In his inaugural Huntington lecture, Phillip Bloom, The Huntington’s new director of the Center for East Asian Garden Studies and curator of the Chinese Garden, examines the history of Shizhuanshan, a hilltop Buddhist sanctuary in southwestern China constructed in the late 11th century. Bloom argues that, at Shizhuanshan, architecture, image, and text work together to transform the natural environment itself into a site for the eternal performance of Buddhist ritual. Recorded Nov. 21, 2017.

Lugene Bruno, curator of Carnegie Mellon's Hunt Institute, and Alice Tangerini, curator of botanical art at the Smithsonian Institution, present an illustrated lecture on recently rediscovered artworks long forgotten in their archives. These botanical illustrations represent significant historical and scientific findings of an earlier era. Recorded Nov. 5, 2017.

Richard Pegg, Asian art curator of the private MacLean Collection in Chicago, discusses the similarities and differences in representations of space, both real and imagined, in early modern maps created in China, Korea, and Japan. He also examines the introduction of European map-making techniques into Asian cartographic traditions. This talk is part of the East Asian Garden Lecture Series at The Huntington. Recorded September 5, 2017.

Originally conceived by art dealer George T. Marsh as an exotic setting in which to sell curiosities, the building that in 1912 became The Huntington’s Japanese House is a beautiful remnant of a transformational moment in design history. Art historian Hannah Sigur puts Marsh and his house in context, discussing the factors that helped make Japanese aesthetics the basis of good taste at the turn of the 20th century. This talk is part of the East Asian Garden Lecture Series at The Huntington. ...

Composer Huang Ruo, the 2017 Cheng Family Visiting Artist at The Huntington, is joined by the acclaimed kun opera singer Qian Yi for an evening of discussion and performance. Together they explore the Chinese kun opera tradition and how Huang uses the form in his contemporary compositions. Recorded Mar. 24, 2017.

Composer Huang Ruo, the 2017 Cheng Family Visiting Artist at The Huntington, discusses his work, introduces Chinese opera types, and explains how he uses Chinese opera in the contemporary context. The program is the first in a series of three public presentations given by Huang during his residency. Recorded Jan 31, 2017

David Barker, professor of printmaking at the China National Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou, will consider the important contributions made to Chinese pictorial printing by the famous Huang family of artisan block cutters. This lecture is presented in conjunction with the exhibition “Gardens, Art, and Commerce in Chinese Woodblock Prints,” on view in the Boone Gallery. Recorded Nov. 22, 2016.

Suzanne Wright, associate professor of art history at the University of Tennessee, discusses the partnerships between Chinese painters and woodblock carvers who worked together to produce prints of exquisite beauty in the Ming and Qing dynasties. This talk is part of the East Asian Garden Lecture Series at The Huntington. Recorded Oct. 25, 2016.

June Li, curator emerita of the Chinese Garden at The Huntington, will look at some of the functions of printed images in China from the late 16th through the 19th centuries, using examples from the exhibition “Gardens, Art, and Commerce in Chinese Woodblock Prints.” Recorded Oct. 5, 2016.

Guoliang Wang, the author of "Old Roses of China,” surveys the development of the rose in China, from the Song dynasty (960–1279) to the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) and beyond. Wang is a professor of horticulture with the Jiangsu Provincial Commission of Agriculture and a lecturer at both Nanjing University and Nanjing Agricultural University. His research has focused particularly on wild roses and ancient horticultural varieties.

Jeffery Burton, archaeologist at the Manzanar National Historic Site, examines traces of the gardens, which were lost and abandoned when the site was closed. During World War II, the internment camp at Manzanar in the California desert held more than 10,000 men, women, and children of Japanese ancestry. To ameliorate the harsh conditions, many of those imprisoned there built Japanese gardens.

Peter Flueckiger, professor of Japanese literature at Pomona College, discusses how the floristic garden, Mukojima Hyakkaen, served as a center of literati culture in 19th-century Japan.

Historian Yu Liu discusses how in the 18th century, English landscape design moved from the regularity and discipline of classical European art to the irregularity and freedom of nature. Could this change have been influenced by Chinese gardening ideas that were then being discussed? Yu Liu of Niagara Country Community College explores this possibility through the work of British statesman George Macartney, landscape architect William Kent, and artist/engraver Matteo Ripa.

Georges Métailié, honorary director of research at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, examines some of the people of Japan's day-to-day engagement with plants from both an historical and a contemporary perspective.

Xin Wu, assistant professor of art history at the College of William & Mary, explores the time-honored classical Chinese painting theme “Eight Views of Xiaoxiang” through the lens of the garden.

Michael Nylan, professor of East Asian studies at the UC Berkeley, examines the archaeological and literary evidence of the emergence of early garden culture in China, from the 4th century B.C. through the Tang Dynasty (618–907).

Andong Lu, professor of urbanism and architectural theory at Nanjing University, compares photographic documentation of the famous Lingering Garden in 1926 with images of the garden today to excavate the detailed changes to the garden’s former landscape of intimacy and domesticity.

Yang Ye speaks about the Chinese poet Tao Qian (365-427), also known as Tao Yuanming, who is famed for his tale “The Record of the Peach Blossom Spring,” about a fisherman who discovers a hidden utopia. Ye discusses the tale’s genesis, changing variations, and universal nature as a literary motif about an ideal world. Ye is associate professor of Chinese and comparative literature at the University of California, Riverside.

Patricia J. Graham, an independent scholar, discusses,”Searching for the Spirit of the Sages: The Japanese Tea Ceremony for Sencha". During the 18th century, Japanese literati developed a new type of tea ceremony for sencha, or green tea, based on Chinese precedents. Graham explores the transformative effects that sencha has had on Japanese cultural identity, as the tea ritual and utensils developed for it facilitated the adoption of Chinese cultural values and stimulated the production of...

Huntington archivist Li Wei Yang and Duncan Campbell, the June and Simon K.C. Li Director of the Center for East Asian Garden Studies and Curator of the Chinese Garden, will discuss a unique Chinese manuscript recently uncovered in the Library's collections: a volume of the Yongle Encyclopedia, dating from around 1562.

Duncan Campbell, The Huntington’s new Director of the Center for East Asian Garden Studies and Curator of the Chinese Garden, will explore the life of the Suzhou bibliophile Huang Peilie 黃丕烈 (1765-1825), one of the greatest book collectors of the Qianlong (1736-1795) and Jiaqing (1796-1820) periods. Library owner, editor, bibliographer, publisher, and, in his final year, bookseller, Huang devoted thirty years of his life to the acquisition, copying, cataloguing, and collating of ancient...