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The restoration of “The Blue Boy” by Thomas Gainsborough is complete. As we await Blue Boy’s public unveiling, Christina Nielsen reflects on the project.

Welcome to The Collections, a podcast produced by The Huntington, hosted by Huntington President Karen  R.  Lawrence. In this first season, inaugurated during the institution’s Centennial, Dr. Lawrence talks with the heads of the library, art museum, and botanical gardens about why they do what they do and what makes their work at The Huntington so deeply rewarding. 

Season 1, Episode 1 – March 23, 2020: President Karen R. Lawrence talks with Sandra L. Brooke, Avery Director of the Library at The Huntington about the Library’s rare books and manuscripts collections, digitization, and what’s gained from having access to the real thing.

Season 1, Episode 2 – March 23, 2020: President Karen R. Lawrence talks with Christina Nielsen, Hannah and Russel Kully Director of the Art Museum at The Huntington about the European and American collections and their relevance today, and the importance of art conservation.

Season 1, Episode 3 – March 23, 2020: President Karen R. Lawrence talks with James P. Folsom, the Telleen/Jorgensen Director of the Botanical Gardens at The Huntington about the history of the gardens and how new technology and garden practice is helping the garden prepare for climate change.

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Wade Graham, author of American Eden: From Monticello to Central Park to Our Backyards, What Our Gardens Tell Us About Who We Are, explores the birth and career of the modern garden in California between 1920 and the 1960s. He charts the prewar origins, postwar evolution, and global influence of this unique garden idiom, from pioneers Rudolph Schindler and Richard Neutra to modern masters Thomas Church, Garrett Eckbo, and Lawrence Halprin. The program is presented by the California Garden & Landscape History Society.

 
Damian Duffy and John Jennings, the award-winning team behind the #1 bestseller Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation, discuss their new graphic novel adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower.

The image of a “Chinese garden” that most often comes to mind is that of the white-walled, gray-tiled gardens built by scholar-officials and merchants in the city of Suzhou during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). Despite its iconic status in the contemporary imagination, the Suzhou-style scholar’s garden is only one type among many. Exploring “unscholarly” spaces such as monastic gardens, merchant gardens, medicinal gardens, and market gardens, this symposium challenges common assumptions about what makes a garden in China.