The New Suburbia: How Diversity Remade Suburban Life in Los Angeles after 1945
5:00 PM Pacific – Program America’s suburbs have been transforming. The conventional story of suburbs as bastions of white, middle-class homeowners no longer describes suburban realities. Today they house a more typical cross-section of the nation—rich, poor, Black American, Latino, Asian, immigrant, the unhoused, the lavishly housed, and everyone in between. Stories of everyday suburban […]
Al Martinez in the Korean War: A Future Columnist Hones His Craft
5:00 PM Pacific – Program For more than twenty years, the Los Angeles Times columnist Al Martinez (1929-2015) delighted, and enriched the lives of, thousands of readers across southern California. An Oakland native, he attended San Francisco State College. Later, he was a reporter for the Richmond Independent and the Oakland Tribune before being lured […]
Judson: Innovation in Stained Glass
Pasadena Heritage | 160 N Oakland Avenue | Pasadena, California 91101 Five generations of Judsons have worked with artists, architects, and designers to create Old World-style stained glass whose quality and craftsmanship has often been compared to the work of Louis Tiffany. Famed for its Craftsman glass, Judson arts-and-crafts era windows have been celebrated by […]
California, a Slave State
5:00 PM Pacific – Program California owes its origins and sunny prosperity to slavery. Spanish invaders captured Indigenous people to build the chain of Catholic missions. Russian otter hunters shipped Alaska Natives—the first slaves transported into California—and launched a Pacific slave triangle to China. Plantation slaves were marched across the plains for the Gold Rush. […]
The Material Culture of Advertising: Treasures from the Winterthur Library’s Collection of Trade Literature
5:00 PM Pacific – Program Before Amazon, before big box stores, and even before mailboxes sagged under the weight of catalogs in the mid-20th century, customers and shop-owners alike turned to a wide variety of media to select their purchases, and to aspire to grander lifestyles. Trade cards, trade catalogs, advertising ephemera, and sales samples […]
Black Woman on Board: Claudia Hampton, the California State University, and the Fight to Save Affirmative Action
5:00 PM Pacific – Program Author Donna J. Nicol tells the extraordinary story of Dr. Claudia H. Hampton, the California State University (CSU) system’s first Black woman trustee, who later became the board’s first woman chair, and her twenty-year fight (1974–94) to increase access within the CSU for historically marginalized and underrepresented groups. Amid a […]
Not Your China Doll: The Wild and Shimmering Life of Anna May Wong
5:30 PM Pacific – Reception 6:00 PM Pacific – Program Pasadena Heritage | 160 N Oakland Avenue | Pasadena, California 91101 Set against the glittering backdrop of Los Angeles during the gin-soaked Jazz Age and the rise of Hollywood, this debut book celebrates Anna May Wong, the first Asian American movie star, to bring an […]
The White Whale: Moby-Dick Illustrated
At the time of Herman Melville’s death, in 1891, his novels had fallen into obscurity. Moby-Dick, his masterwork published in 1851, was out of print and unread. But in the 1920s, critical reassessments led to a “Melville revival.” This lecture surveys some of the famous and less well-known illustrated editions, artists’ books, and other visual interpretations, […]
American Burial Ground: A New History of the Overland Trail
5:30 PM Pacific – Reception 6:00 PM Pacific – Program In popular mythology, the Overland Trail is typically a triumphant tale, with plucky easterners crossing the Plains in caravans of covered wagons. But not everyone reached Oregon and California. Some 6,600 migrants perished along the way and were buried where they fell, often on Indigenous […]
Redemptive Dreams: Engaging Kevin Starr’s California
5:30 PM Pacific – Reception 6:00 PM Pacific – Program Pasadena Heritage | 160 N Oakland Avenue | Pasadena, California 91101 An essential piece in California Studies, Redemptive Dreams: Engaging Kevin Starr’s California offers the first critical engagement with the vision of California’s most ambitious interpreter. While Starr’s multifaceted and polymathic vision of California offered a unique […]