Watch, Read, Listen

Robert Hori, the gardens cultural curator and program director at The Huntington, was invited to serve as guest curator for an exhibition at the Portland Japanese Garden. The collaborative result is “Gifts from Japan: A Horticultural Tale Told through Botanical Art,” an exhibition that focuses on the intersection of garden arts, horticulture, and botany through a selection of botanical illustrations from The Huntington, the Botanical Artists Guild of Southern California, and invited botanical artists from Japan. 

Exploring a range of styles among The Huntington’s premier collection of British drawings and watercolors from the 17th to the mid-20th century, the exhibition highlights rarely seen works from masters of the medium, including William Blake, John Brett, John Constable, Thomas Gainsborough, and J. M. W. Turner.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the amount of time that people spent focused on screens was an issue of concern. Sarah Wilson of the Autry Museum had an idea: bring together museum education staff to find an innovative way to serve the needs of children and families beyond online learning.

Miki Hayakawa’s From My Window—on loan from the collection of Sandra and Bram Dijkstra in The Huntington’s Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art—captures a specific place and time.

Why do museums matter? It’s a question on the minds of many museum leaders today, including Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III, who spoke at The Huntington last month with Huntington President Karen R. Lawrence and Huntington Governor Robert C. Davidson Jr. The event, held in a packed Rothenberg Hall, was part of the institution’s “Why It Matters” series.

Natalia Molina grew up in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Echo Park and spent evenings at the Mexican restaurant her mother owned, the Nayarit, a local landmark that her grandmother founded in 1951.

Henry E. Huntington famously built a landmark collection of rare early editions of William Shakespeare’s plays and poems, which remain hugely important to scholars. But what about everyone else?