Videos and Recorded Programs

Historian Steven Usselman traces how one breakthrough technology—the deep well centrifugal pump—triggered an unfolding cascade of change that reshaped the Golden State, both literally and figuratively. Conceived for use on citrus ranches such as those owned by Henry Huntington, these intricate mechanical marvels spilled over into many domains, including water management, food processing, oil drilling, and aviation.

Architectural historian Barbara Lamprecht explores a little known but key aspect of Richard Neutra’s unique contribution to architecture: designing environments that fused constructions and site to create “soul anchorages” or “habitats.” Renowned for his sleek interpretations of Modernism, Neutra’s first job after World War I was as a gardening assistant to one of Switzerland’s most famous early purveyors of Modern landscape design. Neutra later integrated...

Li Wei Yang, curator of the Pacific Rim Collection at The Huntington, retraces the history of Chinatown in Los Angeles using old Chinese Restaurant menus from the You Chung Hong Family Collection.

Historian Victoria Johnson discusses the life of David Hosack, the attending physician at the Hamilton-Burr duel and founder of the nation’s first public botanical garden, today the site of Rockefeller Center. Johnson is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-nominated biography of Hosack, American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic.

The Browns of California: A Conversation with Governor Jerry Brown and Miriam Pawel, moderated by William Deverell. The program is presented by the Huntington–USC Institute on California and the West.

This interdisciplinary conference illuminates the movement of writers, artists, scientists, and cultural goods between Paris and London during the fourteen months of peace ushered in by the Treaty of Amiens, from March 1802 through May 1803–the first break in hostilities after a decade of Revolutionary warfare.

Peter Moore, writer and lecturer at the University of Oxford, takes us back to the mid-18th century to the story of how a humble coal collier from a small port in northern England came to define an entire age.

Andrea Wulf, the New York Times bestselling author, discusses her new illustrated book, The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt—her second work about the intrepid explorer and naturalist.