Verso

Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (1755–1842) fashioned a remarkable career in portraiture. Her 1784 portrait of Joseph Hyacinthe François-de-Paule de Rigaud, comte de Vaudreuil—acquired by The Huntington with support from The Ahmanson Foundation—is perhaps more important for what it conceals than for what it reveals.

The Huntington holds the diary of a merchant written during his time in London from December 1768 to April 1769. It offers a rare first-hand account of an American colonist’s experiences in London, just as relations between Britain and North America were deteriorating. 

In sitting down with Ford Foundation President Darren Walker for the May 31 “Why It Matters” event, Huntington President Karen R. Lawrence set the stage for a lively conversation.

Ben Robbins, senior postdoctoral researcher in American literature at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, explores the diaries and notebooks that the English novelist Christopher Isherwood kept during the 1930s.

The Huntington’s “Gee’s Bend: Shared Legacy” exhibition celebrates the culture of quilts within Gee’s Bend and the quilters themselves as world-renowned artists. Collectively, these works represent not only the tradition of quilts but how quilts can be used to transform a community’s past, present, and future.

In 1924, Henry E. Huntington bought an extensive portfolio from Frances B. Johnston, understood to be the nation’s first female photojournalist. Johnston photographed U.S. presidents, Supreme Court justices, and famous people ranging from Susan B. Anthony to Mark Twain. And she traveled widely to document architecture and gardens.

On June 2–3, leading and emerging historians of the Atlantic slave trade will gather for a conference at The Huntington titled “Slave Trading in the Spanish and British Atlantic Worlds” in order to present research on the trafficking of African people in these two imperial spheres.

Each year, The Huntington hosts roughly 150 long- and short-term research fellows, selected through a competitive, peer-review process that provides $1.4 million in awards.