price of admission alone.

Ornate decor was the rule rather than the exception during the latter part of the 19th century and well into the early 1920s. You can relive those days of ostentatiousness in the Robert McKee Room where objects d’art made by the likes of Louis C. Tiffany (his highly detailed urns and mantle clocks rest on a equally detailed mantel) and Frenchman Henri Dasson (a French clock made of glass and bronze cherub holding a scroll) complement the oil on canvas art. The regal look of this era is a disparity to the conservative craftsmanship of contemporary times and a gentle reminder of how fast styles change.

Then there’s the tractor display.

It’s not very artsy, but completely appropriate. Anyone with familial roots in San Joaquin County (let alone the Central Valley) has fertile valley soil in their veins and knows agriculture is the mother’s milk in the region’s economy.

Holt Memorial Hall tells the story of the Caterpillar tractor developed in Stockton by Benjamin Holt on the soft Delta soil. Holt’s behemoth 1918 gasoline powered tractor is on display as well as a replica of his experimental shop complete with lathes, shapers and shafts.

The Pioneer Room focuses on Stockton’s history. Dedicated to Robert F. Stockton, for whom the city is named and Charles Weber, founder of Stockton, the room takes the visitor on a chronological tour of the area from prehistoric times to a look at the future.

The basement level is a replica of Stockton, circa 1880 or thereabouts. Plywood planks make a realistic sidewalk amid several period storefronts — a grungy blacksmith shop, a fully stocked general store, the druggist, a saloon, barbershop and Fung Lee’s Chinese herb shop.

The American Indian Gallery is a realistic display of the regions earliest civilization, the Miwok Indians.

The display features lifesize male warrior and a female who is frozen in time crushing grain in a grinding rock near her tee pee made of tree bark.

Surprisingly, the museum houses a dead guy named Iret-Net Hor-Irw.

Hor-Irw is actually a mummy excavated from Egypt and on loan from the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco. Nestled back in the far reaches of the museum, the battered tomb and its contents is fascinating and scary. It’s hard not to get a chill being alone with a mummified human being. It’s also hard to fathom its age estimated to be at least 2,100 years old.

In the same room, ancient Rome, Egypt, Greece and South America are on display through figurines, clay jars and miniature bottles. The oldest is an Estrucan chalice made in approximately 630 BC.

In its 70-year history, the Haggin has managed to encapsulate remnants of the world in one simple building.

Not a bad achievement for an ag town.

If you go:

Admission is $5 adults, $2.50 for children 10-17, seniors 65 and over and students with ID and free for museum members, children under 10 with an adult, the first Tuesday of the month and pre-arranged docent-led tours. Located at 1201 N. Pershing Ave., Stockton. Open Tuesday through Sunday, 1:30 to 5 p.m. For more information, call (209) 940-6300.