Huntington Frontiers

Huntington Frontiers connects readers with the rich intellectual life of The Huntington, capturing the work of researchers, educators, curators, and others across a range of disciplines. It is produced by The Huntington’s Office of Communications and Marketing.

Negotiating Religious Difference in 18th-Century Kilkenny

Wed., March 2, 2022 | Jonathan Koch
On Feb. 15, 1774, a young man from Kilkenny, Ireland, wrote his name across the title page of an old book. Purchased in Kilkenny's robust secondhand book trade, the slim quarto of theology had once belonged to a local Protestant minister. But its new owner was no clergyman.

Blue Boy Mania: How Gainsborough’s Masterpiece Colored Pop Culture

Wed., Jan. 12, 2022 | Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell
What is it about Blue Boy that appeals to advertisers, entertainers, and interior decorators? His youth? His fancy clothes? Nostalgia? Notoriety? Over the years, he has served as a stand-in for boyhood, Britain, and fine art itself. American Anglophiles consumed Blue Boy tchotchkes the way they might consume Downton Abbey...

Revising a Masterpiece

Mon., Nov. 15, 2021 | Malik Gaines
With a new painting that responds to Thomas Gainsborough’s The Blue Boy, Kehinde Wiley again revises a “masterpiece,” adding Black youth to the repertoire of English grand manner portraiture, redirecting the genre’s aggrandizing powers, and challenging its exclusivity.

West of Slavery

Wed., May 26, 2021 | Kevin Waite
In his book, West of Slavery: The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire (University of North Carolina Press, 2021), Kevin Waite, assistant professor of history at Durham University in England, uncovers the surprising history of the Old South in unexpected places, far beyond the region's cotton fields and sugar plantations.

Kathy Fiscus and the Johnson Well

Wed., March 17, 2021 | William Deverell
William Deverell, director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West and professor of history at USC, recently published Kathy Fiscus: A Tragedy that Transfixed the Nation (Angel City Press, 2021), in which he tells the story of a groundbreaking live TV news broadcast of a rescue attempt in...

Legacy of Wonder

Tue., Dec. 22, 2020 | Usha Lee McFarling
The Huntington's botanical gardens have long been shaped by the vision of Jim Folsom.When young botany student Jim Folsom traveled from Austin, Texas, to The Huntington to interview for an assistant curator job in late August of 1984, he was completely turned off by the heavy traffic and acrid smog...

Hidden Within “The Three Witches”

Tue., Dec. 22, 2020 | Christina M. O’Connell
When The Huntington acquired Henry Fuseli's The Three Witches (ca. 1785) in 2014, I could immediately see clues that there was something to discover beneath its surface.

A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky

Tue., Dec. 22, 2020 | Lynell George
In her life and work, Octavia E. Butler strove to embody what could be.Author and journalist Lynell George, a 2017–18 Alan Jutzi Fellow at The Huntington, has been working with the Octavia E. Butler archives for four years. The result is a very personal book, A Handful of Earth, A...

Accounting for Freedom

Mon., July 20, 2020 | Usha Lee McFarling
Curator Olga Tsapina discusses the account book of an Underground Railroad operatorThe Huntington is home to extensive collections documenting the history of slavery and abolition in the United States and the Atlantic World.

The Autobiography of a Garden

Sun., July 19, 2020 | Lynne Heffley
Andrew Raftery's ceramic plates capture the cycle of the seasons in fine detailRaftery, a professor of printmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design, specializes in engraved scenes of contemporary American suburbia

Kaleidoscope

Fri., July 17, 2020 | Sumpter Priddy
How a Scottish scientist's invention influenced 19th-century American decorative artFew objects have played a greater role in underscoring the combined power of light, color, and motion than the kaleidoscope

Historical Markers

Thu., Oct. 17, 2019 | Usha Lee McFarling
Author Lynell George reflects on assembling the Huntington timelineAs part of the preparation for The Huntington’s Centennial year, Los Angeles–based journalist and essayist Lynell George spent months delving into the history of the institution