Harry Ransom Center


The Harry Ransom Center is an archive, library and museum at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in the collection of literary and cultural artifacts from the United States, Latin America and Europe for the purpose of advancing the study of the arts and humanities. The Ransom Center houses 36 million literary manuscripts, one million rare books, five million photographs, and more than 100,000 works of art.
The Center has a reading room for scholars and galleries which display rotating exhibitions of works and objects from the collections. In the 2015-2016 academic year, the center hosted nearly 6,000 research visits resulting in the publication of over 145 books.

History

founded the Humanities Research Center in 1957 with the ambition of expanding the rare books and manuscript holdings of the University of Texas. He acquired the Edward Alexander Parsons Collection, the T. Edward Hanley Collection, and the Norman Bel Geddes Collection.
Ransom himself was the official director of the Center for only the years 1958 to 1961, but he directed and presided over a period of great expansion in the collections until his resignation in 1971 as Chancellor of the University of Texas System. The Center moved into its current building in 1972.
F. Warren Roberts was the official director from 1961 to 1976 and acquired the Helmut Gernsheim Collection of photographs, the archives of D. H. Lawrence, John Steinbeck, and Evelyn Waugh, and in 1968 the Carlton Lake Collection.
After Roberts's tenure, John Payne and then Carlton Lake served as interim directors from 1976 to 1980. It was during this time that the Center acquired its complete copy of the Gutenberg Bible.
In 1980, the Center hired Decherd Turner as director. Turner acquired the Giorgio Uzielli Collection of Aldine editions, the Anne Sexton archive, the Robert Lee Wolff Collection of 19th-century fiction, the Pforzheimer Collection, the David O. Selznick archive, the Gloria Swanson archive, and the Ernest Lehman Collection. Upon Decherd Turner's retirement in 1988, Thomas F. Staley became director of the Center. Staley had acquired the Woodward and Bernstein Watergate Papers, a copy of the Plantin Polyglot Bible, and more than 100 literary archives. In September 2013, Stephen Enniss was appointed director of the Ransom Center. Enniss was formerly the Head Librarian of the Folger Shakespeare Library. Under Enniss the Ransom Center has continued to collect several archives, including Kazuo Ishiguro, Arthur Miller and Ian McEwan.
In 1983 the institution's name was changed from the Humanities Research Center to the Harry Ransom Center.

Notable collections

Two prominent items in the Ransom Center's collections are a Gutenberg Bible and Nicéphore Niépce's c. 1826 View from the Window at Le Gras, the first successful permanent photograph from nature. Both of these objects are on permanent display in the main lobby.
Beyond these, the Center houses many culturally important documents and artifacts. Particular strengths include modern literature, performing arts, and photography. Besides the Gutenberg Bible and the photograph, notable holdings include:

Literature

'', 1852. From the George C. Howard and Family Collection, Harry Ransom Center.

Theatre and performing arts