Historians can be like kids in a candy store when it comes to Halloween. Nicholas Rogers, the Fletcher Jones Foundation Distinguished Fellow at The Huntington in 2009–10, had fun with a public lecture in Friends’ Hall last October. Continue reading
If casting spells is not your cup of chamomile tea, you can work plenty of bewitching magic of the culinary kind by experimenting with herbs in the kitchen. Want to exorcise of few of your personal demons? Spend an afternoon planting tarragon and marjoram in your garden. Ideas and inspiration can be found among the cookbooks and gardening guides in the Bookstore & More. Look for Kerins’ A Celebration of Herbs: Recipes from the Huntington Herb Garden, among other titles. Continue reading
A “hidden collection” is a collection that is largely unknown to researchers, usually because it hasn’t been processed (arranged, described, conserved). This is no use to researchers—you can’t ask for something if you don’t know it exists—and there is a great push within the archival profession to make these “hidden collections” visible through simpler processing and online catalogs. The Los Angeles Times company records is probably one of the least-hidden “hidden collections” we have. Continue reading
The Huntington was the site of the first bazaar in 2006, when 30 historical collections and archives exhibited photos, pamphlets, and other primary documents from their collections. Saturday, more than 70 exhibitors will be on hand, including L.A.-area universities, libraries, museums, and community organizations. The event is free and open to the public and is presented by the L.A. as Subject Archives Forum. Continue reading
This month at the Huntington Library Press, we have been time travelers. We began in the distant past, doing the last proofreading on a special issue of the Huntington Library Quarterly devoted to what people read, mostly in England, in the 16th and 17th centuries, including cookbooks. The articles in the issue looked at various forms of commentary: what people wrote about their reading—sometimes directly in the margins of books, but often in what are called commonplace books, notebooks made up in this case of literary quotations and comment. Continue reading
Before coming out to The Huntington this weekend for the 51st annual Southland Orchid Show, listen to Jim Folsom’s recent talk on “Getting to Know Orchids.” Folsom, the Marge and Sherm Telleen/Marion and Earle Jorgensen Director of the Botanical Gardens, spoke yesterday at the Second Thursday Garden Talk & Plant Sale. Continue reading
You can download the recording—”California Up for Grabs”—from The Huntington on iTunes U. The event was sponsored by the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West. Director Bill Deverell hosts a number of public programs throughout the year, including a luncheon series that kicked off last week with Michael Hiltzik, author of Colossus: Hoover Dam and the Making of the American Century. Continue reading
For docents in the school tour program, what they learn is as rewarding as what they teach. Big yellow buses will start rolling through The Huntington’s gates this week as the school tour season gets under way. When students disembark for a morning of discovery, a group of highly trained … Continue reading
Huntington curator Sue Hodson says there is a tenderness under the hard shell that is exquisite and painful. “When you think about how he touched people’s lives, it’s incredibly powerful. He offered comfort, gave people hope and something to hang on to,” she said. Continue reading
Several hundred visitors had a chance to exhibit their artwork at The Huntington on Saturday, Oct. 2. This wasn’t your ordinary art show, however. For one thing, the media these artists were working with included leaves, twigs, seed pods, palm fronds, pinecones, bark, fruit, and flowers. In an event dubbed … Continue reading