Detail from storyboard of the
balcony scene in West Side Story.
Unidentified artist.
Ernest Lehman Collection.
Making Movies February 9 - August 1, 2010
Featuring items from the Ransom Center's extensive film collections, Making Movies reveals the collaborative nature of the filmmaking process and focuses on how the artists involved—from writers to directors, actors to cinematographers—transform the written word into moving image.
Highlights include original scripts, storyboards, production photos, and call sheets, in addition to screenplays from The Third Man, North by Northwest, and Shakespeare in Love, and costumes from Gone with the Wind, An Affair to Remember, and Taxi Driver.
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Madero's guard, 1911.
Unidentified photographer.
Mexican Revolution Collection.
¡Viva! Mexico's Independence February 9 - August 1, 2010
The year 2010 marks the 200th anniversary of Mexico's independence from Spain and the 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution, pivotal events in Mexico's struggle for self-governance. In collaboration with The University's Graduate Studies program and the Consulado General de México en Austin, the Ransom Center will display original materials from its collections that illuminate these historic touchstones.
The exhibition will feature such rarities as the original 1529 document appointing Hernán Cortés Captain General of New Spain; unpublished letters exchanged between the ill-fated Ferdinand Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico and his wife Carlotta; original documentary photographs of the Mexican Revolution along with period broadsides illustrated by José Guadalupe Posada; and artistic responses to the long history of Mexico's conquest and revolt.
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Frida Kahlo, (Mexican, 1907-1954)
Self-portrait with Thorn Necklace
and Hummingbird
Oil on canvas, 61.25 cm x 47 cm
Harry Ransom Center
© 2009 Banco de Mexico Diego Rivera
& Frida Kahlo Museums Trust. Av Cinco de
Mayo No. 2, Col. Centro, Del. Cuauhtemoc
06059, Mexico, DF
Frida Kahlo's Self-portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird May 5, 2009 - March 21, 2010
The Ransom Center celebrates the homecoming of one of its most famous and frequently borrowed art works, the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo's Self-portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (1940). Since 1990 the painting has been on almost continuous loan, featured in exhibitions at 28 museums in the U. S. and around the world, including Australia, Canada, France, and Spain.
Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) taught herself how to paint after she was severely injured in a bus accident at the age of 18. For Kahlo, painting became an act of cathartic ritual and her symbolic images portray a cycle of pain, death, and rebirth. Kahlo's affair in New York City with her friend, the photographer Nickolas Muray (American, b. Hungary, 1892-1965), and subsequent divorce from the artist Diego Rivera left her heartbroken and lonely, but she produced some of her most powerful and compelling self-portraits during this time period.
Muray purchased the Center's self-portrait from Kahlo to help her during a difficult financial period. It is part of the Nickolas Muray collection of more than 100 works of art, which was acquired by the Center in 1966.
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The Gutenberg Bible
The Gutenberg Bible is the first substantial book printed from movable type on a printing press. The Ransom Center holds one of five complete copies in the United States.
The First Photograph
One of the finest pieces of the Ransom Center's photography collection is the first photograph, which Frenchman Joseph Nicéphore Niépce produced in 1826.
