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Art historian Katharina I-Bon Suh of the Seoul National University discusses how the Garden of Seyeonjeong's design and layout served practical purposes but also alluded to philosophical metaphors and fantastical worlds in this East Asian Garden Lecture.

For more than 50 years, the Portland Japanese Garden has been a haven of serenity and an important center for Japanese culture. Join Sadafumi Uchiyama, Garden Curator of the Portland Japanese Garden, as he reflects on their recent expansion and newly founded institute for teaching garden history, design,...

Visiting journalist Corinne DeWitt heads to the Seifu-an tea house in the Japanese Garden, where Robert Hori, gardens cultural curator, performs a traditional Japanese tea ceremony and discusses the intricacies of this venerable art form.

Originally conceived by art dealer George T. Marsh as an exotic setting in which to sell curiosities, the building that in 1912 became The Huntington's Japanese House is a beautiful remnant of a transformational moment in design history. Art historian Hannah Sigur puts Marsh and his house in context, discussing the...

A 322-year-old house from Marugame, Japan is being added to the Japanese Garden. This well-preserved structure is an exquisite example of a working magistrate's residence that once served as the center of village life and home to generations of the same family.

Through the pioneering work of collectors and nurserymen, many new Japanese species were introduced to the American gardening public in the late 19th century. Peter Del Tredici, Senior Research Scientist, Emeritus, of the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University, will examine the history behind these early...

Jeffery Burton, archaeologist at the Manzanar National Historic Site, examines traces of the gardens, which were lost and abandoned when the site was closed.

In this talk, Qianshen Bai, professor and Dean of the School of Art and Archaeology, Zhejiang University, explores some foundational questions concerning Chinese calligraphy: How did writing become a fine art in China? Where is the boundary between functional writing and visual art? And what are the social...

Mae Ngai, professor of history at Columbia University, explores The Huntington's collections on the history of the American West, which includes some scattered references of the Chinese people, who were integral to California's history but were not always visible through historical records.

Sue Fawn Chung, professor emerita at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, presents facts and fictions about late 19th-century Chinese railroad workers, introducing newly published work on the subject: The Chinese and the Iron Road.

Hui-shu Lee, professor of Chinese art history at UCLA, reflects on two recipients of the Pritzker Architecture Prize—I. M. Pei and Wang Shu—and their instrumental reinterpretations of Chinese garden design for the modern and post-modern worlds.

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...