Lugene Bruno, curator of Carnegie Mellon's Hunt Institute, and Alice Tangerini, curator of botanical art at the Smithsonian Institution, present an illustrated lecture on recently rediscovered artworks long forgotten in their archives. These botanical illustrations represent significant historical and scientific findings of an earlier era.
David Loewenstein, Erle Sparks Professor of English and Humanities at Penn State, discusses the daring originality of Milton's "Paradise Lost." This year marks the 350th anniversary of the great poem's first publication in 1667. This talk is part of the Ridge Lecture Series at The Huntington.
In his groundbreaking biography of American sculptor Alexander Calder (1898–1976), author Jed Perl shows us why Calder was—and remains—a barrier breaker, an avant-garde artist with mass appeal. Perl is joined in conversation by Alexander S. C. Rower, chairman and president of the Alexander Calder Foundation and Calder's grandson.
Historian Daniela Bleichmar, co-curator of the exhibition "Visual Voyages: Images of Latin American Nature from Columbus to Darwin," discusses the surprising and little-known story of the pivotal role that Latin America played in the pursuit of science and art during the first global era. This talk is part of the Wark Lecture Series at The Huntington.
The newspaper rose to centrality in modern societies by making information current, critical, legitimate, and public. Leading experts on the history of the newspaper consider its invention, its layout, its appeal to sensation, and its claim to objectivity. The conference explores our debt to the newspaper and our continued need for news sources that are not "fake." The conference was held at The Huntington Oct. 13–14, 2017.
Author and sculptor Matthew Spender talks about the friendship between his father, Stephen Spender, and Christopher Isherwood and W.H. Auden, from the late 1920s until Auden and Isherwood emigrated to the United States in the late 1930s. He focuses on the intense relationships between these three British writers, their homeland, and Nazi Germany. This talk is part of the Isherwood-Bachardy Lecture Series at The Huntington.
Early modern collections played a key role in the creation and transmission of knowledge, but they are usually studied in terms of the objects they contained or how they came to exist. This conference instead explores how they were actually used in the 16th and 17th centuries. The conference was held at The Huntington Sept. 15–16, 2017.
Richard Pegg, Asian art curator of the private MacLean Collection in Chicago, discusses the similarities and differences in representations of space, both real and imagined, in early modern maps created in China, Korea, and Japan. He also examines the introduction of European map-making techniques into Asian cartographic traditions.
Based on the acclaimed science fiction novel Kindred by Octavia E. Butler, a new graphic adaptation by Damian Duffy and illustrator John Jennings gives fresh form to Butler's powerful tale of slavery, time travel, and the inexorable pull of the past. Duffy and Jennings discuss the continuing relevance of Butler's writings and how it has influenced their own work.
Inspired by the award-winning speculative fiction author Octavia E. Butler (1947–2006), leading experts in the field will explore the expansive ways Butler's writing, research, and life foster deeper understanding of the past, present, and possible futures.