Watch, Read, Listen

News, stories, features, videos and podcasts by The Huntington.

Pretty in Pink

Tue., March 29, 2022 | Sandy Masuo

At this time of year, flowering fruit trees are in the spotlight for their showy displays of pink blossoms, but there is a lot of competition throughout The Huntington’s gardens. Although many trees share the pink color palette, if you look closely, you’ll see that each one is distinctive.

Verso

Lily Lee Chen, Mayor of Monterey Park

Tue., March 22, 2022 | Li Wei Yang

On April 13, 1982, Lily Lee Chen was elected to the city council of Monterey Park, a city in the western San Gabriel Valley region of Los Angeles County that had become one of the first “suburban Chinatowns” in the United States. In 1984, Chen made history by becoming the first female Chinese American mayor in the nation.

Verso

Charles Yu in Conversation

Tue., March 15, 2022 | Cheryl Cheng

For The Huntington’s 2022 Founders’ Day celebration, a conversation was held on March 2 between acclaimed writer Charles Yu and Huntington Trustee Simon K.C. Li. They discussed Yu’s experiences writing in multiple genres, the role of fiction in constructing identity, and current U.S. dialogues about identity and race.

News

News Release - The Huntington Acquires Eve Babitz Archive

Thu., March 10, 2022

The collection spans from 1943 to 2011, documenting the professional and personal life of the LA author and cultural figure through manuscripts, original works of art, journals, photographs, and correspondence

Verso

Behind the Scenes with Sonya Levien

Wed., March 9, 2022 | Natalie Russell

The life of Sonya Levien (1888–1960) reads like a rags-to-riches fairy tale. But it is also a story of fortitude, feminism, and the ability to balance personal, family, and financial ambitions.

Videos and Recorded Programs

In Conversation with Ourselves: Wright of Derby’s "Air Pump" as a Modern Moral Subject

Wed., March 9, 2022

In this lecture, renowned art historian David Solkin shows how Joseph Wright of Derby constructed conflicting messages out of an eclectic mix of elements drawn from different pictorial traditions in An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump and asks us to consider the artwork's relevance today.

Frontiers

Negotiating Religious Difference in 18th-Century Kilkenny

Wed., March 2, 2022 | Jonathan Koch

On Feb. 15, 1774, a young man from Kilkenny, Ireland, wrote his name across the title page of an old book. Purchased in Kilkenny's robust secondhand book trade, the slim quarto of theology had once belonged to a local Protestant minister. But its new owner was no clergyman.

Videos and Recorded Programs

Founders’ Day Lecture - Charles Yu in Conversation with Simon K.C. Li

Wed., March 2, 2022

For The Huntington’s 2022 Founders’ Day celebration, acclaimed writer Charles Yu joins Huntington Trustee Simon K.C. Li to discuss Yu’s experiences writing in multiple genres, the role of fiction in constructing identity, current U.S. dialogues about race and identity, and more.

Founders’ Day is observed annually at The Huntington in honor of Henry and Arabella Huntington’s roles in envisioning and establishing the institution.

Founders’ Day conversation with writer Charles Yu (left) and Huntington Trustee Simon K.C. Li

CHARLES YU is the author of four books, including Interior Chinatown (winner of the 2020 National Book Award for fiction) and the novel How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (a New York Times notable book and a Time magazine best book of the year). He received the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Award and was nominated for two Writers Guild of America Awards for his work on the HBO series Westworld. He has also written for television shows on FX and AMC. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired, among other publications. Together with TaiwaneseAmerican.org, he established the Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Writing Prizes in honor of his parents.

SIMON K.C. LI retired from full-time journalism as an assistant managing editor of the Los Angeles Times in 2007 after 23 years there. He had also been the paper’s foreign editor, promoted for his work directing the paper’s coverage of the 1991-2 Gulf War. He has served as a vice chairman of the Vienna-based International Press Institute and on the board of directors of Inside Climate News, which won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. He received his bachelor’s degree in English Language and Literature from the University of Oxford and his master’s in journalism from Columbia University. He was elected to serve on The Huntington’s Board of Governors in 2010 and to the Board of Trustees in 2019. He also serves on the board of the Huntington Memorial Hospital, Pasadena.