Matt Stevens

Former managing editor
Department: Communications & Marketing

Verso

Posted on Sep. 22, 2015
Harry Houdini (left) and Jack London—famous friends in the public eye. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Author Jack London found a kindred spirit in famed magician…
Posted on Mar. 31, 2015
President Lincoln visiting the former residence of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, in Richmond, Virginia, on April 4, 1865. Wood engraving from a sketch by Joseph Becker. Frank…
Posted on Aug. 26, 2014
A selection of books on display in the "Library Today" gallery of the Library. The next time you walk into the Library’s main exhibition hall to see “Remarkable Works, Remarkable Times,” be sure to…
Posted on Jul. 18, 2014
The reopening of the Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art includes new installations of works from The Huntington collection, including Robert Rauschenberg’s Global Loft (Spread) (1979…
Posted on Jul. 4, 2014
A modest pocketbook made in 1776 by Elizabeth Fellows is but one of many artworks at The Huntington that together tell a “full, rich story” about the history of art in the United States. Photography…
Posted on Jun. 26, 2014
Photographers Paul Caponigro (left) and Bruce Davidson (right) meet for the first time at a new exhibition of their work at the Yale Center for British Art. Exhibition co-curator Scott Wilcox (…
Posted on Jun. 5, 2014
If California Chrome wins this weekend, he will become the 12th horse to win the Triple Crown. Above is Gallant Fox, Triple Crown winner from 1930. From William Woodward, Gallant Fox: A Memoir (New…
Posted on May. 29, 2014
A commemorative JFK stamp issued on May 29, 1964, was based on a 1958 photograph taken in Santa Monica by William S. Murphy of the Los Angeles Times. Fifty years ago today the U.S. Postal Service…
Posted on May. 20, 2014
Melencolia I, 1514, on loan from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, is one of 33 engravings by Albrecht Dürer that are on view in a small exhibition in the Works on Paper Room. Together with…
Posted on Apr. 21, 2014
A pair of lemon-scented gums (Eucalyptus citriodora) photographed by historian Jared Farmer near the mausoleum of Henry and Arabella Huntington, 2007. In his new book, Trees in Paradise: A…
Posted on Apr. 15, 2014
Alan Taylor. Photo by Lynn Friedman. Congratulations to historian Alan Taylor, who has won the Pulitzer Prize in History for The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772–1832, published…
Posted on Mar. 20, 2014
Do you follow The Huntington on Tumblr? If you do, then you’re one of the thousands who joined since we launched our site exactly one year ago today. If you don’t follow us, take some time today to…
Posted on Feb. 27, 2014
This portrait of Charles I is the frontispiece to Eikōn basilikē: The pourtraicture of His sacred Majestie in his solitudes and sufferings, London, 1649. The book is on view in the permanent…
Posted on Jan. 10, 2014
An unusual copy of Jack London's novel The Sea-Wolf is the centerpiece of one section of books and manuscripts in the permanent exhibition "Remarkable Works, Remarkable Times: Highlights from the…
Posted on Dec. 6, 2013
Nelson Mandela signed his name along the side of a passage from Julius Caesar. Robben Island Shakespeare. Photo by Julie Ainsworth. Courtesy of Sonny Venkatrathnam / Folger Shakespeare Library.…
Posted on Nov. 19, 2013
Monument to the 533-147th Pennsylvania Infantry at Little Round Top, site of an unsuccessful assault by Confederates on the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg. This photo is from a book…
Posted on Nov. 11, 2013
Frederick Douglass' signed note on Dec. 11, 1861, ends with his plea: "Unchain that black hand!" Early in the Civil War, abolitionist Frederick Douglass urged Abraham Lincoln to allow black men to…
Posted on Nov. 8, 2013
The newly renovated Main Hall of the Library. Photo: Tim Street-Porter. As you enter the Library’s Main Hall and walk straight ahead, one of the first things you’ll see is a familiar treasure…
Posted on Oct. 29, 2013
The new book is published by Yale University Press and part of its Lamar Series in Western History. Sutter’s Mill. Forty-niners panning for gold. Lottery of the Golden Ingot? If you thought you…
Posted on Oct. 14, 2013
Blc. Tainan Gold 'Golden Canary'. This weekend The Huntington hosts the annual Southland Orchid Show in the Botanical Center’s Banta Hall. Billed this year as “Orchid Masquerade,” the show promises…
Posted on Oct. 10, 2013
The opening page of the Ellesmere manuscript of Geoffrey Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," 1400–1405, written in a scribe's careful penmanship. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical…
Posted on Sep. 27, 2013
Paula Nuttall and Catherine Hess discuss “Virgin and Child” and its companion diptych at the exhibition's press preview on Sept. 27, 2013. Photograph by Lisa Blackburn. “Face to Face: Flanders,…
Posted on Aug. 2, 2013
Frank Osen, photo by Robert Osen. On Aug. 3, 1906, poet Wallace Stevens wrote in his journal: “Engaged at the office all day on a sonnet—surreptitiously.” At the time, Stevens was a lawyer in a New…
Posted on Jul. 16, 2013
Portraits of Arabella D. Huntington after her marriage to Henry include this image of her wearing a famous necklace known as the “Morgan pearls,” ca. 1915. The Hispanic Society of America, N.Y.…
Posted on Jul. 10, 2013
Alpha Beta Supermarket, Joseph Fadler, 1968. Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. How do you showcase a photographic archive of more than 70,000 images documenting Los…
Posted on Jul. 9, 2013
Edmund S. Morgan in his office at Yale University. Photo by Michael Marsland, Yale University. Historian Edmund S. Morgan died on Monday at the age of 97. Morgan was the Sterling Professor Emeritus…
Posted on Jul. 3, 2013
Battle-Field of Gettysburg. View on the Field after Fight of First Day, July 4, 1863 (printed later); also known as “Harvest of Death.” Timothy H. O’Sullivan (ca. 1840–1882), photographer; printed…
Posted on Jun. 21, 2013
What's on your summer reading list? We have some suggestions for you... “There are books these days on all sorts of subjects,” thinks Thomas Cromwell in a passage from Hilary Mantel’s latest award-…
Posted on May. 24, 2013
After Monday, the Gutenberg Bible will move from the Scott Galleries to the Thornton Portrait Gallery. Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Monday will be your last chance to…
Posted on May. 9, 2013
The Greene brothers and a companion in the Arroyo in an undated photo from the Greene & Greene Archives, University of Southern California. The second annual LitFest Pasadena takes place this…
Posted on Apr. 23, 2013
Adria L. Imada, University of California, San Diego, is the recipient of the 2013 OAH Lawrence W. Levine Award. She is pictured with OAH President Albert M Camarillo, Stanford University, who…
Posted on Apr. 5, 2013
The Great Ocean by David Igler. When David Igler first pondered writing a book about the Pacific Ocean, he admits he felt a little bit out to sea. “I was hoping to bring the Pacific into the…
Posted on Apr. 2, 2013
Round About the Earthby Joyce Chaplin. When Joyce Chaplin attended a conference at The Huntington in January, she completed a rather remarkable journey that began with a visit here in November 2011…
Posted on Mar. 27, 2013
Doug White, Shopping Bag Market, date unknown. Photograph, 4 in. x 5 in. Southern California Edison Photographs and Negatives. Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. On Monday…
Posted on Mar. 1, 2013
Pope Gregory the Great (ca. 540–604), Cura Pastoralis, in Latin, 32 leaves. This hand-decorated manuscript on vellum was owned by and probably written at the Reading Abbey in Berkshire, England,…
Posted on Feb. 27, 2013
Technicians from Gale Cengage onsite at The Huntington. They are completing the scanning of 5,000 books from The Huntington's collection on the history of science. Photo by John Sullivan, The…
Posted on Feb. 14, 2013
To Marry an English Lord was published by Workman Publishing in 1989 and reissued in 2012. Bates and Anna. Matthew and Lady Mary. Lady Edith and Sir Anthony. Lord and Lady Grantham. If you are a…
Posted on Feb. 7, 2013
Set of 15 letters by Charles Dickens (1812–1870). The letters were written between 1837 and 1868. Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. For the second time in four years, The…
Posted on Jan. 29, 2013
An assortment of the papers of Jonathan Davis Hale (1817–1898). Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Jonathan Davis Hale and Henry Z. Osborne are not household names. Then…
Posted on Jan. 20, 2013
Ronald C. White Jr. Photo by Cynthia White. Today Barack Obama will be sworn in for his second term as president of the United States, although the public ceremony and inaugural speech won't take…
Posted on Jan. 18, 2013
Ed Edelman at the dedication of Pan Pacific Park, mid-1980s. This Sunday at 5 p.m., PBS SoCal will air the documentary “The Passion and Politics of Ed Edelman: An Untold Story of Leadership in Los…
Posted on Jan. 11, 2013
The website for “A Strange and Fearful Interest” will remain online after the close of the exhibition. You have just a few more days to see the exhibition “A Strange and Fearful Interest: Death,…
Posted on Dec. 30, 2012
The Japanese Garden following its year-long renovation. We’ve covered a lot of memorable stories on Verso this year, but The Huntington also got a fair amount of coverage in other outlets—from the…
Posted on Dec. 19, 2012
“Britannia’s Ruin,” published by Mary Darly, Dec. 17, 1779, hand-colored etching, British Cartoon Prints Collection, Library of Congress. This publishing season, books on the American Revolution…
Posted on Nov. 20, 2012
Skip Brack in 2009, standing in front of The Huntington’s painting of “Blinking Sam” (1775), by Sir Joshua Reynolds, which was donated to The Huntington by noted Johnson collector Loren Rothschild,…
Posted on Nov. 1, 2012
Drew Gilpin Faust. Photo by Tony Rinaldo. Historian Drew Gilpin Faust, president of Harvard University and author of This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, spoke at The…
Posted on Oct. 26, 2012
Witches apprehended, examined, and executed, for notable villanies by them committed both by land and water. With a strange and most true triall how to know whether a woman be a witch or not.…
Posted on Oct. 16, 2012
The BBC reported earlier today that Hilary Mantel has won the Man Booker Prize for her novel Bring Up the Bodies. The book is a sequel to Wolf Hall, which won the Man Booker Prize in 2009. Mantel’s…
Posted on Oct. 10, 2012
Bob Middlekauff and Steve Koblik at The Huntington in June 2012. Koblik is president of The Huntington. As one of his predecessors, Middlekauff served as director of The Huntington from 1983 to 1987…
Posted on Oct. 3, 2012
Karen Zimmerman, desert collections propagator, and John Trager, director of ISI, pose with agave specialist Kelly Griffin and the Agave utahensis var. eborispina. Seeds were collected from this…
Posted on Oct. 2, 2012
Alan Taylor. Photo by Lynn Friedman. Lost in sesquicentennial commemorations of various Civil War anniversaries is the fact that we are in the thick of the bicentennial year of one of America’s…
Posted on Sep. 28, 2012
A branch from a box elder tree shows the extensive galleries (the gray, snaking pathways) created by the polyphagous shot-hole borer. This tree had to be removed by garden staff. Photo by Maxx Echt.…
Posted on Sep. 20, 2012
An audience of 300 attended the conference "Civil War Lives" in October 2011. Here, historian James M. McPherson took the podium in Friends' Hall. Check out what’s coming up in the way of conferences…
Posted on Sep. 17, 2012
Alexander Gardner (1821–1882), Confederate Soldiers, As they fell inside the fence on the Hagerstown Road, at the Battle of Antietam, September 1862, albumen print, 3 1/4 x 4 5/8 in. Huntington…
Posted on Sep. 12, 2012
Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies has made the short list for the 2012 Man Booker Prize, the most prestigious literary award for books written in English by authors from the Commonwealth of…
Posted on Sep. 5, 2012
Street scene at night with illuminated sign advertising the “Mission Play” at the San Gabriel Mission. Photograph by G. Haven Bishop, April 12, 1915, from The Huntington’s Southern California Edison…
Posted on Aug. 28, 2012
Neil Armstrong accepts NASA’s Ambassador of Exploration Award at the Cincinnati Museum Center at Union Terminal, in April 2006. Photo credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls. Neil Armstrong, who died Saturday at…
Posted on Aug. 10, 2012
Bearman and Boydston taking a look at images in the lab. With their high-tech lighting equipment and software, Greg Bearman and Ken Boydston can reveal hidden text in old, darkened manuscripts.…
Posted on Aug. 1, 2012
Welcome to Verso, the newly named and redesigned blog of the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Bibliophiles know verso as the term for the back of a page or for the left-…
Posted on Jul. 18, 2012
Few authors can boast hitting Amazon.com and the Amazon River in the same month, but Neil Safier is one of them. His 2008 book, Measuring the New World: Enlightenment Science and South America, just…
Posted on Jul. 13, 2012
Cover of conference program. It’s not often that you go to an academic conference and a concert breaks out, but that’s what happened in April when scholars, musicians, and writers gathered at USC…
Posted on May. 11, 2012
LitFest Pasadena takes place Saturday, May 12, at Pasadena's Central Park, which is between Raymond and Fair Oaks avenues, just south of the historic Castle Green. We wrote about LitFest in March,…
Posted on May. 4, 2012
A new exhibition opening this weekend at Cal State Fullerton's Grand Central Art Center has a special connection to The Huntington's manuscript collection of mosaic artist Denis O'Connor. O'Connor…
Posted on Apr. 26, 2012
If you consider yourself an amateur birdwatcher, you owe a debt to one of the first professional birders, Robert Ridgway (1850-1929), the Smithsonian's first curator of birds. Huntington curator…
Posted on Apr. 20, 2012
The calligraphy of Peizhu and Qian Yu adorns the piano at Atlantic Times Square in Monterey Park. Photo by Christina Cheng, posted to streetpianosLA.com on April 16. As you go about your business…
Posted on Apr. 19, 2012
On Tuesday, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences elected 220 new members, including Huntington President Steven Koblik. The Academy's membership boasts more than 250 Nobel laureates and more…
Posted on Apr. 6, 2012
Folk singer Woody Guthrie famously roamed and rambled the country in the 1930s and '40s, writing and singing about the downtrodden caught between the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. He also…
Posted on Mar. 20, 2012
Historian Anne F. Hyde won the Bancroft Prize last week for her book Empires, Nations, and Families: A History of the North American West, 1800–1860. She joins the ranks of notable scholars who have…
Posted on Mar. 16, 2012
Detail from Denis O'Connor's mosaic for the Home Savings & Loan building (now Chase) in Temple City, Calif. Photo by M. O. Quinn. On Sunday, March 18, the L.A. Conservancy is sponsoring a tour…
Posted on Feb. 27, 2012
The Library room of the Huntington Art Gallery; one of the tapestries can be seen at the wall in the background. Photo by Tim Street Porter. Today is Founder's Day, the birthday of Henry Edwards…
Posted on Feb. 20, 2012
George Washington, after 1779, after Charles Willson Peale (1741–1827), oil on canvas, The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. In July 1776, as George Washington readied…
Posted on Feb. 17, 2012
Detail from Michael Hart's drawing of the San Gabriel Mission. Michael Hart spent 40 years as the vice president and general manager of the Sunny Slope Water Company in Pasadena. After retiring in…
Posted on Feb. 16, 2012
Symposium poster. Erik Altenbernd and Alex Young are just now completing their graduate coursework at UC Irvine and USC, respectively. They both study California and the American West, Altenbernd…
Posted on Feb. 13, 2012
Abraham Lincoln 1864, photo by Anthony Berger. Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Late last month, Harry S. Stout gave a public lecture titled "Abraham Lincoln's Second…
Posted on Feb. 9, 2012
Behind every great book collection is a good love story. Someone with an obsession for antiquarian children's books or signed first editions might spend a lifetime amassing a collection, scouring…
Posted on Feb. 7, 2012
Today is the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens' birth. The English novelist wrote many of his greatest works in serial form, including Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Bleak House, and Great…
Posted on Jan. 23, 2012
Photograph of Abraham Lincoln includes a handwritten note reading "Let it be done," signed and dated by Lincoln on March 17, 1865. (The photograph itself was taken in 1864 at Matthew Brady's…
Posted on Jan. 12, 2012
Sailors straddling the crossbeam of the Dirigo, photo by Jack London, 1912. Today is Jack London's birthday, and what better way to celebrate than to board a ship to see some of the sites that the…
Posted on Jan. 10, 2012
Lucy Wang, courtesy Julia Dillon Photography. It's not often that you come across an opportunity to have a hand in creating manuscript collections for The Huntington, but the Annenberg Community…
Posted on Jan. 5, 2012
The surfboard, on display in the West Hall through Jan. 9, is courtesy John Mazza Historic Surfboard Collection, Pepperdine University, Special Collections and University Archives. Photo by Lisa…
Posted on Dec. 30, 2011
The "forever" stamp of Edward Hopper's The Long Leg. There is a certain predictability in the ways the gardens enchant visitors from season to season. And you can always count on visitors lining up…
Posted on Dec. 26, 2011
The Chinese Garden. A look back on the year of the Huntington Blogs, where we covered more than a hundred stories about the Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. The Huntington will be…
Posted on Dec. 23, 2011
Title page of Shakespeare's first folio edition, 1623. A look back on the year of The Huntington Blogs, where we covered more than a hundred stories about the Library, Art Collections, and…
Posted on Dec. 21, 2011
Andy Warhol, Brillo Box (1964); from the estate of Robert Shapazian. A look back on the year of The Huntington Blogs, where we covered more than a hundred stories about the Library, Art Collections…
Posted on Dec. 19, 2011
A look back on the year of The Huntington Blogs, where we covered more than a hundred stories about the Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. If you haven't completed your holiday…
Posted on Dec. 15, 2011
Matthew Hersch at the Smithsonian Institution, National Air and Space Museum. Photo by Eric Long. Matthew Hersch, co-curator of the Huntington exhibition "Blue Sky Metropolis: The Aerospace Century…
Posted on Dec. 13, 2011
One of the most popular Huntington exhibitions of the past decade was "The Bible and the People," which featured dozens of Bibles on view in the MaryLou and George Boone Gallery. Lori Anne Ferrell,…
Posted on Dec. 6, 2011
Margaret Cocks, later Margaret Smith, 1787, by Richard Cosway. © The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. When was the last time you wrote a real, honest-to-goodness letter?…
Posted on Nov. 23, 2011
Captions: Roy Ritchie, pictured at lower right, is also flanked above by participants of the conference (from left to right): Steve Hindle (the new W. M. Keck Foundation Director of Research),…
Posted on Nov. 21, 2011
Peter Westwick, the director of the Aerospace History Project with Carol Basney (in blue) and Burt Basney (far right). They came to see the exhibition with their daughter Barbara Van De Velde (in…
Posted on Nov. 15, 2011
Ramón Gutiérrez In October 1966, a Pentecostal preacher named Reies López Tijerina led a group calling itself La Alianza (the Alliance) in an occupation of Kit Carson National Forest in northern New…
Posted on Nov. 11, 2011
Today is 11-11-11. This year, Veterans Day echoes the original Armistice Day, when World War I ceased at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. At that time, Anthony Edward Mrazek…
Posted on Nov. 8, 2011
It's not often that you'll hear a former Huntington research fellow interview a current research fellow on National Public Radio. But that's what happened on Morning Edition today when Joe Palca…
Posted on Nov. 7, 2011
Louis Warren grew up in southern Nevada, near Las Vegas but also on the edge of a barren landscape called the Great Basin. "To many people, Nevada is the kind of state you drive through to get…
Posted on Nov. 4, 2011
Abraham Lincoln, 1860. Alexander Hesler photographed Lincoln after he won the Republican presidential nomination, Huntington Library. "I am not an accomplished lawyer," wrote Abraham Lincoln in a…
Posted on Oct. 25, 2011
In her introductory remarks at the conference "Civil War Lives" this past weekend, co-convener Joan Waugh explained the objective of the presenters: "This conference showcases the importance of…
Posted on Oct. 10, 2011
Philip Connors spends long stretches of every spring and summer alone, on top of a lookout tower in New Mexico's Gila Wilderness, scanning the horizon for signs of smoke. In his book Fire Season:…
Posted on Oct. 6, 2011
Lyman Gilmore Jr. and his brother Charles in their barn in Grass Valley, Calif., ca. 1907 Just four years after the Wright brothers' famed first flight at Kitty Hawk, a man in the Sierra foothills…
Posted on Oct. 3, 2011
Ask Frances Dolan if she believes in witches and she'll likely tell you you're asking the wrong question. "I'm more interested in how people come to believe what they believe." In her lecture on…
Posted on Sep. 28, 2011
The Double Music Stand and Musician's Chair as they appeared at the reopening of the Scott Galleries in 2009. Photo by John Sullivan. In 2008, three art curators from The Huntington paid a visit to…
Posted on Sep. 15, 2011
Portrait of Jack London. Copyright Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Huntington literary manuscripts curator Sara S. "Sue" Hodson has been named Woman of the Year by the…
Posted on Sep. 2, 2011
Design for Fresco—"Four Workers" (1936) by John Charles Haley (1905–1991). © The Huntington. Echoes of a conference held at The Huntington in April continue to reverberate this Labor Day weekend. "…
Posted on Aug. 17, 2011
The Gutenberg Bible's text, printed with movable type, resembles the calligraphy of medieval scribes who copied books by hand before Johann Gutenberg revolutionized the printing process. The…
Posted on Jul. 15, 2011
This Sunday, American History TV (C-SPAN 3) will broadcast "The Presidency: Thomas Jefferson and Alternatives to Slavery," a program that picks up where Laura Voisin George left off in her Huntington…
Posted on Jul. 14, 2011
Arroyo Seco Parkway, 1948, northbound traffic at 5:00 p.m. Courtesy Automobile Club of Southern California Archives. Unless you live under a piece of asphalt, you already know that this coming…
Posted on Jul. 8, 2011
Preliminary weather forecasts were looking iffy for the final launch of the space shuttle program, but they didn't keep thousands of people from showing up at the Kennedy Space Center in anticipation…
Posted on Jun. 16, 2011
Zevi Gutfreund, UCLA; Todd Holmes, Yale University; Emmanuelle Perez, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, in Paris; Ruth Morgan, University of Western Australia; and Miles Powell, UC…
Posted on Jun. 9, 2011
The XXII North American James Joyce Conference takes place June 12–16 at both The Huntington and Caltech, with a full slate of academic panels and several programs open to the public. Events are…
Posted on May. 25, 2011
Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz. Author photo by Paul Teeling. Memorial Day Weekend marks the beginning of an exodus of researchers who have spent the full academic year mining the collections in the…
Posted on May. 20, 2011
Sean Wilentz. Photo by Daniel Kramer. "Sean Wilentz," says Robert C. Ritchie, The Huntington's W. M. Keck Foundation Director of Research, "is one of our country's leading interpreters of 19th-…
Posted on May. 18, 2011
Triangles showing the primary and secondary colors, from Robert Ridgway's Nomenclature of Colors for Naturalists (1886). Copyright Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. On…
Posted on May. 12, 2011
Authors who conduct research at the Huntington Library don't often see their books turned into movies or country songs. But one chapter from Deanne Stillman's book Mustang: The Saga of the Wild…
Posted on Apr. 22, 2011
Title page of Shakespeare's first folio edition, 1623. Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. A new exhibition opens Saturday, April 23, which happens to be William Shakespeare'…
Posted on Apr. 20, 2011
Abraham Lincoln with his White House secretaries John G. Nicolay and John M. Hay, ca. 1863. Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Monday was President's Day all over again.…
Posted on Apr. 14, 2011
Pulitzer Prizes will be announced on Monday, April 18, including the categories of history, biography, and general nonfiction. While Huntington scholars have garnered this top honor on several…
Posted on Apr. 12, 2011
A fragment of the American flag from Fort Sumter and a portrait of Major Robert Anderson are bound into the first volume of The Huntington's set of Battles and Leaders of the Civil War. Copyright…
Posted on Apr. 7, 2011
The final page of the book, featuring the dancing Sleeping Beauty and Prince Charming, was bound into the back of the book. Image courtesy of the Disney Archive. Walt Disney's animated movie…
Posted on Mar. 23, 2011
Brandon Tam and Lance Birk pollinate a Paphiopedilum rothschilianum in the Huntington greenhouse. Brandon Tam and Lance Birk know what it's like to drive the 101 Freeway with a truck full of…
Posted on Mar. 9, 2011
A section of the Ranch includes a new heritage orchard of avocados, including 33 different cultivars. (It is called the Shepherd-Brokaw collection in honor of the Brokaw Nursery and Jack Shepherd,…
Posted on Mar. 4, 2011
Ronald C. White Jr., photo by Cynthia C. White. Today we mark the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural Address. In a way, the commemoration kicks off the sesquicentennial of the…
Posted on Mar. 1, 2011
Warren's new book with Harvard University Press. Kenneth Warren's latest book—What Was African American Literature?—is based on a set of lectures he delivered at Harvard a few years ago. This week…
Posted on Feb. 28, 2011
Henry Huntington, 1927. Copyright The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. For a short month, February has a lot of big birthdays—George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and…
Posted on Feb. 26, 2011
Christopher Isherwood, c. 1932, photograph from personal album. From the collection of the Huntington Library, copyright The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Sunday night…
Posted on Feb. 22, 2011
If you're not sure what alchemy is, don't look it up in the dictionary. Come to Bruce Moran's lecture in Friends' Hall, where he'll explain it with some concrete examples from the 16th and 17th…
Posted on Feb. 18, 2011
Gilbert Stuart (American, 1755-1828), George Washington (detail), 1819, oil on canvas, on view in the Huntington Art Gallery. © The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. It's…
Posted on Feb. 16, 2011
Abraham Lincoln, 1860. Alexander Hesler photographed Lincoln after he won the Republican presidential nomination, Huntington Library. Abraham Lincoln never set foot in California, but the…
Posted on Jan. 28, 2011
When The Huntington launched the online version of the Early California Population Project (ECPP) in the summer of 2006, historian Steven Hackel said that the comprehensive database of the…
Posted on Jan. 25, 2011
Frederick Douglass, c. 1879. Photo Credit: CORBIS. If you haven't yet decided to attend David Blight's lecture tonight in Friends' Hall, you might listen to the podcast of the talk he gave at The…
Posted on Dec. 10, 2010
The Roseate Spoonbill, plate no. 65. Image from Audubon's Birds of America, © 2010 The Huntington. On Tuesday, Sotheby's auctioned off a copy of John James Audubon's monumental Birds of America,…
Posted on Nov. 5, 2010
In the spring/summer 2009 issue of Huntington Frontiers magazine, I wrote about a project that was underway to return The Huntington to its agricultural roots. Next week marks the official unveiling…
Posted on Oct. 29, 2010
Historians can be like kids in a candy store when it comes to Halloween. Nicholas Rogers, the Fletcher Jones Foundation Distinguished Fellow at The Huntington in 2009–10, had fun with a public…
Posted on Oct. 22, 2010
This Saturday USC Libraries play host to the fifth annual Los Angeles Archives Bazaar. The Huntington was the site of the first bazaar in 2006, when 30 historical collections and archives exhibited…
Posted on Oct. 16, 2010
Before coming out to The Huntington this weekend for the annual Southland Orchid Show, listen to Jim Folsom's recent talk on "Getting to Know Orchids." Folsom, the Marge and Sherm Telleen/Marion and…
Posted on Oct. 13, 2010
Last night, California gubernatorial candidates Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman sparred for the third time in their campaign. In Friends' Hall at The Huntington, an audience of 150 watched the debate on…
Posted on Sep. 29, 2010
Linda Colley One of the last times Linda Colley gave a public lecture in Southern California, it changed the course of her research. The professor of history from Princeton will help kick off the…

Frontiers

Posted on Oct. 29, 2014

Richard W. Fox ties Lincoln's body to his words and deedsOn April 21, 1865, Abraham Lincoln's funeral train left Washington, D.C., for Springfield, Ill. It offered northerners "a moving shrine they could approach as pilgrims"

Posted on Oct. 25, 2014

A photographer immerses himself in The Huntington's bonsai and penjing collectionsPhotographer Stephen Hilyard does things big. In the summer of 2007, he donned a dry suit and jumped into a lake in Þingvellir (in English, Thingvellir)

Posted on Oct. 3, 2014

When black became the new blackThe death of France's Louis XV in 1774 was good for fashion. At the time, much of Europe followed a long-established etiquette