Now open: “Literature and Sport” and “Contemporary Photographic Practice and the Archive”

Two new exhibitions, Literature and Sport and Contemporary Photographic Practice and the Archive open today at the Ransom Center.

Sport holds a sacred place in Western culture and literature. Writers as diverse as Ernest Hemingway, Willa Cather, Norman Mailer, Marianne Moore, Don DeLillo, Joyce Carol Oates, and David Foster Wallace have written about sport.

Drawn exclusively from the Ransom Center’s collections, Literature and Sport showcases the literature of sport through fiction, essays, poetry, and plays. Organized by sport, the exhibition highlights some of the finest examples of literary writing about baseball, football, boxing, tennis, cricket, bullfighting, and other sports. From Bernard Malamud’s The Natural to Norman Mailer’s The Fight, great literary works capture the appeal of sport and its ability to transform both the individual and society, all the while demonstrating how writers elevate language to literature.

Contemporary Photographic Practice and the Archive was created in cooperation with the Lakes Were Rivers collective, an Austin-based group of artists working in photography and video. Members of the collective created a body of work influenced in some way by the Ransom Center—its space, its purpose, its collections. Approximately 50 new works are displayed alongside Ransom Center collection materials chosen by the artists, including photographs by Ansel Adams and Man Ray, manuscripts from the E. E. Cummings archive, William Blake’s Songs of Innocence, an embellished Maurice Ravel score, and props from the Robert De Niro collection.

Both exhibitions are on display through August 4 and can be seen in the Ransom Center Galleries on Tuesdays through Fridays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with extended Thursday hours to 7 p.m. On Saturdays and Sundays the galleries are open from noon to 5 p.m. The galleries are closed on Mondays.

Beginning June 18, free docent-led tours are offered on Tuesdays at noon, Thursdays at 6 p.m., Saturdays at 2 p.m., and Sundays at 2 p.m.

Join us for an “All-Star Evening,” the opening celebration for the summer exhibitions Literature and Sport and Contemporary Photographic Practice and the Archive, this Friday from 7 to 9 p.m. Become a member now to receive complimentary admission and valet parking at this event. If you are not yet a member, tickets are available for $20 at the door (valet parking not included for non-members).