Watch, Read, Listen

Hilton Als joined Huntington President Karen R. Lawrence in a conversation about his career as a critic and curator, the relationship between visual and textual forms, and the endless inspiration found in The Huntington’s collections.

In celebration of the exhibition “Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts,” join Beauty and the Beast screenwriter Linda Woolverton for an in-depth conversation with Wolf Burchard, Associate Curator, European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Beauty and the Beast was the first animated feature nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award, but that’s only one of the firsts that Linda Woolverton includes among her accomplishments: the first woman to write an animated feature film; the first female screenwriter with a sole writing credit on a film that grossed $1 billion dollars for Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland; and playwright of Disney’s first Broadway musical, Beauty and the Beast, for which she received a Tony Award nomination and won an Olivier Award). Other Disney classics credited to Woolverton include: The Lion King, Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey, Alice Through the Looking Glass, Maleficent, and Maleficent: Mistress of All Evil.

This program was recorded on March 9, 2023.

Exhibition curator Wolf Burchard from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in conversation with producer Don Hahn, animator Glen Keane, and art director Brian McEntee.

In celebration of the exhibition “Inspiring Walt Disney: The Animation of French Decorative Arts,” exhibition curator Wolf Burchard, Associate Curator, European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, leads an illuminating conversation about the creation of the animated film Beauty and the Beast (1991) and the diverse sources of inspiration that informed its design, aesthetic, and screenplay.

Featured speakers:

• Don Hahn, Producer, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast
• Glen Keane, Animation Director, Glen Keane Productions
• Brian McEntee, Art Director, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast

This program was recorded on March 6, 2023.

Letters from Jane Austen’s mother reveal more than just a glimpse into the famous author’s family—they highlight the importance of archives and those who tend to them.

In this lecture video, Madeline Hsu, director of the Center for Migration Studies, discusses the transformative impacts of the 1965 Immigration Act and how the law shifted racial anxieties and hostilities that once targeted Asians toward Mexicans and Latinos as “brown perils.”

The Huntington announced today the appointment of Josh Garrett-Davis as the H. Russell Smith Foundation Curator of Western American History. Garrett-Davis has served for the past seven years as the Gamble Curator of Western History, Popular Culture, and Firearms at the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles. 

The Huntington will produce a major exhibition and book on Black artist Sargent Claude Johnson, whose powerful works—masks, portrait busts, and figural sculptures created in the 1920s and 1930s—have become emblems of the Harlem Renaissance. This will be the first exhibition devoted to Johnson in over 25 years.

In 1905, Henry E. Huntington asked his superintendent of grounds, William Hertrich, if it was possible to grow an avocado orchard. Hertrich replied that he would be willing to make the experiment. More than a century later, the avocado experiment continues, linking communities and expanding our understanding of plant science.