Videos and Recorded Programs

Discover the eerier side of The Huntington in a virtual event where curators and botanists share rarely seen objects and otherworldly stories from deep inside the collections. Enter a mysterious world of ghoulish characters, bizarre plants, and devilish elixirs and treats you can make at home.

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For this presentation, James Folsom, the Marge and Sherm Telleen/Marion and Earle Jorgensen Director of the Botanical Gardens, recounts the physical and intellectual origins of Liu Fang Yuan, reminding us of the many people, ideas, and activities that brought this garden and endeavor to its current state. To establish a broader context, he discusses how The Huntington’s Asian Gardens strengthen the concerted impact and significance...

In this webinar, Huntington Curator of Rare Books Stephen Tabor explains how printing technology developed from the hand-press period to the early 20th century, shows how to spot different typesettings and impressions, and explores how basic bibliographical terms have been used variously by book historians, publishers, and booksellers. Illustrations include examples of varying quality to show how photographic reproductions can produce false clues and digital...

Professor Annette Gordon-Reed, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and one of the nation’s premier authorities on the Founding era, discusses how Americans today deal with problematic historical figures such as Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, in the inaugural lecture for the Shapiro Center for American History and Culture at The Huntington.

Huntington curators share stories about some of the Library’s most remarkable and surprising acquisitions. This program is presented by Rare Books LA.

Dr. Sowande’ Mustakeem, Associate Professor of History and of African and African-American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, reconstructs the significance of water and power in how slavery is remembered, exploring the roles of bondpeople, sailors, and slave ship surgeons during the centuries of racial calamity at sea. By centering maritime history and culture in the realities of transoceanic slaving, we gain greater insight...

Tang Qingnian 唐慶年, the 2019 Cheng Family Visiting Artist at The Huntington, screens the video artwork that has been the focus of his yearlong residency. A conversation with the artist follows a virtual screening of his new video. A new musical work composed by pipa virtuoso Wu Man 吳蠻 and shakuhachi artist Kojiro Umezaki 梅崎 康二郎, commissioned by The Huntington, accompanies the video.

Phillip E. Bloom, June and Simon K.C. Li Curator of the Chinese Garden and Director of the Center for East Asian Garden Studies, examines a selection of gardens from Song-dynasty (960–1279) China that explicitly thematized both the sensual and intellectual pleasures of gardening. The talk argues that close attention to the pleasures afforded by Chinese gardens enables us to reconcile their myriad, often contradictory, functions.