The San Gabriel Valley Humanities Center is an independent nonprofit organization devoted to promoting the humanities in the San Gabriel Valley. Our mission is to provide a home for local humanities scholars and a center for sharing humanities scholarship, broadly understood.

Our Building

The front of the Center's building at 414 South Mission Drive: a white stucco Mission Revival building with a red tile roof, arched overhangs above the entry, and the Center's sign beside the door, with rose bushes in the foreground.

The Center occupies a recently renovated building in the San Gabriel Mission District, a quiet but lively neighborhood, across the street from San Gabriel City Hall and near the San Gabriel Mission Playhouse. It has twelve offices for scholars in residence, a multipurpose room, and a library that can host scholarly events for up to 40 people.

The library arranged for a lecture, with a lectern and screen facing rows of chairs.
Green armchairs beside rows of chairs in the library, set up for a lecture.
The library set up for a seminar, with tables arranged in a square beneath a row of windows.
Seminar tables arranged in a square in the sunlit library, with built-in shelves along the far wall.
A sunlit room at the Center with two green armchairs, a small table, and a tall plant beside steel-framed windows overlooking red tile roofs.
A chair on the Center's roof terrace, looking out over red tile roofs and trees toward the San Gabriel Mountains.

Our Programs

The SGVHC sponsors its own events and also hosts programs organized by local groups whose work is aligned with the humanities. Since our first program in March 2026, we have presented book talks by David Igler and Peter Mancall, a discussion of California in the 1770s as part of LA250, and workshops on new scholarship in progress. See our events.

Leadership

  • Steven Hackel, Founder and Director; Professor of History, University of California, Riverside
  • Adam Knight Gilbert, Treasurer; Director, Early Modern Music Department, and Chair, Musicology Program, University of Southern California
  • Becky M. Nicolaides, Secretary; Affiliated Research Scholar, Huntington-USC Institute on California & the West

The San Gabriel Valley Humanities Center is a California nonprofit public benefit corporation and a 501(c)(3) organization (EIN 33-4826967). Donations are tax-deductible.