Watch, Read, Listen

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

Art

Sargent Claude Johnson–California School for the Blind Commission

Mon., March 18, 2024
In 1933, Sargent Johnson began a monumental architectural installation for the California School for the Blind in Berkeley. It was commissioned by the federally sponsored Public Works of Art Project—part of the New Deal.

The Huntington’s Foundations and Futures

Tue., March 12, 2024 | Sandy Masuo
To celebrate this year’s Founders’ Day, Lori Bettison-Varga, president and director of the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County, engaged in a wide-ranging conversation with Huntington President Karen R. Lawrence about the past, present, and future of The Huntington.
Events

Highlights from Founders’ Day 2024: Foundations and Futures

Tue., March 12, 2024
On Feb. 22, 2024, Huntington President Karen R. Lawrence sat down with Lori Bettison-Varga, president of the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County, for a conversation that looked back at The Huntington’s past five years under Lawrence’s leadership and forward at the institution’s strategic aspirations.
Events

Huntington Founders Day 2024: Foundations and Futures

Tue., March 12, 2024
The 2024 Founders’ Day program marked The Huntington’s fifth anniversary under the leadership of President Karen R. Lawrence.
News

Major Exhibition to Explore How Artists, Scientists, and Writers Traced Awareness of the Industrial Revolution’s Impact on the Environment

Thu., March 7, 2024
“Storm Cloud: Picturing the Origins of Our Climate Crisis,” puts today’s environmental issues in historical context, examining the profound changes that industrialization and a globalized economy have wrought on everyday life, as charted by artists, scientists, and writers during the 19th century.
News

New Exhibition to Examine How Gardening Inspired Ethical Connections in Historical China

Thu., March 7, 2024
This exhibition displays 24 objects and a participatory artwork highlighting how historical Chinese gardens have served as spaces that not only delight the senses and nourish the body but also inspire the mind—both intellectually and spiritually.

Five Great Native Plants

Tue., March 5, 2024 | Sandy Masuo
California natives add a regional flair to gardens and also support local wildlife; many birds and pollinators prefer native plants, and some depend exclusively on them. Native plants fit a variety of garden niches, from spectacular specimen trees to ground covers, vines, and colorful annuals.

Another West: Ecologies of Photography

Tue., Feb. 27, 2024 | Monica Bravo and Carolin Görgen
An exploration of photography’s ecological dimensions provides an opportunity to reexamine the role that photography has played in documentation as well as environmental degradation. By examining photographs other than those of classic Western landscapes, we reconsider how Indigenous persons and settlers perceived and interacted with the environment.
Art

The Huntington Commissions Artist Mineo Mizuno for Monumental Outdoor Sculpture

Wed., Feb. 21, 2024
Mizuno's site-specific sculpture “Homage to Nature” debuts on May 25, 2024.

Reflecting on Black Artistic Influence in California

Tue., Feb. 20, 2024 | Lauren Cross
During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ’60s, California was an important site of African American creativity, even in the face of intense discrimination. Black enclaves emerged as places where African American leaders, activists, writers, performers, and visual artists could build community and make professional connections.

Petrarch Mania: Love, Poetry, and Fan Fiction in the Renaissance

Tue., Feb. 13, 2024 | Shannon McHugh
Centuries before the pop song, love sonnets provided the thrill of peeking into another’s romantic experience. Petrarch’s poems about his adoration of a woman named Laura still impacts how we talk about love today and spawned an early kind of fan fiction that swept the Renaissance reading public.

Guns, Secession, and a Secret Message in a Spool

Tue., Feb. 6, 2024 | Olga Tsapina
The Huntington’s Edward Davis Townsend collection contained something rather curious: a spool of thread with a note hidden inside that shed new light on the dramatic events that unfolded shortly after the election of Abraham Lincoln in November 1860.