Verso

Early in his life, the celebrated British writer Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) thought he'd make furniture for a living; he also studied art. While he ultimately abandoned those paths, his desire to make beautiful things never ceased.

As you stroll through the Frances and Sidney Brody California Garden, you may find it hard to believe that, just a few years ago, the same space was used primarily as a walkway and parking lot.

Five hundred years before government officials in some countries got in the business of censoring Instagram feeds or Twitter accounts, the Roman Catholic Church was using ink to black out text that it considered dangerous.

For Kyoto-based landscape designer Takuhiro Yamada, the tea garden he designed in The Huntington's Japanese Garden is a work in progress. Each year, he returns to check on its development and chooses a few areas where he can help infuse the plants

Home to gorgeous gardens, spectacular art, and stunning rare books and manuscripts, The Huntington also offers an impressive slate of lectures and conferences on topics and themes related to its collections. Featured are audio recordings of five recent lectures and conversations.

In June 2016, The Huntington launched a crowdsourcing project called "Decoding the Civil War" to transcribe and decipher a collection of 15,922 U.S. Civil War telegrams between Abraham Lincoln, his Cabinet, and officers of the Union Army.

The Huntington Library is a vast treasure box, replete with more than nine million items, including rare books, manuscripts, photographs, and maps. In addition, the Library houses a variety of oddities—such as a set of false teeth, an Oscar statuette, and a collection of vintage light bulbs.

One afternoon in the Library's archive, I found a battered and scuffed photograph at the bottom of a small pile. Twenty-four men gaze somberly at the camera; all wear jackets and ties. The mere fact that the 19th-century portrait showed Black and white men respectfully intermingled