Huntington Verso

Art exhibitions in the late 18th and early 19th centuries created rich immersive environments of fine art working in tandem with other media, which today can seem like a bewildering jumble. The Huntington’s “Paintings, Peepshows, and Porcupines” conference will begin to make sense of this apparent chaos.

With the aim of engaging a more diverse cross section of people, The Huntington created the Meet Me in the Garden program as a way of welcoming visitors with different sensory needs. The program is geared toward families with members who identify as disabled, but all guests can participate.

The Huntington’s Botanical staff members routinely collaborate with other institutions to tackle conservation challenges. Most of the time, these are carefully planned projects: propagating rare and endangered species, making gardens more resilient to the changing climate, and teaching cryopreservation or culturing plant tissue. But sometimes, the unexpected happens.

The Desert Garden is one of the world’s premier collections of succulent plants, covering more than 10 acres and comprising more than 5,000 arid-adapted plants. The Desert Garden Entrance Project, nearing completion, will make it possible to showcase more of this collection and spotlight the significance of these plants.

The Huntington has acquired David Hockney’s painting “Tree on Woldgate, 6 March,” along with 17 works on paper that include drawings, prints, and watercolors. Donated by Gregory Evans, who had a close romantic and business relationship with Hockney for many years, the works showcase an intimate side of the artist.

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.