Exhibition News
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The Austin Chronicle Reporter Rachel Cook explains the ways in which the exhibitions Jess: To and From the Printed Page and On the Road with the Beats are engaged in a dialogue concerning "how the written word sparked a cultural revolution." Cook reflects on the ways the art of Burgess “Jess” Collins depicts the historical and cultural context of his world. She also notes how this exhibition provides a stage for that presentation. |
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The Austin Chronicle Robert Faires of the Austin Chronicle talks with playwright Tony Kushner about Arthur Miller. Kushner speaks about his own interactions with Miller's plays and discusses Miller's life and work as "an absolutely indestructible link between the personal and the political." Kushner spoke about Miller in conjunction with the Ransom Center's exhibition Rehearsing the American Dream: Arthur Miller's Theater on October 18, 2007. |
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Weekend America Weekend America, a National Public Radio show, profiles the Ransom Center's The American Twenties exhibition. Incoming Collections Curator Danielle Sigler discusses the exhibition and some of the changes that occurred during the 1920s. The piece contains audio excerpts from the museum theater program Voices of the American Twenties, short one-act plays that complement the exhibition by animating characters. |
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KVUE News KVUE News highlights the special De Niro exhibition featured at the University Co-op. The exhibition displays 13 costumes spanning De Niro's extensive Hollywood career from the Ransom Center's collection. |
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KUT KUT's John Aielli provides listeners with a selection of audio of Joe Ely reading from his new book Bonfire of Roadmaps. In conjunction with the release of the book, the Ransom Center presented "Joe Ely: Bonfire of Roadmaps," an installation of Ely's verse, sketches and paintings drawn from his road journals. Ransom Center Art Curator Peter Mears provides information about the show. |
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The Austin Chronicle This Austin Chronicle article delves into the Ransom Center's Samuel Beckett online exhibition, which allows access to "deeper layers of information, and more interactive and multimedia components" of Beckett's first edition books, drafts of plays, novels, and more. |
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The Austin Chronicle Robert Faires gives us the "lost saga" of Feliks Topolski's paintings, from its early beginnings to its current exhibit at the Harry Ransom Center. Faires notes about the paintings, "They seem about as improbable as lizard skin boots on Victoria Regina: 20 oil portraits of leading figures from the British literary scene at a university deep in the heart of Texas." |
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Austin American-Statesman Roger Gathman's article, "The exhibitionist's song" describes the Norman Mailer exhibit as portraying not only the man, but the America that inspired and shaped his life and works. The article details biographical information on Mailer, explaining the impact of serving in World War II on his works. Gathman highlights the decades of Mailer's life and the important works from these decades, now on display at the exhibit. From his description, Norman Mailer is a "radical, violent, brilliant" man. Even today, at age 83, Mailer will publish "The Castle in the Forest" in January. The article praises the Ransom Center for displaying all sides of the complex writer Norman Mailer. |
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The Chronicle of Higher Education Lawrence Biemiller's article in The Chronicle for Higher Education, "Memory, Reproducible and Revisable" highlights the "wide-ranging" and global nature of "Technologies of Writing," including Sumerian cuneiform tablets, a 15th century Venetian manuscript that "must rank among the world's most beautiful books" and a newspaper dispatch filed by Ernest Hemingway. Biemiller's article reveals how these eclectic items are brought together in the exhibition to document the evolution of writing from a tool for accounting in ancient Egypt to a means of modern expression in the 21st century. |
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The Economist Announcing "the daguerreotype is back," "Unfrozen in Time" highlights the rebirth of 19th century photographic processes featured in "The Image Wrought: Historical Approaches in the Digital Age." The article contrasts the "delightful" exhibition that is a "return to photography's roots" with the digitization that has pushed conventional photography into its "death throes." In cataloging the methods used in photographs featured in the exhibition, such as Deborah Luster's tintype of a female prisoner in Louisiana and Dan Burkholder's digitally enhanced platinum print of New York's flatiron building, the article also reveals that digitization, seen as the enemy of the conventional photograph, can enhance old forms. The article calls the juxtaposition of these new "enhanced" versions of processes to old work from the Harry Ransom Center's collection "one of the show's most notable aspects." |
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Western Interiors The Ransom Center's exhibition "Ansel Adams: A Legacy" is highlighted with a back page spread of Adams's Self-portrait, Monument Valley, Utah, 1958. |
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Associated Press This review of the "The Battle for the Eastern Front: Photographs from the William Broyles, Jr. Collection" says the images "trace the war from the German invasion in 1941 through its retreat and the Soviet push into Germany in 1945. It culminates with a Soviet capture of Berlin, including the image of the red flag over the Reichstag and another famous shot of a Soviet tank at the Brandenburg Gate." |
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Austin American-Statesman Jeanne Claire van Ryzin critiques the "Place: Photographs of Environment and Community" exhibition, saying "curiosity is certainly evident... in the work of 18 photographers culled from the Ransom Center's vast collections." She singles out Sian Bonell's "Glowing No. 50" — "a whimsical, otherworldly landscape that's actually a close-up of two colorful dessert dishes placed upside down in tall grass" — as being the most "abstract," "artful," and "sincere" image in the show. She gives marks to Byron Brauchli, who "also goes for sheer beauty, though he doesn't use any artifice" and to Beth Block, whose cityscapes and portraits are ruled by "subtle drama." |
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The Dallas Morning News Janet Kutner examines the Ransom Center's exhibition on Miguel Covarrubias, a Mexican illustrator, author, muralist, historian and more, well-known for his place in Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera's circle. The young Covarrubias left Mexico for New York City in 1923, and quickly made a name for himself with his cheeky caricatures of celebrities that were featured in magazines such as Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. The exhibit showcases Covarrubia's various other talents, as well as works by his contemporaries. Nearly all of the treasures are taken from the Ransom's Nickolas Murray Collection of Mexican Art from 1925-1954. |
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EWTN Global Catholic Network The World Over, a production of EWTN Global Catholic Network, airs a piece on the Center's exhibition "Writing Among the Ruins: Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh." The World Over takes viewers on a tour of the exhibition, highlighting the Catholicity of both men through their diary entries, manuscripts, and personal letters. Host Raymond Arroyo also interviews Thomas F. Staley, the Director of the Ransom Center. |
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Fort Worth Star-Telegram "Shooting Stars: the Golden Age of Hollywood Portraiture, 1925-1950," "demonstrates the collaborative nature of studio publicity," according to this exhibition review. Writer Art Chapman serves up some history on Hollywood promotions — "still photography was the primary tool in building a heightened status for the actors" — and decides this about the images: "Though most were taken in the 1940s, they still resonate with an admiring public." |
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Austin Chronicle Barry Pineo, reviewing the an exhibition of photographs taken from the archives of the influential journal Camera Work, briefs the reader on the plan Alfred Stieglitz had when, in 1903, he launched the journal. The Pictorialists, whose philosophy Stieglitz advocated, "believed photography had more to offer than simply recording the 'facts' of everyday life. Pictorialists were interested in photography as art, in its ability to express mood, atmosphere, and emotion." But the journal survived long enough to record an important shift in photographic thinking: "from the 'photography as art' of the Pictorialists to photography as an art form in and of itself, capturing the events of life and turning them into art." |
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Austin American-Statesman Pat Beach writes about "Go Out and Look: the Photography of Russell Lee," a "sweeping" exhibition pulled together from the 800 or so prints Lee left the Ransom center. Beach says the images "have a strong sense of geometric composition, of order imposed by man-made shapes and angles" and that some are "are startlingly intimate shots, suffused with empathy but no patronizing pity." He offers a snapshot biography — Lee learned his technique from Walker Evans and was the U.S. Farm Security Administrations "most prolific and longest-lasting photographer" — and quotes old friends. One says Lee was good at convincing his subjects, many of whom had never before seen cameras, to let him take shots: "He had a broad smile and a friendly manner and it wouldn't have been hard for him to win people over." |
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San Antonio Express-News The review negotiates definitions of modernism and sizes up "Make It New: The Rise of Modernism," the "first major exhibit in the Ransom Center's newly remodeled galleries." It mentions such seemingly different items as Ulysses page proofs, The Theory of Relativity and quotes Kurt Heinzelman, executive curator for academic programs, on the underlying logic: "We wanted to show the whole spectrum of modernism as it cut across various media, including literature, opera, film, architecture and so on. Modernism wasn't singular or unilateral in scope." The ultimate verdict: the exhibition does not attempt a new definition of modernism but instead offers "a re-discovery." |
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Associated Press The piece centers on the results of scientifically examining the First Photograph. Undertaken in collaboration with the Getty Conservation Institute, the Ransom Center sought to determine the condition of the photograph. The testing also produced a new, unmanipulated image of the First Photograph, minus any manual retouching. Reporter Andrew Bridges notes that the photograph was "rediscovered" in 1952 and the Ransom Center acquired it in 1963. |
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Associated Press Joining a handful of other international institutions that have digitized rare surviving copies of the Gutenberg Bible, the Ransom Center has made theirs accessible on the web. Richard Oram, head librarian at the Ransom, has called this version, "the most interesting in the world." Digitizing began in June 2002, with the final product providing more than 7,000 images to the public. |
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Associated Press The article, which ran in international newspapers, quotes Princeton scholar Paul Needham as saying the Ransom Center's Bible is among the most-used of the surviving Gutenbergs. "It's a remarkable copy. In its digital format it will be invaluable to researchers who want to compare it with other copies around the world." AP writer Jim Vertuno notes the Texas Gutenberg "bears a Jesuit stamp that was used in monasteries in southern Germany as late as the 1760s. It was marked up by monks who scratched out some passages and corrected others. Other markings indicate sections that were to be read aloud or reserved for church services." |
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National Public Radio Host Jackie Lyden interviews Dusan Stulik, senior scientist at the Getty Conservation Institute, which was then examining and constructing an airtight case for the Ransom Center's First Photograph, by Joseph Nicephore Niepce. Stulik talks about Niepce, his legacy, and the type of research the Getty team will be conducting: "So far, you know, people even don't know what was used as the metal plate on which that photograph was deposited." The segment ends with Stulik sharing his enthusiasm for the photograph: "When I entered the room where the First Photograph is exhibited now at the University of Texas, I felt the same as I felt when I was on scaffolding in the Vatican and was able to touch the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel; really a magic moment." |
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NBC Today Show Research Curator of Photography at the Ransom Center, Roy Flukinger, was interviewed on the Today Show before the First Photograph embarked on a two-week trip to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. There, non-destructive tests were to be performed on the photograph to determine if historical evidence about the piece matched up with scientific results. Results from these tests performed at the Getty allowed the Ransom Center to build the best environment possible for this historical treasure, and design a new viewing case for it accordingly. This feature served as a case study for the preservation performed on millions of documents at the Center. |
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