Online Programs

Join us for these upcoming programs that will be streamed on Facebook and YouTube.

Collection Connections

Hear intriguing stories in this series connecting remarkable items and personalities from a variety of library and museum collections. Join us every month to learn something new, discover one-of-a-kind collection items, and participate in live Q&A sessions.

Authors and Presidential Inaugurations

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• Thursday, January 28, 4:30 p.m. CST - Online

Over the years, several authors have participated in or influenced American presidential inauguration ceremonies. Join us for a discussion about two items from the Ransom Center’s collections that will help deepen our understanding of why poetry readings and speeches at these events matter. Ransom Center Associate Director Megan Barnard and UT Professor of History and Public Affairs Jeremi Suri will discuss and contextualize a typescript of Miller Williams's poem "Of History and Hope," read at the 1997 inauguration of Bill Clinton, and a draft of a mostly unused speech John Steinbeck wrote for Lyndon B. Johnson's 1965 inauguration.

HOW TO WATCH
This program will be live-streamed on the Ransom Center Facebook page and YouTube channel. No registration necessary. Be sure to like or subscribe to our accounts for notifications when we go live. Have a question or comment for one of our speakers? Simply post them in the comments section.

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Pforzheimer Lecture

The Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Lecture is an annual lecture series featuring a prominent authority on bibliography, book arts, libraries, and related topics.

Herbals "Grete" and Small: Commodifying Botany in Early Modern England with Sarah Neville

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• Thursday, February 18, 4:30 p.m. CST - Online

Over the course of the sixteenth century, herbals grew from compact, unadorned volumes to giant, lavishly illustrated ones, and their contents shifted from reprints of anonymous medieval works to commissioned authorial tomes. To explain the broader context in which English botanical science developed, Neville’s talk will reveal the sophisticated and nuanced calculus performed by members of the London book trade who invested capital to manufacture these popular printed books. By exploring the relationship between readers’ responses to printed herbals and the activities of the book trade that catered to them, she will show how publishers navigated the financial risk that herbal publication increasingly required of them, and ultimately, how the early commercial practices of English printers shaped both popular reading habits and the development of scholarly and botanical authority.

HOW TO WATCH
This program will be live-streamed on the Ransom Center Facebook page and YouTube channel. No registration necessary. Be sure to like or subscribe to our accounts for notifications when we go live. Have a question or comment for one of our speakers? Simply post them in the comments section.

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Past Online Programs

Curatorial Perspectives: A look at Frida Kahlo’s Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird

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• Tuesday, Dec. 15, 7 p.m. CST – Online

Same iconic painting, two very different museum exhibitions. Learn how Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird by Frida Kahlo has been interpreted in recent exhibitions at the New York Botanical Garden and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Housed at the Harry Ransom Center, the painting is one of Kahlo’s best-known artworks and has been exhibited worldwide. Join Ransom Center Curator of Art Tracy Bonfitto, who will host a discussion with curators Adriana Zavala and Layla Bermeo to explore how varied curatorial choices and contextual environments may enhance our understanding of Kahlo and her work.

Adriana Zavala is Associate Professor at Tufts University and holds a joint appointment in the departments of Art History and Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora Studies.

Layla Bermeo is the Kristin and Roger Servison Associate Curator of Paintings in the Art of the Americas department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Frida Kahlo (Mexican, 1907–1954), Untitled [Self-portrait with thorn necklace and hummingbird], 1940. Oil on canvas mounted to board, 62.5 x 48.0 cm. Courtesy Harry Ransom Center. © 2017 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

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Collection Connections: What Did Gutenberg Invent?

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• Thursday, Dec. 10, 4:30 p.m. CST - Online

The Gutenberg Bible, famous as the first major book printed using moveable type in Europe, is one of the most recognizable objects at the Ransom Center. But what exactly did Gutenberg invent, and what was it good for? In our next virtual conversation across collections, we will explore the early history of printing by putting the Center’s Gutenberg Bible in conversation with a remarkable book in the UCLA Library Special Collections: a 16th-century volume printed in China that reproduces an 11th-century pharmacology treatise. Join Aaron T. Pratt, the Ransom Center's Pforzheimer Curator of Early Books and Manuscripts, and Devin Fitzgerald, UCLA’s Curator of Rare Books and History of Printing, as they contextualize Gutenberg’s innovation within the long and vibrant history of woodblock printing in Asia.

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Collection Connections: Arthur Miller remixes Jane Austen classic for radio

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• Thursday, Nov. 19, 4:30 p.m.- Online

In 1945, American playwright Arthur Miller adapted British novelist Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice for the radio. The quirky adaptation aired just before Thanksgiving Day 75 years ago, a few years before Miller became a household name as author of plays like All My Sons and Death of a Salesman. Tune in as Jane Austen scholar and UT professor Janine Barchas talks about the original script with Eric Colleary, the Ransom Center's curator of theatre and performing arts. Did this unlikely remix for the airwaves lead to success? Decide for yourself and listen to the play before “dialing” into the discussion and live Q&A.