Videos and Recorded Programs
Videos about The Huntington and previously recorded lectures, programs, and conferences.
Thoreau’s Walden: Four Contemporary Writers on its Enduring Relevance
Wed., Oct. 27, 2021Authors Kristen Case, Gerald Early, Pico Iyer, and Megan Marshall in conversation with Karla Nielsen, Curator of Literary Collections at The Huntington
Spring 2020 and the onset of a global pandemic saw many writers returning to Henry David Thoreau’s Walden for guidance for living in a constricted space and with a reduced footprint. Beginning on July 4, 1845, Thoreau moved into a cabin on Walden Pond...
Calligraphy in the Lingering Garden, Suzhou
Thu., Oct. 21, 2021Amy McNair, professor of Chinese art at the University of Kansas, explores the calligraphy found in the Lingering Garden in Suzhou, a famous setting for two outdoor formats of calligraphy. Plaques written by friends of the owner identify places and views within the garden, while engraved stone slabs display the owner’s collection of antique calligraphy examples.
Astronomy in Arcadia: Galileo and Guarini’s “Pastor Fido”
Wed., Oct. 20, 2021Nothing generated interest, imitation, and outrage throughout Europe better and more lastingly than Giambattista Guarini’s Pastor Fido. In this talk, Eileen Reeves, professor of comparative literature at Princeton University, discusses allusions to the controversies emerging from that frothy and scandalous tragicomedy of 1589 in the astronomical works of Italy’s other most famous citizen, Galileo Galilei.
This is the Dibner Distinguished Fellow Lecture.
An Overflow of Meaning: Reading and Re-reading Hilary Mantel - Virtual Conference
Thu., Oct. 14, 2021Hilary Mantel, whose literary archive is held at The Huntington, is one of the most critically acclaimed authors working today. Her unprecedented double Booker Prize wins for Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies combined with sell-out West End and Broadway stage adaptations and award-winning television dramatizations brought her unquestionable public prominence. But Mantel’s Tudor novels constitute only one element of a writing career, which...
War Torn Californios: The Civil Wars of Antonio and Porfirio Jimeno
Wed., Oct. 13, 2021Jesse Alemán, professor of English at the University of New Mexico, discusses the lives and letters of the Jimeno brothers, whose coming of age in the years before the U.S. Civil War demonstrates that the process of becoming Latino in the United States is a story of uneven assimilation, embattled acculturation, and divided loyalties to family, nation, language, and place.
This is the 2021 Ray Allen...
Forgotten Pallbearers of Abraham Lincoln: What Now, Part 2
Wed., Oct. 6, 2021Olga Tsapina, curator of American historical manuscripts at The Huntington, discusses the importance of a little-known photograph from renowned Civil War photographer Mathew Brady’s studio that reveals the forgotten pallbearers of Abraham Lincoln, now on display in the exhibition “What Now, Part 2.”
Looking Like a Person: Portraits after Coloniality - Virtual Conference
Sat., Oct. 2, 2021This symposium interrogates the issues raised by contemporary artist Kehinde Wiley’s new painting Portrait of a Young Gentleman, which responds to Thomas Gainsborough’s grand manner masterpiece The Blue Boy. Between these two paintings, separated by 250 years, lies a colonial history that has managed representation across a field of visuality, nominating certain figures for human status and others for something less or more. What does...
Wild Cursive Calligraphy, Poetry, and Buddhist Monks in the Eighth Century and Beyond
Thu., Sept. 30, 2021Huiwen Lu, professor of art history at National Taiwan University, takes the audience into the strange and enchanting world of wild cursive calligraphy when it first appeared in China in the late seventh and early eighth centuries. Lu looks at the development of this script in history as it went from being perceived as a magical act unattainable by human power to a specialized skill...