Botanical
Big Bonsai? Not Really
Fri., April 21, 2017 | Diana W. Thompson
For Kyoto-based landscape designer Takuhiro Yamada, the tea garden he designed in The Huntington's Japanese Garden is a work in progress. Each year, he returns to check on its development and chooses a few areas where he can help infuse the plants
Audio
Recent Lectures: Feb. 23–April 12, 2017
Wed., April 19, 2017 | Huntington Staff
Home to gorgeous gardens, spectacular art, and stunning rare books and manuscripts, The Huntington also offers an impressive slate of lectures and conferences on topics and themes related to its collections. Featured are audio recordings of five recent lectures and conversations.
Conference
West of Walden: Thoreau in the 21st Century
Tue., April 18, 2017
"The sun is but a morning star." Walden's famous last line points eastward to the sunrise; but Henry David Thoreau also wrote of the west, the sunset, and day's end.
Beyond The H
Transcription Challenge for Civil War Telegrams
Mon., April 17, 2017 | Kevin Durkin
In June 2016, The Huntington launched a crowdsourcing project called "Decoding the Civil War" to transcribe and decipher a collection of 15,922 U.S. Civil War telegrams between Abraham Lincoln, his Cabinet, and officers of the Union Army.
Video
Carnegie Lecture Series: Simulating the Universe, One Galaxy at a Time
Mon., April 17, 2017
Andrew Wetzel discusses how theoretical astrophysics is now revealing how galaxies are formed, using the world's most powerful supercomputers to simulate this complex process.
Video
Do Not Open
Thu., April 13, 2017 | Susan Turner-Lowe and Aric Allen
The Huntington Library is a vast treasure box, replete with more than nine million items, including rare books, manuscripts, photographs, and maps. In addition, the Library houses a variety of oddities—such as a set of false teeth, an Oscar statuette, and a collection of vintage light bulbs.
Lecture
Potosí, Silver, and the Coming of the Modern World
Wed., April 12, 2017
John Demos, Samuel Knight Professor Emeritus of History at Yale University and the Ritchie Distinguished Fellow at The Huntington, presents an account of Potosí, the great South American silver mine and boomtown that galvanized imperial Spain in the 16th and 17th centuries, fueled the rise of cap
Video
DO NOT OPEN! Investigating an Artifact from The Huntington’s Vault
Tue., April 11, 2017
The Huntington has the only known recording of Joseph H. Hazelton's eyewitness account of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Aric Allen documents the story of this strange artifact.
Library
The Power of Touch
Mon., April 10, 2017 | Jennifer A. Watts
One afternoon in the Library's archive, I found a battered and scuffed photograph at the bottom of a small pile. Twenty-four men gaze somberly at the camera; all wear jackets and ties. The mere fact that the 19th-century portrait showed Black and white men respectfully intermingled
Exhibitions
Telling Her Stories
Thu., April 6, 2017 | Kevin Durkin
The Huntington is launching the first major exhibition on the life and work of award-winning science-fiction writer Octavia E. Butler (1947–2006), whose literary archive resides here. She was the first science fiction writer to receive a prestigious MacArthur "genius" award and the first African American woman to win widespread recognition...
Conferences
West of Walden
Mon., April 3, 2017 | Laura Dassow
"Walden. Yesterday I came here to live." That entry from the journal of Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), and the intellectual journey it began, would by themselves be enough to place him in the American pantheon of writers and thinkers.
Video
Carnegie Lecture Series: Unraveling the Mysteries of Exploding Stars
Mon., April 3, 2017
Tony Piro discusses how scientists are combining observations with theoretical modeling to unravel the mysteries of supernovae.