C. Pierce Salguero, associate professor of Asian history and religious studies at Penn State Abington, provides an introduction to the principles of Sino-Buddhist medicine, the product of centuries of cross-cultural exchange between medieval India and China.

In celebration of the 500th anniversary of the birth of anatomist and physician Andreas Vesalius, this conference brings together rare book collectors, curators, art and cultural historians, and physicians to explore the changing concepts of the human body and visualizations of knowledge in...

Bringing together international leaders in the field of medieval studies, this conference focuses interdisciplinary attention on the recent resurgence of interest in fifteenth-century texts and manuscripts and reshapes the dialogue about this decisive moment in English literary history. This...

Susan Juster, professor of history at the University of Michigan and the Robert C. Ritchie Distinguished Fellow, discusses the changing nature of blasphemy and blasphemy prosecutions in early modern England and the North American colonies. This is part of the Distinguished Fellow Lecture series.

This conference explores the nature, significance, and dynamics of market practices, institutions, and cultures in comparative perspective. Leading historians with expertise spanning a broad range of contexts will explore the changing discourse, norms, and practices of exchange across the period.

Held in the last year of the national commemoration of the Civil War Sesquicentennial, leading historians offer fresh perspectives on the turbulent conclusion of the conflict. Speakers discuss prominent political and military leaders, Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, and other episodes that...

Author and sculptor Matthew Spender talks about the friendship between his father, Stephen Spender, and Christopher Isherwood and W.H. Auden, from the late 1920s until Auden and Isherwood emigrated to the United States in the late 1930s. He focuses on the intense relationships between these three...

The concept of the frontier among scholars has changed considerably over the past 25 years. This symposium invited historians, literary scholars, and cultural critics to revisit the famed Frontier Thesis written by Frederick Jackson Turner more than 100 years ago. In three panel discussions,...

Noted architect Brian Tichenor discusses the life of one of the first landscape architects in Southern California, Ralph Cornell's, and examines three of his highly significant landscape designs. The lecture is presented in collaboration with the California Garden and Landscape History Society.

Chris Woods, award-winning horticulturist, describes the most arresting features in public parks, botanic gardens, and private estates in locations ranging from New Delhi and Dubai to Chile and Australia from his book GardenLust. Throughout, he reveals the fascinating people, plants, and stories...

The Huntington Art Gallery is home to the European art collection, which focuses on works from the 15th to the early 20th century. It consists of about 400 paintings, 300 sculptures, 2,400 objects of decorative art, and some 20,000 prints and drawings. The in-depth Adult Tour highlights some of...

Governor Jerry Brown and author Miriam Pawel discuss the development of California through the perspective of the influential Brown family with moderator William Deverell.

The sixth biennial Francis Bacon Conference took place from March 10 to 12, 2016, at the California Institute of Technology and The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Titled General Relativity at One Hundred or GR 100, the three-day conference is occasioned by the...

The Symposium, held in the Brody Botanical Center at The Huntington, features lectures from a wide variety of fields, including the sciences, botany, photography, botanical art history, the digital world and tours of The Huntington's gardens, collections, and art galleries.

David Loewenstein, Erle Sparks Professor of English and Humanities at Penn State, discusses the daring originality of Milton's "Paradise Lost." This year marks the 350th anniversary of the great poem's first publication in 1667. This talk is part of the Ridge Lecture Series at The Huntington.

Andrea Wulf, the New York Times bestselling author, discusses her new illustrated book "The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt"—her second work about the intrepid explorer and naturalist.

Daniel Lewis, the Dibner Senior Curator of the History of Science at The Huntington, discusses his new book about the birds of Hawaii. Belonging on an Island: Birds, Extinction, and Evolution in Hawai'i takes readers on a thousand-year journey as it explores the state's magnificent birds,...

The cosmopolitan ideal is commonly understood as one of the key legacies of the European Enlightenment. This interdisciplinary conference explores the possibilities and contradictions of the cosmopolitan ideal in the Enlightenment by considering a range of thematic perspectives, including...

The Huntington hosts the East Asian Garden Lecture series, spanning topics and discussions by prominent speakers about gardens across the Pacific.

The Huntington was founded in 1919 by Henry E. Huntington, an exceptional businessman who built a financial empire that included railroad companies, utilities, and real estate holdings in Southern California. Along with his wife, Arabella Duval Huntington, he amassed extensive library, art, and...

Robert Hellyer, associate professor of East Asian history at Wake Forest University, examines Japan's emergence in 1870 as a tea exporting nation, and how its emphasis on green tea influences U.S. tea-drinking.

Martha Howell, professor of history at Columbia University and the R. Stanton Avery Distinguished Fellow, discusses the meaning attached to goods—both humble and luxurious—during the Renaissance.

This conference investigates the nature and significance of the Protestant Reformation as a global phenomenon. Leading scholars from Europe and the United States offer fresh perspectives on the dynamics of religious change by examining the roles of institutions, interpretative communities, and...

What are “religious affections” and how have they influenced individuals, communities, and cultures? Leading experts in history, literature, and religious studies explore how religion shaped the roots, limits, and consequences of affections in the diverse terrain of early America. The conference...

Barbara Lamprecht, an architectural historian, explores Richard Neutra's unique contribution to architecture: designing environments that fused buildings and settings to create "habitats."

Mary Fissell, professor of the history of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, discusses Aristotle’s Masterpiece. First published in London in 1684, it became one of the most popular medical books ever published in England and America. The lecture is sponsored by the George Dock Society for the...

Jointly presented by The Huntington and Carnegie Observatories, this conference marks the centennial of the completion of the 100-inch Hooker telescope on Mount Wilson, which saw “first light” in November 1917 and heralded the dawn of modern astronomy. Historians, scientists, and others explore...

Experience the inspiration behind Liu Fang Yuan, the Garden of Flowering Fragrance, in this 42-minute walking tour. The garden combines the beauty of nature with the expressiveness of literature to give deeper meaning to the landscape. Filled with literal and symbolic meanings, a walk through Liu...

This interdisciplinary conference focuses on the transatlantic dynamics of food and power in the long 18th century. Historians, historical geographers, and literary scholars will assess the significant role of food in shaping interpersonal and geopolitical relations during this period, focusing...

The Copernican Revolution in astronomy has long been regarded as a central theme in the transformation of the sciences in the early modern period. Leading experts on the history of science explore the relevance of this and other narrative frameworks for understanding scientific developments in...

Henry Huntington acquired one of the rarest books in the history of English literature: the so-called "bad quarto" of Hamlet. Zachary Lesser, professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, discusses how this book's discovery in 1823 transformed our ideas about Hamlet, how it made its way...

Joyce Chaplin, James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History at Harvard University, revisits "The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin," which was one of Henry Huntington's most prized manuscript acquisitions. Franklin tells a tantalizingly open-ended story about his life because the...

As part of its regular program of public lectures, The Huntington hosts a variety of authors speaking about their own books on themes related to The Huntington’s collections.

Award-winning author Susan Straight is joined by novelist Lisa See for a conversation about Straight's powerful new memoir, In the Country of Women, which traces the lives of six generations of immigrant and multiracial women in her extended family.

Peter Del Tredici, Senior Research Scientist, Emeritus, of the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University, will examine the history of early introductions of Japanese plant species to North America, some of which had a profound impact on both cultivated and wild landscapes across America.

William Deverell, director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West, explores the life of Henry E. Huntington (1850-1927) against the backdrop of American history. This program is a Haynes Foundation Lecture.

The southwestern desert has long stood for American individualism, modernist and anti-modernist sentiments, and social and political experiments. As such it has attracted artistic and architectural movements that give form to these ideas. This conference brings together scholars from diverse...

Daniel K. Richter, professor of history and director of the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and the Robert C. Ritchie Distinguished Fellow, explores the neglected chapter of New England's early history during the reign of King Charles II as a few dozen...

This conference, organized in honor of Robert C. Ritchie upon his retirement as W.M. Keck Foundation Director of Research at The Huntington Library, spotlights innovative research on how the exploitation of the oceans changed the institution of slavery, long distance trade, property crime, the...

The image of a "Chinese garden" that most often comes to mind is that of the white-walled, gray-tiled gardens built by scholar-officials and merchants in the city of Suzhou during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). Despite its iconic status in the contemporary imagination, the Suzhou-style scholar's...

A collection of Founders' Day Lectures throughout the years at The Huntington.

Huntington President Karen R. Lawrence speaks with Carla Hayden, Librarian of Congress, about why archives and libraries exist and why the work they do continues to be important.

Huntington President Karen R. Lawrence speaks with Drew Gilpin Faust, former president of Harvard and Civil War scholar, about the importance of the humanities.

Hui-shu Lee, professor of Chinese art history at UCLA, reflects on two recipients of the Pritzker Architecture Prize—I. M. Pei and Wang Shu—and their instrumental reinterpretations of Chinese garden design for the modern and post-modern worlds.

Featuring Paul G. Haaga Jr., Huntington Trustee emeritus, chair of the board of NPR, and retired chair of Capital Research and Management Company, in conversation with Meg Whitman, CEO of Quibi, former president and CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise and eBay Inc., and 2010 Republican nominee for...

Rose hybridizer Tom Carruth, the E. L. and Ruth B. Shannon Curator of the Rose Collections at The Huntington, discusses how he developed his newest floribunda, 'Huntington's 100th', named in honor of the institution's Centennial Celebration.

Rob Iliffe, professor of the history of science at the University of Oxford, discusses two little-known documents that reveal how Isaac Newton's approach to prosecuting contemporary counterfeiters as a warden of the Royal Mint was closely related to his strategy for revealing the corruption of...

This interdisciplinary conference explored the subterranean world of Elizabethan Catholic print and scribal culture, set against the backdrop of press censorship, illicit printing, book smuggling, subversive scribal publication, and the uses of Catholic writing by government agents. The study of...