Walt Disney's animated movie Sleeping Beauty (1959) begins with a live action shot of a spectacular gold-plated book adorned with jewels. As the narrator reads the opening lines, the camera pans in on the colorful paintings, and the viewer is soon transported to a far away land.
Here's a scandal: While the Huntington painting Penelope (Pitt), Viscountess Ligonier immortalizes a woman who indulged in salacious affairs and managed to survive a very public divorce, its real story is not about the sitter at all.
William Deverell, the director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West (ICW), chats with USC doctoral student Sarah Keyes about her research on the Overland Trail experience of 250,000 Americans who moved west before the Civil War. This is the first in a new series highlighting the work of USC graduate students.
When Ben Oki first saw a bonsai tree as a curious youngster of six, he asked his father what bonsai was. "It's something people do when they retire," his father explained. Luckily for the world of horticulture, Oki didn't wait that long to start.