Watch, Read, Listen

News, stories, features, videos and podcasts by The Huntington.

Betye Saar’s “Drifting Toward Twilight”

Tue., Dec. 12, 2023 | Lynell George
Betye Saar’s “Drifting Toward Twilight,” a site-specific installation commissioned by The Huntington, poetically connects the external realm to interior territories—The Huntington’s grounds to its galleries and the life of the body to the mind—and has also been a way to manifest the artist’s personal history.

Queering the Collections: A Tale of Two Libraries

Tue., Dec. 5, 2023 | Brooke Palmieri
Brooke Palmieri, the inaugural writer-in-residence at The Huntington, examines traces of queer history as a way of building a wider understanding about the relationship between what survives from the past and how that information is or is not incorporated into our sense of history.

Elizabeth Montagu and the Bluestocking Corpus Online

Tue., Nov. 28, 2023 | Elizabeth Eger
The Huntington conference “Correspondence and Embodiment: The Bluestocking Corpus Online,” organized in collaboration with the Elizabeth Montagu Correspondence Online project, will investigate new questions deriving from the recent digitization of The Huntington’s Elizabeth Montagu Papers.

Statement from President Karen R. Lawrence Regarding the Passing of Charlie Munger

Tue., Nov. 28, 2023
The Huntington is deeply saddened to learn of the passing of our dear friend Charlie Munger, who died today at age 99. Our hearts are with the Munger family at this time.

Coral Lives: Literature, Labor, and the Making of America

Tue., Nov. 21, 2023 | Michele Currie Navakas
Michele Currie Navakas—professor of English at Miami University and a 2017–18 National Endowment of the Humanities fellow—tells the story of coral as an essential element of the marine ecosystem, a highly sought-after ornament used for display and adornment, a global commodity, and a powerful political metaphor.
Art

The Huntington Acquires Historic Portrait by Renowned Spanish Painter Goya

Mon., Nov. 20, 2023
“Portrait of José Antonio Caballero, Second Marqués de Caballero, Secretary of Grace and Justice” (1807) will go on view Nov. 29, 2023, in the Huntington Art Gallery.

How #MeToo Played Out in 19th-Century California

Tue., Nov. 14, 2023 | Erika Pérez
The extensive Los Angeles Area Court Records offer researchers invaluable evidence of everyday contestations over sexuality and gender relations in early California, the blurring of lines between sexual consent and coercion, and abuses of women whose economic survival was at stake.
Video

Aristotle in Pieces: A Medieval Manuscript’s Journey from Italy to Pasadena

Sat., Nov. 11, 2023
Book historian Lisa Fagin Davis traces the journey of three pieces of a medieval manuscript written by Aristotle from 13th-century Italy to 20th-century America and The Huntington.
Art

Betye Saar: Drifting Toward Twilight

Sat., Nov. 11, 2023
This short documentary film explores artist Betye Saar’s process creating “Drifting Toward Twilight,” a site-specific installation at The Huntington, and her recollections of her life and career.
Video

A Family Story from Native California: The Wright Family, Kinship and Mobility In California, 1849-1941

Sat., Nov. 11, 2023
William Bauer, professor of history at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, examines one family's story as part of the experience of Native peoples between the “abyss” of the 19th century and their return and revival in the 20th.

William Camargo’s Protest Pictures Give Voice to History

Tue., Nov. 7, 2023 | Deborah Miller Marr
Photographer William Camargo has a talent for transporting the viewer to a precise moment in time, often delivering a jarring history lesson in the process. His series Origins and Displacements amplifies issues of gentrification and the invisible labor in his hometown of Anaheim, California.

Reflecting on Daguerreotypes

Tue., Oct. 31, 2023 | Linde B. Lehtinen, Ph.D.
There are more than 70 daguerreotypes in The Huntington’s collection, each with stories as unique as the daguerreotype process itself. These miniature portals into 19th-century life preserve vital histories and allow viewers to engage in their own contact with the past.