Hear and Now at The Huntington

In this episode, we bring you a conversation with Los Angeles-based and internationally renowned artist, painter, and sculptor Lita Albuquerque. During this past year, when museums around California were closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Albuquerque's outdoor installation at The Huntington, “Red Earth,” was among the few pieces of art that visitors could experience. Located near the southern entrance to the Japanese Garden, “Red Earth” features an approximately 6-by-4-foot rock slab coated with red pigment and surrounded by bamboo stalks affixed with copper-colored bands. To talk with Lita about the story behind “Red Earth” and the meanings the piece gained during this past year, we brought in our gardens cultural curator and programs director, Robert Hori.

In this episode, we bring you the stories of two immigrant families who, separated by the border, relied on letters to maintain their relationships: the mid-20th-century Mexican couple José Chávez Esparza and María Concepción Alvarado, whose letters are part of The Huntington’s collections, and José Cervantes, a gardener at The Huntington who came to the U.S. from Mexico when he was 24 years old. We hear from Miroslava Chávez-García, José and Maria’s daughter, and from José Cervantes about the emotional toll of moving to a new country and about how writing letters helped them and their families cope with longing and isolation.

As protests for racial justice take to the streets, we remember one of the most important civil rights lawyers of the mid-20th century: Loren Miller. Host Giovana Romano Sanchez interviews writer and researcher Dr. Amina Hassan and Harvard professor Kenneth Mack about Miller’s life, work, and significance in today’s racial politics.

At a time when a lot of us are (re)connecting with our cooking skills because of the coronavirus pandemic, what can we learn from old recipes? In this episode, host Giovana Romano Sanchez talks with rare book cataloger Shelley Kresan about The Huntington's Anne Cranston collection, which consists of nearly five thousand British and American cookbooks from the 18th and 19th centuries. We also hear from author and food critic Patric Kuh about how this moment of intense home cooking is bringing back some of the flavors we lost with industrialization. Then, Giovana tries an old recipe and shares the result.

In the early 1800s, international travel was a privilege most Americans couldn’t experience firsthand. Only brave souls like “Wicked Ned,” an American sailor who almost died on his first trip, had the stomach for lengthy maritime journeys. But if travel was inaccessible, imagining it was not. And for that, there was art. Join host Giovana Romano Sanchez for a virtual voyage through time and across distant lands, for a look at what travel meant for Americans who, like most of us right now, couldn’t venture far from home. Guests: Olga Tsapina, Norris Foundation Curator of American Historical Manuscripts Dennis Carr, Virginia Steele Scott Chief Curator of American Art

Ted Matson, curator of The Huntington’s bonsai collections, used to be a writer. Whenever he felt writer’s block coming on, he would visit his personal collection of bonsai trees, do a little pruning and pinching and enter a “flow state." Inevitably, the solution he was seeking would pop into his head. To help us grapple with the frustrations of coronavirus stay-at-home orders, host Giovana Romano Sanchez escorts us deep into the practice of bonsai for a lesson in patience, the concept of time, and respect for the pace of nature. Guests: Ted Matson, curator of The Huntington’s bonsai collections; Phillip Bloom, Phillip Bloom, June and Simon K.C. Li Curator of the Chinese Garden and Director of the Center for East Asian Garden Studies at The Huntington.

Join host Giovana Romano Sanchez for a series of short audio essays that explore objects and ideas found at The Huntington along with the brilliant minds behind them. What unfolds is an original take on the issues we are facing in the world, right now. The first episode premieres Thursday, April 30. Music by John Zalewski.