Watch, Read, Listen

Join Lauren Mackler, co-curator of “Made in L.A. 2020: a version,” for this short and insightful discussion about artist Jeffrey Stuker, as part of the Lunchtime Art Talk series on the exhibition.

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Roslyn Lee Hammers, associate professor of art history at the University of Hong Kong, discusses depictions of rural life produced for an 18th-century Chinese emperor’s residence. The Qianlong emperor (1711–1799) had stone stele carved with scenes of men and women producing rice and silk, and he situated them in a reconstruction of a village in his Garden of Clear Ripples (Qing Yi Yuan, now known as the Summer Palace, Beijing). Hammers explores the appeal of such an unusual arrangement that enabled the emperor to observe both actual productive farmers and the representation of their labor in an imperial setting that united real agrarian work with ideated imagery of it.

Join Ikechukwu Onyewuenyi, Made in L.A. 2020 assistant curator of performance, for this short and insightful discussion about artist SON. (Justen LeRoy), as part of the Lunchtime Art Talk series on the exhibition “Made in L.A. 2020: a version.”

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Eric White, Scheide Librarian and Assistant University Librarian for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts at Princeton University, investigates the history and art of The Huntington’s Gutenberg Bible, beginning with the beautiful black-ink printing on fine vellum in Mainz ca. 1455, continuing with the magnificent hand-illumination of the initial letters, borders and the original leather binding in a faraway city, and including the long-forgotten addition of devotional prints, later removed and now held by other institutions. He also traces the rediscovery of the volumes two centuries ago and their long journey through various private collections prior to their arrival in the Huntington Library. This event is the Zeidberg Lecture in the History of the Book.

Join us as George J. Sanchez, Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at USC, discusses his book on the neighborhood of Boyle Heights with four USC doctoral students.

Boyle Heights is an in-depth history of the Los Angeles neighborhood, showcasing the potent experiences of its residents, from early contact between Spanish colonizers and native Californians to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, the hunt for hidden Communists among the Jewish population, negotiating citizenship and belonging among Latino migrants and Mexican American residents, and beyond. Through each period and every struggle, the residents of Boyle Heights have maintained remarkable solidarity across racial and ethnic lines, acting as a unified polyglot community even as their tribulations have become more explicitly racial in nature. Boyle Heights is immigrant-America embodied, and it can serve as the true beacon on a hill toward which the country can strive in a time when racial solidarity and civic resistance have never been in greater need.

Featured doctoral students:
Julia Brown-Bernstein, History
Rachel Klein, American Studies & Ethnicity
Cassandra Flores-Montano, American Studies & Ethnicity
Kathy Pulupa, American Studies & Ethnicity

The program is presented by the Huntington–USC Institute on California and the West.