Watch, Read, Listen

A stroll through The Huntington’s gardens is a feast for the senses. Enhancing the plants’ beauty are their scintillating floral scents, but plants do not produce them for our pleasure. Indeed, many flowers exude odors that are unpleasant. Whether sweet or stinky, they share a common goal: reproduction.

Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (1755–1842) fashioned a remarkable career in portraiture. Her 1784 portrait of Joseph Hyacinthe François-de-Paule de Rigaud, comte de Vaudreuil—acquired by The Huntington with support from The Ahmanson Foundation—is perhaps more important for what it conceals than for what it reveals.

An exhibition of 19 works will be on view in the Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art from Dec. 2, 2023, through March 18, 2024. “Art for the People” explores paintings created in the United States between the 1929 stock market crash and World War II.

The Huntington holds the diary of a merchant written during his time in London from December 1768 to April 1769. It offers a rare first-hand account of an American colonist’s experiences in London, just as relations between Britain and North America were deteriorating. 

In sitting down with Ford Foundation President Darren Walker for the May 31 “Why It Matters” event, Huntington President Karen R. Lawrence set the stage for a lively conversation.

Spanning nearly 300 years, the acquisitions include works by Edward Mitchell Bannister, Agostino Brunias, Letitia Huckaby, Lilly Martin Spencer, Tiffany and Co., and Tyrus Wong.

A portion of the Fielding Wing in The Huntington’s American art galleries showcases a variety of meticulously crafted quilts, made between 1850 and 1900. Here, curator Lauren Cross speaks to the distinctive nature of Amish quilts.

Ben Robbins, senior postdoctoral researcher in American literature at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, explores the diaries and notebooks that the English novelist Christopher Isherwood kept during the 1930s.