Watch, Read, Listen

As part of our Centennial Celebration, we have commissioned a temporary art installation by Los Angeles-based artist Lita Albuquerque. Installed near the southern entrance to the Japanese Garden, Albuquerque’s Red Earth features an approximately six-by-four-foot rock slab marked with bright red pigment and surrounded by bamboo stalks affixed with copper-colored bands. The work contrasts dramatically with the cool greens of the shady bamboo grove and is intended to mark its specific location in time and space. Red Earth incorporates color and light to convey motion and stillness “because only through stillness can we discover the motion of the cosmos,” says Albuquerque.

Christopher Clark, professor of history at the University of Connecticut at Storrs, explores how conflicts in agriculture over possession of land and slavery in 19th-century United States shaped the nation.