Verso

I grew up in Southern California and have loved The Huntington since I first visited it on a high school field trip. Being an intern this past summer in the American art department was a dream come true.

Is identity mutable? Can you alter who you are? Whether or not real transformation is achievable, it is possible to change how others view you. A new exhibition in the Huntington Art Gallery examines an age-old tool used in the effort to influence perception: facial hair. "A History of Whiskers: Facial Hair and Identity in European and American Art, 1750–1920" includes prints, drawings, and photographs

Data, made up of units so uniform as to be, almost by necessity, boring, unite to form collectives of information in a data-driven world that is recognized now as exciting, sexy, and consummately modern. And not for the first time, we must add.

As visual strategists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Dan Goods and David Delgado use art and design to explain science. Their newest project is the Orbit Pavilion sound experience, which recently opened at The Huntington. The large silver structure sits on the Celebration Lawn by the terrace of the 1919 café.

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.

Recently, the director and some of the cast from a current production of Tom Stoppard's play Arcadia stopped by The Huntington to view several of the real-world objects portrayed in the performance by A Noise Within Theatre Company.

The sight of an old account ledger doesn't generally excite many people—aside from historians and forensic accountants. But a ledger that once belonged to the famous American feminist and social reformer Susan B. Anthony

I remember the moment when I fell in love with the Huntington Library. I was researching 19th-century agriculture and, in particular, the use of guano—the droppings of cormorants, boobies, and pelicans on the Chincha Islands off the coast of Peru.