Full Circle: A Return to the Land, on display at the Sturt Haaga Gallery from Nov 13, 2021 to March 13, 2022, chronicles human interaction with the land including and surrounding Descanso Gardens.
The gardens grew out of a purchase of 165 acres of undeveloped land by Los Angeles newspaper publisher Elias Manchester Boddy in the late 1930s. The title to the land can be traced back to a 1784 land grant of 36,403 acres from the King of Spain to José María Verdugo. But even before this the Tongva, the first peoples of Los Angeles, managed an ecosystem that was mutually beneficial to the land and its inhabitants and is necessary to give a full history of the land.
