Watch, Read, Listen

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.

Dr. Lei Xue, Oregon State University, discussed shutiaoshi, stone slabs with engraved calligraphy that are commonly found in Chinese gardens.

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.

Hilton Als—Pulitzer Prize–winning writer, theater critic for The New Yorker magazine, and curator—is the inaugural Hannah and Russel Kully Distinguished Fellow in the History of American Art.

The artist explains how he wove together the stories of California highways, migratory birds, T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets,” and a searing self-portrait into a sprawling but cohesive work.

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.

The biennial award of $10,000 for outstanding first monograph in American history and culture goes to R. Isabela Morales for “Happy Dreams of Liberty: An American Family in Slavery and Freedom.”

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.

The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens announced today the appointment of Lauren Cross as the new Gail-Oxford Associate Curator of American Decorative Arts.

“Printed in 1085: The Chinese Buddhist Canon from the Song Dynasty” will showcase a sacred 11th-century Buddhist book and explore Chinese textual history.

There is little exaggeration in historian Richard Snow’s statement that the Sleeping Beauty Castle has become a sight “as familiar to the world as the Eiffel Tower.” The turrets were painted in shades of pink to create the illusion of the building as standing taller than its actual height.