Office of the President - President's Series Lectures

Charles Elachi, the former director of NASA and Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, talked with Huntington President Karen Lawrence about the importance of daring to take risks, environmental stewardship, and the mutually enriching interactions among the arts, humanities, and sciences.

The importance of empathy and the power of language were recurring themes in a wide-ranging conversation between Carol Christ, chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, and Huntington President Karen Lawrence. Topics addressed included the Pac-12 collegiate athletic conference, the impact of digital technology on education, and free speech. Watch the full recorded program or read “Why It Matters: A Conversation with Carol T. Christ.”

Huntington President Karen R. Lawrence sat down with Lori Bettison-Varga, president of the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County, for a conversation that looked back at The Huntington’s past five years under Lawrence’s leadership and forward at the institution’s strategic aspirations. Watch the full recorded program or read “The Huntington’s Foundations and Futures.”

On Nov. 20, 2023, digital democracy advocate Ramesh Srinivasan and digital humanities scholar Todd Presner joined Huntington President Karen R. Lawrence in a conversation about the rise of generative AI, focusing on the ethical implications of its aggregation of data at an unprecedented scale. Watch the full recorded program.

Hilton Als joined Huntington President Karen R. Lawrence for a lively conversation about his career, the relationship between visual and textual forms, and the endless inspiration found in The Huntington’s collections as part of the “Why It Matters” series. Read Sharing the Love with Hilton Als or watch the full recorded program.

Ford Foundation President Darren Walker joined Huntington President Karen R. Lawrence in a conversation about the shifting landscape of charitable giving, the role of art in the pursuit of social justice, and the importance of hope to civic engagement. Read A Courageous Vision for Philanthropy or watch the full recorded program.

In honor of Founders’ Day 2023, The Huntington and The Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West presented a mix of serious and quirky stories—inspired by Eve Babitz’s archive, The Huntington’s Montezuma cypress, portraits by Laura Aguilar, the Horatio Nelson Rust collection, and glass plate photographs of 1890s and 1900s Chinatown—demonstrating the broad range of The Huntington’s collections and the rich history of the institution’s location in the San Gabriel Valley.

Read Stories We Tell or watch the full recorded program

Architect and educator Billie Tsien joins Huntington President Karen R. Lawrence to discuss how the built environment shapes individual and communal experiences, the interplay between design and purpose, and how architecture can empower future generations.

Read Making a Better World through Architecture or watch recorded program

Lonnie G. Bunch III, 14th Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, joins Huntington President Karen R. Lawrence and Huntington Governor Robert C. Davidson Jr. in a conversation about why museums and collecting institutions matter, what they have to offer to contemporary social and racial justice movements, and what it means to lead a museum in the current moment.

Read Helping a Nation Live Up to Its Ideals or watch recorded program

Revisiting Octavia E. Butler’s Pasadena
Ayana Jamieson, local educator and founder of the Octavia E. Butler Legacy Network, leads a moderated conversation about our desire to locate Butler’s Pasadena. The Revisiting Butler’s Pasadena events are sponsored by the Office of the President and the Library division at the Huntington.

Octavia E. Butler’s Pasadena: A Literary Tour
Visitors can take a self-guided walking or driving tour of the locations around Pasadena where Butler lived, visited, and often found inspiration. Tour maps are available online and in the exhibition “Mapping Fiction.”

For The Huntington’s 2022 Founders’ Day celebration, acclaimed writer Charles Yu joins Huntington Trustee Simon K.C. Li to discuss Yu’s experiences writing in multiple genres, the role of fiction in constructing identity, current U.S. dialogues about race and identity, and more.

Read Charles Yu in Conversation
This event is no longer available for viewing.

Joyce’s Ulysses uses Dublin as map as well as palimpsest upon which to inscribe his vision of worlds past and present. This conference explores approaches to literary study that make clearer the verbal and nonverbal coordinates of Joyce’s literary terrain and their global expressions. Topics range from forms of visualization (schemas, maps, charts, word indexes) to decolonization, intertexts and intermedia, mapping as metaphor and places as texts, in an effort to open up new ways of reading.

Watch recorded program

James P. Folsom, the Telleen/Jorgenson Director of the Botanical Gardens at The Huntington, shares insights into a lifetime spent exploring the intersections of botany, art, literature, and history. After a brief presentation, Folsom joins Huntington President Karen R. Lawrence in conversation before taking questions from virtual attendees around the world. This will be one of Folsom’s last public appearances as director of the gardens before he retires at the end of the year.

Read Legacy of Wonder or watch recorded program

Writer Lynell George discusses her forthcoming book, A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia E. Butler, and her experience in The Huntington archives, in conversation with William Deverell, director of the Huntington-USC Institute for California and the West and professor of history at USC, and Karla Nielsen, curator of literary collections at The Huntington.

Read A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky or watch recorded program

Damian Duffy and John Jennings, the award-winning team behind the #1 bestseller Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation, discuss their new graphic novel adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower. This event is moderated by author Nalo Hopkinson and a book signing follows.

Read Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation or watch recorded program

Huntington President Karen R. Lawrence speaks with Drew Gilpin Faust, Civil War scholar and former president of Harvard, about the importance of the humanities.

Read Why it Matters to Drew Faust or watch recorded program

For the debut of the new Centennial lecture series “Why It Matters,” Huntington President Karen R. Lawrence speaks with Carla Hayden, Librarian of Congress, about why archives and libraries exist and why the work they do continues to be important.

Read An Evening with Carla Hayden, Librarian of Congress or watch recorded program

Featuring Paul G. Haaga Jr., Huntington Trustee emeritus, chair of the board of NPR, and retired chair of Capital Research and Management Company, in conversation with Meg Whitman, CEO of Quibi, former president and CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise and eBay Inc., and 2010 Republican nominee for governor of California.

Watch recorded program

Toshi Reagon, acclaimed composer and lyricist, discusses her operatic adaption of Octavia E. Butler’s science fiction novel Parable of the Sower with special guests. Presented in association with UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance.

Read Amplifying Black History or watch recorded program

Scholar and author Zachary Lesser and actors from the Independent Shakespeare Co. present an evening of drama, audience interaction, and more than a few surprises, in a program that asks the question “What if you don’t know Hamlet after all?”

This event is no longer available for viewing.

Authors Susan Orlean (The Library Book) and Viet Thanh Nguyen (The Sympathizer) and moderator William Deverell, director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West, discuss their books’ shared focus on the role of memory and forgetting in the writing of history.

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President Karen R. Lawrence presents opening remarks at The Huntington’s Centennial Celebration.

Read The Huntington’s Centennial Launch or watch recorded program

Karen Lawrence, president of The Huntington and a James Joyce scholar, delivers the annual Founder’s Day Lecture on the subject of Joyce’s novel Ulysses. Lawrence’s lecture examines what makes Joyce one of the greatest writers, and how he created one of the most original novels by stealing from everybody else.

Watch recorded program