Watch, Read, Listen

Architect Billie Tsien joins Erin Chase, assistant curator of architecture at The Huntington, to view architectural materials from the library archives.

Japan’s elite culture of tea, known as chanoyu, played a key role in the transition of Japan’s divided politics and civil wars of the late 16th century into a unified government in 1603.

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.

The Huntington's Chinese Garden is distinctive for its old Coast Live Oaks native to California. There's one ancient oak, considered to be the oldest at The Huntington, that needed special attention as the gardens were being built around its canopy.

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.

The Huntington has acquired the archive of American author Thomas Pynchon, considered by many to be among the greatest novelists of our time.

Architect and educator Billie Tsien joins Huntington President Karen R. Lawrence to discuss how the built environment shapes individual and communal experiences, the interplay between design and purpose, and how architecture can empower future generations.

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 Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens will open a major new feature in its renowned Japanese Garden in the fall of 2023, when the reconstruction of a 320-year-old magistrate’s (shōya) house from Marugame, Japan, will be complete.

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.

Devoney Looser is Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University and the author or editor of 10 books on literature by women. The following excerpt comes from Looser’s most recent book, “Sister Novelists: The Trailblazing Porter Sisters, Who Paved the Way for Austen and the Brontës.”