Videos and Recorded Programs

The year 1919 was a tumultuous one in American history. It was also the year that Henry E. Huntington created the institution that bears his name. This conference, designed around The Huntington’s Nineteen Nineteen centennial exhibition, focuses on the social, cultural, and political events that provide a national and international context for Huntington’s remarkable act of philanthropy.

Kristen L. Chiem, associate professor of art history at Pepperdine University, explores the role of floral imagery in Qing-dynasty China. Focusing on the peony, Chiem traces how artists used the flower to demonstrate imperial power during the 17th through 20th centuries. Prominently adorning portraits and material objects of Qing emperors and empresses, these images offer insight into gender, ethnicity, and diplomacy at court.

Researcher T.J. Stiles describes the last year of Custer’s life through the eyes of teenager Bertie Swett. Swett came to know Custer and his wife Libbie at Fort Abraham Lincoln and in Manhattan while America approached a historic turning point. Swett bared witness to the notorious soldier’s life as he pushed his career and fortune to the brink of disaster.

Sachiko Kusukawa, professor of the history of science at the University of Cambridge, explores the many ways images served early modern science, from anatomical atlases and botanical illustrations to telescopic and microscopic observations.

Edmund Russell, professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University and the Dibner Distinguished Fellow at The Huntington, discusses the motives, construction, and consequences of the completion of transcontinental telegraph in 1861.

Eugene Wang, professor of art history at Harvard University, discusses the Qianlong Garden in the northeast corner of the Forbidden City. Built in the 1770s, the whole garden space can be seen as a five-act play.

James Walvin, professor emeritus at the University of York and the Los Angeles Times Distinguished Fellow at The Huntington, discusses the widespread global ramifications of African slavery that transformed the cultural habits of millions of people.

Wallace Stevens is regarded as one of the great American poets, yet he was also an inimitable letter writer. Leading international experts make the first concerted effort to study Stevens’ letters as a major part of the poet’s literary heritage.