Stories from the Library: Looking to Learn

Name: Stories from the Library: Looking to Learn | The Huntington
Start: Sat, Dec 13 2025 - Mon, Jun 15 2026
Location: The Huntington

Exhibitions

Examine diverse instructional and educational materials for children from the late-18th through the early 20th centuries.

Tan paper with red and blue ombre print, with black handwriting on top.

A grid of rectangles with diagrams, illustrations, and text describing numbers using vegetables.

A page from a book in Spanish, describing units of time.

Woven strips of black and white paper create unique geometric patterns in three horizontal sections.

Paper with repeating lines of cursive text reading "V Violets are deep blue V."

Gilbert Lester Leong, Chinese copybooks (zitie), printed in China, published in San Francisco, ca. 1920s. Gilbert, Florence, and Leslee See Leong Collection.

| The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.

The Mechanics of Arithmetic from The New Education, Minneapolis: The Diamond Litho-Publishing Co., 1898. Color lithograph on paper. Jay T. Last Collection of Education Prints & Ephemera.

| The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens

José Mariano Romero (compiler), Pedro Castro (owner), Agustin Vicente Zamorano (printer), Tablas para los niños que empiezan a contar (Tables for children who are beginning to count), 1836.

| The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.

Anna Schwarz, Froebel gift sample album, ca. 1890s. Weaving paper. Jay T. Last Collection of Education Prints & Ephemera.

| The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.

Practical Writing, Book Six, New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago: American Book Co. (publisher) for Platt R. Spencer’s Sons (promoter), 1905. Jay T. Last Collection of Education Prints & Ephemera.

| The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.

Generous support for the Stories from the Library exhibition series is provided by the Robert F. Erburu Exhibition Endowment. Additional support is provided by The Neilan Foundation, the Steinmetz Foundation, Laura and Carlton Seaver, and the John Brockway Huntington Foundation.

Stories from the Library: Looking to Learn

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