Kevin Durkin
Kevin Durkin is the managing editor in the Office of Communications and Marketing. He is the editor of The Huntington’s blog, Verso, and its online magazine, Huntington Frontiers.
Verso
From botanical albums created by a mother and daughter, Countess Mary Macclesfield and Lady Elizabeth Parker Fane, containing 73 watercolor drawings on parchment depicting plant specimens, some…
Alyssa Collins, The Huntington’s first Octavia E. Butler Fellow. Photo by Shane Lin.
Alyssa Collins, assistant professor of English language and literature and African American studies at the…
Collage of Verso highlights from 2021.
The year 2021 proved to be filled with both challenges and hope. The challenges included the continuing effects of a global pandemic, social unrest and…
Declaration of Independence, New York: Printed by John Holt, in Water Street, 1776. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.
Home to gorgeous gardens, spectacular art, and…
Collage of Verso highlights from 2020.
Few years in living memory have presented more challenges than this one: a worldwide pandemic and economic recession, widespread civil unrest, and a turbulent…
Joseph Basil Girard, Landscape with Trees, Oct. 15, 1890, watercolor on paper, 5 x 3 1/2 in. (12.7 x 8.9 cm.), purchased with funds from the Virginia Steele Scott Foundation. The Huntington Library…
View of Liu Fang Yuan, the Garden of Flowing Fragrance 流芳園, from the Bridge of the Joy of Fish 魚樂橋. Photo by Phillip E. Bloom.
Home to gorgeous gardens, spectacular art, and stunning rare books and…
Lynell George, author of A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia E. Butler (Angel City Press, 2020). Photo courtesy of Lynell George.
Home to gorgeous gardens, spectacular art,…
Forest fire in the west fork of the San Gabriel River, as seen from Mount Wilson Observatory, Sept. 29, 1924, around 10:20 a.m. Unknown photographer. The dome of the 100-inch Hooker Telescope is in…
Reader Services Coordinator Karina Sanchez could no longer work in the Library when it was closed in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic. She seized the opportunity for a work reassignment in The…
Collage of Verso highlights from 2019.
On Aug. 30, 1919, Henry and Arabella Huntington signed the trust agreement that established The Huntington, transforming their private estate and collections…
Home to gorgeous gardens, spectacular art, and stunning rare books and manuscripts, The Huntington also offers an impressive slate of lectures and conferences on topics and themes related to its…
Scientists Albert Einstein, Edwin Hubble, Walther Mayer, Walter S. Adams, Arthur S. King, and William W. Campbell in front of the 100-inch telescope dome at Mount Wilson Observatory on Jan. 29,…
Collage of Verso highlights from 2018.
As the year draws to a close, we invite you to revisit a dozen of our favorite stories from this year's Verso offerings.
Back in January, John Trager, curator…
Home to gorgeous gardens, spectacular art, and stunning rare books and manuscripts, The Huntington also offers an impressive slate of lectures and conferences on topics and themes related to its…
Home to gorgeous gardens, spectacular art, and stunning rare books and manuscripts, The Huntington also offers an impressive slate of lectures and conferences on topics and themes related to its…
Akira Chiba (middle left), the consul general of Japan in Los Angeles, and his wife, Yuko Chiba (middle right) look at a guest book for a welcome party organized by the Japanese Red Cross to honor…
Eighth-graders from the Arroyo Seco Museum Science Magnet School in Los Angeles view maps at the exhibition “Visual Voyages: Images of Latin American Nature from Columbus to Darwin.” Photo by…
A collage of Verso highlights from 2017.
Before we bid farewell to 2017 and welcome 2018, we’d like to highlight several stories published over the past 12 months that are among our favorites.
We…
For her /five project, kerrie welsh (now Kiki Loveday) is researching materials related to the Greek lyric poet Sappho in the Huntington Library collections. Photo by Kate Lain.
Earlier this week,…
On the "Decoding the Civil War" website, a citizen archivist transcribes the first line of an encoded telegram.
In June 2016, The Huntington launched a crowdsourcing project called “Decoding the…
Author Octavia E. Butler, 1986. Photo by Patti Perret. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.
The Huntington is launching the first major exhibition on the life and work of…
A collage of some of our Verso favorites from 2016.
As 2016 winds to a close, we invite you to take another look at a dozen stories plucked from the more than 80 we’ve published this past year on…
This selection of quilts, made between 1850 and 1900, includes a wide variety of styles and patterns. The spinning wheel in the foreground dates from the early 18th century. Jonathan and Karin…
The Woody Choristers; or, The Birds of Harmony, ca. 1775. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.
The Summer 2016 Huntington Library Quarterly is a special issue devoted to…
Hong Yen Chang as a Chinese Educational Mission student to the United States in the 1870s. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.
In 1890, a Chinese-born national named…
Today The Huntington announces the launch of a crowdsourcing project to transcribe and decode U.S. Civil War telegrams from its collection. What follows is the text of the press release about the…
Front entrance to the Munger Research Center, where the first two fellows for the Huntington-UC Program for the Advancement of the Humanities, Alejandra Dubcovsky and Fuson Wang, will conduct…
Pulitzer Prize–winning historians Elizabeth Fenn and Alan Taylor looking at items from The Huntington’s collections that informed their award-winning books. Photo by Martha Benedict.
How important…
Albert Einstein at the blackboard during a talk, circa 1931, in the Mount Wilson Observatory's Hale Library, Pasadena, California. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.…
Detail of photograph of Octavia E. Butler, photographer unknown, 2001. Octavia E. Butler papers. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Copyright Estate of Octavia E.…
A collage of Verso highlights from 2015.
With 2016 right around the corner, we cast an eye back over a year marked by discovery and transformative change. Here are some of the remarkable stories we…
Living Room, George Turner residence, La Canada Flintridge, California, ca. 1947. Color transparency, 7 x 5 in. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.
The Huntington has…
Doyle Lane, Mutual Savings and Loan Mural, 1964, clay, 17 × 8 ft., as installed in the courtyard of the June and Merle Banta Education Center, part of the Steven S. Koblik Education and Visitor…
Aristotle’s Masterpiece provided ordinary readers access to images such as this one, which depicts the position of a baby in the womb, as well as access to practical instructions about maintaining…
Albert Einstein (right) at the top of the 150-foot solar tower at the Mount Wilson Observatory, with solar physicist Charles St. John (middle) and mathematician Walther Mayer (left). Jan. 29, 1931…
Morse painted biographical information into his monumental work. He depicts himself leaning over his daughter sketching in the foreground; friend and author James Fenimore Cooper stands in the…
A collage of 2014 Verso posts.
Before we say goodbye to 2014, we invite you to enjoy a dozen highlights selected from the year’s Verso posts. Take a peek behind the scenes at The Huntington and…
The Huntington grounds south of the Library after snowfall. (Jan. 11, 1949)
To get in the mood for the winter holiday season, take a gander at The Huntington’s snows of yesteryear (1932, 1948, and…
A view of the Sand Creek Massacre site. Photo by Tom Carr.
For author Ari Kelman, the passage of 150 years has not dulled the impact or resolved the ambiguities surrounding the Sand Creek Massacre…
Frontiers
One of the most powerful women of Tudor and Stuart England, Alice Spencer rose to become the matriarch of one of the most prominent families in British history. The story of her ascent is the subject of “A Woman of Influence,” the first book by The Huntington’s Vanessa Wilkie.
The Huntington's curator of photographs captures the emotional impact of the Civil WarIf you missed The Huntington's unprecedented exhibition of 200 rare Civil War photographs in 2013, you will be pleased to learn that the Huntington Library Press has just published a powerful book based on the show