Videos and Recorded Programs

Chinese American composer Nathan Wang, the 2022-23 Cheng Family Foundation Visiting Artist in the Chinese Garden, will introduce his remarkable career and the development of the opera “On Gold Mountain” in collaboration with renowned author Lisa See. The evening will feature highlights from the upcoming performance of “On Gold Mountain” by LA Opera at The Huntington.

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.

Most artists work in isolation, inventing their art from pure imagination or being inspired by landscapes or inanimate objects. If they derive their art from human beings, it is often from numerous...

An exhibition centered around Joseph Wright of Derby’s masterpiece “An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump” becomes a starting point to examine how witnessing experiments with air pumps were critically important for the transfer of scientific knowledge during the Enlightenment and after.

Featuring Otto von Guericke’s 1672 publication “Experimenta nova (ut vocantur) Magdeburgica de vacuo spatio”

Produced for the exhibition “Science and the Sublime: A...

Tita Chico, professor at the University of Maryland, explores how the concept of wonder during the eighteenth century helps us to see the imaginative underpinnings of how we come to understand the natural world and its various phenomena. Through this lecture, she reveals how feeling played a constitutive role in the formulation of Enlightenment rationalization.

The eighteenth century was populated with fantastical wonders where the moon...

In her new book, Temples in the Cliffside: Buddhist Art in Sichuan, Sonya Lee argues that centuries-old religious monuments can be part of the world’s sustainable future. This talk focuses on the transformation of cave temples from religious centers into tourist destinations in southwest China, where venerable sites such as Leshan, Nankan, and Baodingshan have become entangled in some of the most consequential economic, political,...

In response to Mathew Craske’s prize winning recent biography of Joseph Wright of Derby, Huntington curators Joel Klein and Melinda McCurdy discuss Wright’s iconic painting, Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump (1768) in the exhibition, “Science and the Sublime: A Masterpiece by Joseph Wright of Derby,” in the context of older traditions of European art and of the history of science.

For The Huntington’s 2022 Founders’ Day celebration, acclaimed writer Charles Yu joins Huntington Trustee Simon K.C. Li to discuss Yu’s experiences writing in multiple genres, the role of fiction in constructing identity, current U.S. dialogues about race and identity, and more.

Founders’ Day is observed annually at The Huntington in honor of Henry and Arabella Huntington’s roles in envisioning and establishing the institution.

THIS PROGRAM IS NO...