Videos and Recorded Programs

David Loewenstein, Erle Sparks Professor of English and Humanities at Penn State, discusses the daring originality of Milton’s “Paradise Lost.” This year marks the 350th anniversary of the great poem’s first publication in 1667. This talk is part of the Ridge Lecture Series at The Huntington.

In his groundbreaking biography of American sculptor Alexander Calder (1898–1976), author Jed Perl shows us why Calder was—and remains—a barrier breaker, an avant-garde artist with mass appeal. Perl is joined in conversation by Alexander S. C. Rower, chairman and president of the Alexander Calder Foundation and Calder’s grandson.

Vanessa Wilkie, the William A. Moffett Curator of Medieval Manuscripts and British History at The Huntington, explains what went into the creation of a private, hand written version of the entire 1559 Book of Common Prayer. 

The newspaper rose to centrality in modern societies by making information current, critical, legitimate, and public. Leading experts on the history of the newspaper consider its invention, its layout, its appeal to sensation, and its claim to objectivity. The conference explores our debt to the newspaper and our continued need for news sources that are not “fake.” The conference was held at The Huntington Oct....

Historian Daniela Bleichmar, co-curator of the exhibition “Visual Voyages: Images of Latin American Nature from Columbus to Darwin,” discusses the surprising and little-known story of the pivotal role that Latin America played in the pursuit of science and art during the first global era. This talk is part of the Wark Lecture Series at The Huntington.

Part of the exhibition “Tiffany Favrile Glass: Masterworks from the Collection of Stanley and Dolores Sirott, this Tiffany Aquamarine vase, inspired by a trip to Bermuda, features an underwater scene encased in green-tinted glass. Only three known examples survive, placing it among the rarest Tiffany vases in the world.

Author and sculptor Matthew Spender talks about the friendship between his father, Stephen Spender, and Christopher Isherwood and W.H. Auden, from the late 1920s until Auden and Isherwood emigrated to the United States in the late 1930s. He focuses on the intense relationships between these three British writers, their homeland, and Nazi Germany. This talk is part of the Isherwood-Bachardy Lecture Series at The Huntington.

Early modern collections played a key role in the creation and transmission of knowledge, but they are usually studied in terms of the objects they contained or how they came to exist. This conference instead explores how they were actually used in the 16th and 17th centuries. The conference was held at The Huntington Sept. 15–16, 2017.