John Cage pushed classical music’s limits. He stuck screws and weather stripping into pianos, composed a silent piece, and chose notes at random based on ancient Chinese divination. The Ransom Center holds Cage correspondence in several different collections. These letters reveal Cage’s early efforts to establish a center for experimental… read more
From the Galleries: Tycho Brahe’s "Astronomiae instauratae mechanica"
Before the telescope was invented, 16th-century Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe built his own instruments to measure star and planetary positions with accuracy up to one arcminute. Brahe described these home-made instruments in his 1602 book, Astronomiae instauratae mechanica, the first edition of which is on display in the Ransom Center’s… read more
Cassini’s moon map
Before “Where’s Waldo?” there was the “moon maiden,” a shadowy figure hiding in the Ransom Center’s current exhibition, Other Worlds: Rare Astronomical Works. One of the exhibition’s highlights is a first edition map of the moon rendered by Giovanni Domenico Cassini from 1679, the rarest edition of the first published… read more