What sparks the lightning bolt of insight? How do we come to see with new eyes? Literature can expose us to perspectives strange to us, but our interpretations can also be clouded by familiarity.
One hundred years after Henry E. Huntington purchased Thomas Gainsborough’s masterpiece, The Blue Boy (ca. 1770) from the Duke of Westminster, and it set sail from England for its new home in the United States
Family Activities
Enjoy these activities and crafts about The Huntington Desert Garden!
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens announces the addition of three new members to its Board of Trustees. They are Christine Bender, J. Mario Molina, and Mei-Lee Ney.
Join "Made in L.A. 2020" artist Hedi El Kholti and writer, filmmaker Abdellah Taïa as they read excerpts from their respective works and discuss their shared experiences growing up queer in Morocco and their journeys translating those experiences into writing, art, and film.
The program is presented by the Hammer Museum.
Family Games
Check out some teen-created games related to the Desert Garden!
Dr. Yurika Wakamatsu, assistant professor of East Asian art history at Occidental College, explores Tsukigase, a plum-filled mountain valley in today's Nara Prefecture that came to be celebrated as a paradisiacal site in nineteenth-century Japan. Tracing Tsukigase's transformations during this period, Dr. Wakamatsu examines how poets and painters who worked in the Sino-Japanese mode of literati art constructed a fleeting, utopian realm of reclusion by imbuing this remote landscape with imagery drawn from beloved works of Chinese literature.
Priya Satia, professor of history at Stanford University, explores the ways in which Victorian thinkers drew on a historical sensibility to understand and justify British rule in India. By deferring ethical judgment to the future, historical thinking enabled well-meaning Britons to engage in imperial activities, including the brutal repression of colonial resistance, with mostly clear consciences. The role of historical thinking in Victorian imperialism keeps events such as the Indian rebellion of 1857 at the center of contemporary debates about how and why we study history.
Join writer Jack Skelley and "Made in L.A. 2020" artist Sabrina Tarasoff for a virtual screening and conversation on Gail Kaszynski's 1983 documentary Fear of Poetry. Kaszynski's film is an improvisatory 40-minute foray into a fervent, formative period in the lives of poets such as Dennis Cooper, Benjamin Weissman, Amy Gerstler, and Bob Flanagan, who took part in Cooper's famed Wednesday Night Poetry readings.
Join Nika Chilewich, curatorial assistant at the Hammer Museum, for this short and insightful discussion about artist Ann Greene Kelly, as part of the Lunchtime Art Talk series on the exhibition "Made in L.A. 2020: a version."