Huntington Verso

Just a couple of hours east of Los Angeles is a vast expanse that few Californians know by name: the California Desert Conservation Area, which contains roughly 25 million acres—or one-quarter of the state's land mass.

This is one of the most exhilarating times at The Huntington—when the new cadre of research fellows arrive on our beautiful campus to explore our collections and take part in the intellectual life of this institution.

In this edited excerpt from the introduction to the exhibition catalog, Visual Voyages (Yale University Press, 2017), Daniela Bleichmar, associate professor of art history and history at the University of Southern California and co-curator of the exhibition, focuses on a 17th-century feathered cape created by the Tupinambá people of Brazil.

In the first half of the 18th century, Hans Sloane (1660–1753)—the collector, physician, and president of the Royal Society—was the acknowledged center of a web of international relationships that brought objects, letters, and visitors into his house

A photograph of the actress, director, and producer Olga Nethersole (1867–1951) shows her descending from a pedestal on which she had been posing as a statue. Men crouch and kneel beneath her.

It's one thing to read about history in a school textbook. It's quite another thing to engage with it first-hand: to make personal connections with history and, by doing so, to gain perspectives on the past.

If you were to ask Sue Hodson, who is retiring today, about her favorite Huntington memories, she might tell you about the repartee that was exchanged by the panel of political cartoonists convened in conjunction with her Paul Conrad exhibition.

Miniature books are among the hidden treasures at The Huntington. Henry E. Huntington did not set out to collect miniature books, but he received them as part of other large collections he purchased en bloc.

On August 21, 2017, millions of people across North America will experience a total solar eclipse as the moon passes between the sun and Earth, completely covering the face of the sun for as long as several minutes.

"This was one of the first major purchases of art that Henry Huntington made at the request of his wife Arabella," says Soyoung Shin. She is standing in front of the 19-foot wide tapestry The Bird Catchers in the Huntington Art Gallery.

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 collections. Featured are audio recordings of five recent lectures and conversations.

Summer is a time for enjoying the great outdoors, and what better way than by hiking and camping? That's as true today as it was more than a century ago, when one remarkable woman embarked on a 10-day camping trip in the San Gabriel Mountains with a group of friends.