Celebrating Pride Month
Honor the experiences and contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual people, including artists and authors represented in The Huntington’s collections. Discover the stories behind artworks on view, learn about research happening in the Library, and explore The Huntington’s archive of stories and programming.
Robert Indiana’s 'LOVE' Joins The Huntington
Iconic sculpture to be unveiled on campus in 2026
The Huntington has acquired Robert Indiana’s ‘LOVE,’ the celebrated Pop Art sculpture, as a gift for its permanent collection. It will be unveiled before year’s end.
Over time, LOVE has accrued layered meanings: first as an emblem of the optimism and contradictions of postwar America, and later as a symbol embraced by LGBTQ+ communities, particularly during the AIDS crisis, when it came to signify care, loss, and solidarity. Those associations continue to inform the work’s cultural resonance today.
Hidden Histories: Discovering Los Angeles’ LGBTQ+ Collections
Huntington ONE Archives
A partnership between ONE Archives at USC and LA as Subject, The goal of Hidden Histories is to create a centralized resource of LGBTQ+ archival material for researchers and community members. The Huntington shares its world-renowned collections to support scholarship, foster learning, inspire creativity, and offer transformative experiences for diverse audiences.
Stories
Queering the Collections: A Tale of Two Libraries
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.
Christopher Isherwood in Exile
Ben Robbins, senior postdoctoral researcher in American literature at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, explores the diaries and notebooks that the English novelist Christopher Isherwood kept during the 1930s.
Laura Aguilar’s California
Often featuring her own body in the composition, Laura Aguilar’s photographs explore a variety of themes and subject matter—from lesbian and Chicana identity to interventions in the Western landscape and explorations of Los Angeles cultures and subcultures.
The Pride and Practice of Frances B. Johnston
In 1924, Henry E. Huntington bought an extensive portfolio from Frances B. Johnston, widely considered the nation’s first female photojournalist. Johnston photographed famous people, architecture, and gardens.
A Walk on the Wilde Side
Born in Dublin and named for Irish folk heroes, Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854–1900) became a cultural hero in his own right.
Florence Yoch and Lucile Council
Partners both in business and in life, Yoch and Council completed more than 250 landscape commissions—projects that included landmark public gardens and private gardens for Hollywood elites.
Programming
Why It Matters: Darren Walker in Conversation with Karen R. Lawrence
On May 31, 2023, Ford Foundation President Darren Walker joined Huntington President Karen R. Lawrence in a conversation about the shifting landscape of charitable giving, the role of art in the pursuit of social justice, and the importance of hope to civic engagement.
The Artistic Achievement of Don Bachardy
Robert Flynn Johnson, curator emeritus of the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, discusses how Don Bachardy was one of the most insightful draftsmen of his era.
Designating the Isherwood-Bachardy Residence and Studio in Los Angeles
Historic preservation consultants from Chattel Inc. share how the Christopher Isherwood papers at The Huntington were instrumental in the designation of the Santa Monica Canyon home of writer Christopher Isherwood (1904–1986) and artist Don Bachardy as a Historic-Cultural Monument in Los Angeles.