Huntington Verso

In the twilight of President Jimmy Carter’s life, longtime Huntington volunteer Dennis Harbach recently shared a Los Angeles Times article on Carter’s 1991 visit. It was July 15, and Carter was here for the opening of “The Sacred Fire of Liberty: The Creation of the American Bill of Rights” exhibition.

Through an ongoing partnership with Ghetto Film School, young filmmakers are introduced to The Huntington’s three collections—art, library materials, and the botanical gardens—as a source of ideas and inspiration for their work.

As the 2020–21 Caltech-Huntington Art + Research Fellow, Los Angeles–based artist Sandy Rodriguez created new artworks that appear in “Borderlands,” including a map and a series of works on paper.

Valentine’s Day is a florist’s busiest time of the year and among the most popular at The Huntington. While visitors explore the splendor of the gardens, tucked among the rare books collection in the Library are the works of botanists in love—enamored of the plants themselves.

Currently on fellowship at The Huntington, I have been using my time to conduct research for my second book about how enslaved Africans in the Americas re-created and re-imagined African maritime traditions, including swimming, diving, surfing, boat-making, canoeing, and fishing.

A collection of medical remedies doesn’t seem like the obvious place for contentious or problematic texts. Yet in England during the medieval period, certain methods of healing could be controversial.

An array of winter-blooming plants from around the world are taking the stage at The Huntington, putting on floral performances that add vibrancy to the gardens at a time of the year that some might think is surprising.

As 2022 draws to a close, we invite you to look back at some of our favorite Verso stories from the past year. Below is a selection of posts, one from each of the past 12 months, highlighting what makes The Huntington such a remarkable place.

What can architecture aspire to be? Award-winning architect and educator Billie Tsien has some ideas and shared them in conversation with Huntington President Karen R. Lawrence last month as part of The Huntington’s “Why It Matters” series.

The monumental Portage Falls on the Genesee (ca. 1839) by the 19th-century English American landscape painter Thomas Cole (1801–1848) is at once beautiful and sublime, depicting the overwhelming scale and power of nature in a spectacular region of upstate New York.

In September 1758, the 62-year-old Lt. Col. Conrad Weiser (1696–1760), a veteran Indian interpreter, recorded a speech delivered by a man whose name he rendered as Ackowano Thio, or Ackowanothio.

William Shakespeare remained the most produced playwright in the world in 2022, but will he maintain that status by 2050? While major research libraries continue to build their collections around their Shakespearean holdings, the purpose of the research library is in flux.