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The image of a “Chinese garden” that most often comes to mind is that of the white-walled, gray-tiled gardens built by scholar-officials and merchants in the city of Suzhou during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). Despite its iconic status in the contemporary imagination, the Suzhou-style scholar’s garden is only one type among many. Exploring “unscholarly” spaces such as monastic gardens, merchant gardens, medicinal gardens, and market gardens, this symposium challenges common assumptions about what makes a garden in China.

Civil War scholar and former Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust explores the ways The Huntington’s collections have served as a critical resource for our understanding of the Civil War. Although the collection started with Henry Huntington, it has expanded since the library’s founding, bringing new insights about the war’s causes, motivations, and consequences.

Huntington President Karen R. Lawrence speaks with Drew Gilpin Faust, former president of Harvard and Civil War scholar, about the importance of the humanities.

Recent portrait-like paintings by contemporary British artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye are displayed adjacent to the historic Thornton Portrait Gallery at The Huntington in an exhibition curated by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Hilton Als, staff writer and theater critic for The New Yorker magazine, and associate professor of writing at Columbia University. The installation of five of Yiadom-Boakye’s studies of fictional characters create a dialogue with The Huntington’s collection of highly formal 18th-century British portraits. Drawn from the world of found images and imagination, Yiadom-Boakye’s figures seem familiar but also mysterious. She typically finishes each painting in a single day, infusing the works with freshness and spontaneity, as if they were painted from life.

The exhibition is the second in a trilogy at The Huntington that originated at the Yale Center for British Art. The first focused on the work of Celia Paul, and the final installment in 2021 will highlight the work of Los Angeles-based artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby.

“The Hilton Als Series: Lynette Yiadom-Boakye” is organized by the Yale Center for British Art where it was on view Sept. 12–Dec. 15, 2019.