Five exhibits at The Haggin Museum you don’t want to miss for sure
NEW YORK: The mummy is gone, but The Haggin Museum has a world-renowned collection of American and European fine art and historical collections, special collections and industrial archives.
But here are five exhibits — recommended by retiring Ceo/curator Tod Ruhstaller — you don’t want to pass up.
Ruhstaller, who earlier this year announced his upcoming retirement as CEO and curator at the storied Stockton museum, still has the leter of rejection hanging on his wall from when he first applied in 1984.
The Haggin Family Collection
Spread across four galleries and the vestibule, the renovated and reinterpreted Haggin Mckee Legacy collection of paintings, photos, artifacts and ephemera traces The Haggin to its roots. “Spoiler, there wasn’t a Stockton connection,” Ruhstaller says. “It explains the story of how this wonderful art collection found its way to Stockton, California, when none of the three generations who helped put the collection together had ever lived in Stockton.”
The Art of J.C. Leyendecker
Leyendecker, “probably the most popular and successful commercial artist in the United States during the first three and a half decades of the 20th century,” is a hot commodity among celebrity collectors like
Whoopi Goldberg, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, Ruhstaller says, “so the prices now are through the roof.”
“He was Norman Rockwell’s mentor. He actually did one more cover for the Saturday Evening Post than even Norman Rockwell did. We are extremely fortunate in having the largest public museum collection of original works by JC Leyendecker. And again, JC Leyendecker never lived in Stockton,” he notes. “We have people who come from throughout the United States to see our collection.”
Holt Hall’s 1918 Holt “75” Caterpillar and 1904 Haines-houser Combined Harvester
These two treasures of agriculture history in the Holt Memorial Hall pay tribute to the role Stockton played in the mechanisation of agriculture. “Stockton is the birthplace of the Caterpillar tractor built by Benjamin Holt, not just the name of a street here in Stockton,” Ruhstaller says. “Benjamin Holt really put Stockton in the world’s consciousness because we were shipping homemade Caterpillar tractors all over the world at one point.”
The 1904 Stockton-built vintage HainesHouser combine, “a milestone in agricultural technology,” he says, is the second-oldest such machine on display; the oldest is in the Smithsonian.
Stephens Bros. boat
Originally purchased by San Francisco Zoo founder Herbert Fleishhacker for his Lake Tahoe summer home, the 1927 double cockpit speedboat was built by Stephens Brothers Boat Builders, one of world’s premiere builders (The Haggin also holds the company’s industrial archives). Made of teak, mahogany and white oak, the restored boat “is just a work of art, really,” that helps tell the story of Stockton’s Stephen Bros.
ICYMI: Stockton celebrates 100 birthday of boat builder Dick Stephens this weekend
Willy the Jeep
Willy tells the amazing story of how Stockton High School students raised the equivalent of some $3 million, enough to purchase more than 275 Jeeps, to help with the national war effort during World War II between 1943 and 1945, Ruhstaller says. Each Jeep had a plaque on the dashboard that read “Please report periodically on the fate of this vehicle to Stockton, California,” resulting in numerous letters from servicemen and women, some in The Haggin’s possession. Read one such letter: “You can imagine my surprise when I read this plaque because I graduated from Stockton High School just a year ago.”
“I still run into some people who were part of that Jeep Week programme,” Ruhstaller says. “They are justifiably very proud. So it’s a real tribute to the people of Stockton and the whole spirit of volunteerism.”