With a purpose to make positive change and enhance the community, Heather Sturt Haaga and the Descanso Gardens team brought to life the Sturt Haaga Gallery in 2011 for local artists to bloom and for visitors to explore a new side of the garden.
Sturt Haaga, a La Cañada Flintridge resident since 1985, started going to Descanso Gardens with her young kids, who are now in their 40s. She continued with the organization, but in a bigger way by serving on the Descanso board of directors from 2006 to 2015, holding several positions, including board chair.
“We have a special place in our heart for Descanso, because our kids went there when they were 2 and 3 and 6 years old, so we’ve got a lot of family history with this place,” Sturt Haaga said. “… We do things because they make a difference.”
When Sturt Haaga and her family moved to LCF, she started getting involved with nonprofits because of the flexibility they offered as she cared for her two small children and because she wanted to work to make a difference.
The Sturt Haaga Gallery sits right next to the historic Boddy House, and was once the garage of owner E. Manchester Boddy, which he purchased in 1937.
The gallery consists of about 1,500 square feet of floor space and over 300 linear feet of wall space, arranged in three complementary gallery spaces — two fashioned from the original garage structure and a third in the new structure, featuring 12-foot ceilings for the display of larger works. The new structure was designed by renowned architects Frederick Fisher and Partners.
With the former Descanso Gardens CEO David Brown, Sturt Haaga worked and developed the idea of the gallery for visitors, since she and her husband, Paul, were the biggest donors to the project.
“[David’s] vision for Descanso was to have a broader reach and appeal to people not just in this immediate area who understood that it was a garden, but it lured people in from even the Westside because there was art and botany,” she said.
The project was also special to Sturt Haaga and her husband as the gallery was a gift to each other for their 30th wedding anniversary.
Current Descanso Gardens CEO Juliann Rooke told the Outlook Valley Sun that she was the chief operations officer throughout the project and oversaw the construction. Rooke said it was great to work with Sturt Haaga, especially after seeing her commitment to the project.
“She was at almost every construction meeting, and I had never worked on a construction project with the donor in the room, and it was awesome to work with [her],” Rooke said.
The designers were able to transform the historic garage into a great gallery space, while keeping its historic components, like the garage doors and rooms. Rooke said that during the project, the team had to take into consideration the garage’s history.
“There’s a very distinct delineation between the original structure and what is new,” she said, adding that it’s designed to look like one contiguous structure, but it’s technically separated into three parts.
Another unique aspect to the gallery is that it highlights and invites artists from California to showcase their work and share with visitors things happening both at Descanso and out in the community.
“There’s so many fabulous artists right in our backyard, we don’t really need to look very far to find artists to showcase in the gallery, and I think that is really exemplified in [our show] right now,” said Rooke, adding that locals from Los Angeles are showcased in the gallery’s current show.
Rooke explained that the gallery hosts about three exhibits a year that showcase a multitude of areas, including art, science and history, and it was Sturt Haaga’s goal to make the gallery open to more than just art.
Rooke said that not all exhibits are correlated to Descanso Gardens but present a bigger conversation, such as its next event, called “Roots of Cool,” which talks about shade equity.
Currently the exhibit showcased in the gallery is “HWAJODO: Flowers and Birds in Korean American Art,” with artists Dave Young Kim and Kee Soon Sung, to name a few.
Rooke also added that visitors love the gallery and what it has to offer, especially after Descanso received pleas from some who wish to keep the artwork there.
“What’s really interesting about the gallery is that we don’t collect art, nor do we put anything in it permanently. Sometimes we’ll have something that is beloved, and people are like, ‘oh, you should keep that,’” she said, adding that she has had to disappoint a few visitors.
Another unique aspect of the gallery is the green wall, which was not commonly seen in 2011. The green wall offers an unusual perspective on plants in keeping with the gallery’s mission of presenting shows that challenge and inspire visitors to think about nature in new ways. The new addition is also topped by a small rooftop garden that is viewable from Hope’s Garden on the hillside above.
The current board chair, Brad Schwartz, said that the gallery adds another dimension to the overall experience at Descanso.
“It fits with the emphasis over the last few years and the next few years of enhancing the experience of Descanso members and guests,” he said. “In addition, as several exhibits at the gallery are plant- and nature-related and/or educational, it also fits with the overall offerings of Descanso.”
He said he likes that the exhibits change from time to time and how creative they can be for the visitors.
“I think the gallery is one of the lesser-known gems at Descanso that comes as a surprise to those who don’t know the gardens that well,” Schwartz said.
Sturt Haaga’s background is in advertising and long-range strategic planning. Now, she focuses on nonprofits, her biggest commitment being with the African Wildlife Foundation for the last 12 years. She also serves on the advisory board of the Princeton University Art Museum and as a trustee at the Princeton Theological Seminary.
She also finds herself dabbling in painting and taught herself when she was 43 years old; she knows the feeling of being in shows and selling pieces, which “was very gratifying.” She focuses on plein air painting, which is primarily landscapes and still life.
“I had always been crafty for kids’ birthday parties, crafting little sweatshirts and light plates and party favors, but I’d never really painted,” she said. “So, I’m pretty much self-taught, although I’ve worked in a studio with a bunch of other painters.”
Although Sturt Haaga has stepped away from serving on the Descanso board of directors, she continues to go every couple of weeks and participates in the Exhibits and Engagement Roundtable, which helps plan the exhibits for the gallery. Sturt Haaga’s passion for Descanso has even rubbed off on her daughter, who now serves on the board as the chair of the Governance Committee and got involved with the garden in 2018.
Rooke is excited to see how the gallery will grow from its current state. “I think when you open [the room up] to many voices, that’s how you continue to have it grow. We need the up-and-coming people in this space to think about this space.”
Rooke is happy to call Sturt Haaga a friend today, and a great supporter of Descanso Gardens.
“We’ve become really good friends as a result of working together,” she said. “She is just dynamite and really helped take this organization to a different level, and it started with projects like the gallery in 2011.”
To view current exhibits at the Sturt Haaga Gallery, visit descansogardens.org/visit/sturt-haaga-gallery/.
