Watch, Read, Listen

The Huntington has awarded the 2025 Shapiro Book Prize to Ashley Brown for the biography “Serving Herself: The Life and Times of Althea Gibson.” The biennial prize, which includes a $10,000 cash award, honors an outstanding first scholarly monograph in American history and culture.

Cycads have withstood the test of time, surviving ravenous dinosaurs and ice ages. Today, however, habitat loss, poaching, and declining pollinator populations threaten their survival.

Grafton Tyler Brown was one of the few African American artists and printers in the American West during the 19th century. He broke barriers as an illustrator and lithographer, a business owner, and a landscape painter.

Raqib Shaw’s painted worlds are fragile creations that strike delicate balances between hope and despair, resilience and destruction, humor and profundity.

Kelly Lytle Hernández, the Thomas E. Lifka Endowed Chair in History at UCLA, gives a lecture that tracks the rise of the whites-only immigration regime and how federal authorities have yet to abolish it.

Shannon McHugh and Brett Rushforth will work to broaden the institution’s scholarship and connect it with a more diverse global community.

The Huntington expands access through Museums for All by offering $3 admission to individuals and families receiving SNAP benefits. Museums for All is a national initiative designed to encourage cultural engagement and museum attendance among people of all backgrounds.

On Jan. 17–18, The Huntington will host a research conference titled “Abortion in American History,” which will explore more than a century of abortion history in the United States before 1973.

These Verso posts from this past year provide new perspectives, cultivate curiosity, and ignite the imagination.

Artist William De Morgan’s fascination with Middle Eastern designs and colors prompted his design of the original “Persian” vase, decorated with stylized flowers and leaves, in the late 19th century.

Fungi are an essential part of biodiversity at The Huntington, though many species remain unseen without sufficient rainfall. The past two winters’ heavy rains led to a surge in mushrooms across the gardens.

Join Frederick Ilchman, chair of the Art of Europe at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, as he explores Francisco Goya’s extraordinary achievements in portraiture.