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Art

With over 65,000 items—ranging from fifteenth-century prints to contemporary artworks—the Ransom Center's art holdings are a rich resource for advancing insight into the creative process. Sketches, early proofs, artists' partnerships with fine presses, and visual works by literary figures provide unique opportunities for researching and exploring artistic method, production, and collaboration.

Among the collection's strengths are extensive holdings of artists' books and livres d'artiste; archives and visual materials related to publication history, book art, and book design; and materials important to the history of typography and fine presses. Our large collection of original illustrations includes drawings and prints by Eric Gill, Miguel Covarrubias, John Biggers, and Arthur Rackham. Among our diverse holdings relating to literary figures are paintings by Tennessee Williams, Anne Sexton, and e. e. cummings, as well as sketches by D. H. Lawrence and Charlotte Brontë. European and Latin American modernists—among them Odilon Redon, Jean Cocteau, Frida Kahlo, and Diego Rivera—and satirists such as George Cruikshank, Max Beerbohm, and José Posada are also well represented. Included among the Center's contemporary artworks are works on paper by Robert Rauschenberg, James Turrell, Elizabeth Catlett, Jasper Johns, and Betye Saar. Particular archival strengths include works and papers of Nancy Cunard, Charles Henri Ford, Pavel Tchelitchew, Ed Ruscha, Elizabeth Olds, and Anita and Leah Brenner.

Contact us, or learn more by exploring our finding aids and research guides, our digital collections, and the visual materials on view in our galleries. Visit our Reading Room to arrange to view art materials in person, or apply for a fellowship to advance your research.