Watch, Read, Listen

Architectural historian Barbara Lamprecht explores a little known but key aspect of Richard Neutra’s unique contribution to architecture: designing environments that fused constructions and site to create “soul anchorages” or “habitats.” Renowned for his sleek interpretations of Modernism, Neutra’s first job after World War I was as a gardening assistant to one of Switzerland’s most famous early purveyors of Modern landscape design. Neutra later integrated his knowledge of plants with ideas about evolutionary biology’s role in human well-being. The program is presented as part of the California Garden & Landscape History Society Lecture Series.

Li Wei Yang, curator of the Pacific Rim Collection at The Huntington, retraces the history of Chinatown in Los Angeles using old Chinese Restaurant menus from the You Chung Hong Family Collection.

Historian Victoria Johnson discusses the life of David Hosack, the attending physician at the Hamilton-Burr duel and founder of the nation’s first public botanical garden, today the site of Rockefeller Center. Johnson is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-nominated biography of Hosack, American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic.

The Browns of California: A Conversation with Governor Jerry Brown and Miriam Pawel, moderated by William Deverell. The program is presented by the Huntington–USC Institute on California and the West.