The turn of the twentieth century was a period of innovation, when advances in printing and color lithography coincided with a new golden age in the performance of magic and illusion. This convergence resulted in the most stunning, color-saturated advertisements in the history of magic. [Read more…] about The Golden Age of Magic Posters
Exhibitions + Events
Revealing an English Schoolmaster’s Piers Plowman
Most of the books that came to The University of Texas at Austin as part of the John Henry Wrenn Library didn’t look like old books when they arrived in 1918 and still don’t look old now—not as old, at least, as the publication dates of the printed pages inside would suggest. [Read more…] about Revealing an English Schoolmaster’s Piers Plowman
Celebrating 100 years of Doris Lessing
Nobel Prize–winning author Doris Lessing was born one hundred years ago, on October 22, 1919. [Read more…] about Celebrating 100 years of Doris Lessing
Why are some books collected and others merely read?
During the latter half of the nineteenth century, cheap and shoddy reprints of Jane Austen’s novels brought her work to the general public. [Read more…] about Why are some books collected and others merely read?
Introducing ‘The Niépce Heliograph’
One of the most celebrated objects in the history of photography is featured in a permanent exhibition just inside the main entrance to the Harry Ransom Center. The untitled photograph—the earliest known surviving photograph made with the aid of the camera obscura—was produced in 1827 by the French scientist and inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce using a process he called héliographie. Permanent exhibitions are never really “permanent,” however; objects may remain in place, but their meanings are always evolving, and exhibitions are periodically revised to reflect those advances. [Read more…] about Introducing ‘The Niépce Heliograph’
Detecting forgeries of Aubrey Beardsley’s influential artworks
“Pray forgive my frankness when I say that two of them are not only not by A.B. [Aubrey Beardsley], but are not in the least like him! It is astonishing to me how many people are taken in. Is it not perhaps because they buy a name and not a work of art? I hope that is your excuse. But you are in good company.”
— R. A. Walker (1944)
[Read more…] about Detecting forgeries of Aubrey Beardsley’s influential artworks