The Huntington’s permanent exhibitions are hardly that. They shift meanings and rotate, depending on the curators’ new acquisitions and updated interpretations. Visitors who arrive at The Huntington to see an iconic book or manuscript often leave with the thrill of having seen the unexpected—a 16th-century map, a novelist’s revised book manuscript, or a colorful medical treatise.
Temporary exhibitions bring a still more heightened curiosity and engagement, as if the visitors are in on the curators’ quests to dig deeper into particular subjects. The coming months will bring two major Library shows to the MaryLou and George Boone Gallery: “Visions of Empire: The Quest for a Railroad Across America, 1840–1880,” opening in the spring of 2012, and “A Strange and Fearful Interest: Death, Mourning, and Memory in the American Civil War,” opening Oct. 13, 2012. Together the shows will feature hundreds of photographs, posters, books, letters, and manuscripts, many of which have never before been on public view.
This issue of Huntington Frontiers gives readers a peek at a few items that will be on display in those exhibitions. A stereograph by A. A. Hart opens up a three-dimensional view of the construction of the Central Pacific Railroad, and an iconic photograph by Andrew J. Russell shows the carnage from the Battle of Fredericksburg in 1863. In this context, though, the historic photos add dimension to the scholarship of historians Richard White and David Blight, who have each spent countless hours at The Huntington and have produced new books about the transcontinental railroad and the Civil War, respectively. When she isn’t assisting researchers, Jennifer Watts, The Huntington’s curator of photographs and curator of the upcoming Civil War exhibition, spends much of her time on her own scholarship. In the fall of 2011 she contributed two essays to a new catalogue raisonné of the work of photographer Carleton E. Watkins. Her efforts are highlighted in these pages as well.
So while each book or manuscript or photo in a glass case might entice the visitor who relishes the chance to see history up close, the same objects are instruments of scholarship. And for every item thoroughly scrutinized by a scholar, dozens—thousands, actually—await integration into future stories to be told about the past.