Inside the spring 2020 Stories to Tell exhibition, Ransom Center film curator Steve Wilson explores the archive related to the recently restored film, The Queen, which documents the 1967 “Miss All American Camp Beauty Pageant” held in Manhattan. The New York contest was a parody of the Miss America pageant and featured drag queens when laws against cross-dressing and widespread anti-gay attitudes put the participants at great personal risk. The Center worked in partnership with Kino-Lorber to restore the film, and in 2019, The Queen was re-released. Learn more through this Q&A with multi-platform drag historian and videographer Joe E. Jeffreys (read more). [Read more…] about All hail ‘The Queen!’ An interview with drag historian Joe E. Jeffreys
Exhibitions + Events
THE QUEEN
Lewis Allen was a respected theater and film producer. His biggest hits on stage were Annie (1983), I’m Not Rappaport (1985), A Few Good Men (1989), and Master Class (1995). His films include The Connection (1961), The Lord of the Flies (1963), and Fahrenheit 451 (1966). But, when Allen’s daughter Brooke donated her father’s archive to the Ransom Center in 2006, she told me that of all her father’s films, the one which he was most proud of was a 1968 documentary called The Queen. [Read more…] about THE QUEEN
How Gabriel García Márquez’s ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ became a classic
Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez’s masterpiece, One Hundred Years of Solitude, was published on May 30, 1967. A new book by Ransom Center guest curator and Whitman College assistant professor Álvaro Santana-Acuña–Ascent to Glory: How One Hundred Years of Solitude Was Written and Became a Global Classic (Columbia University Press, August 2020), explores how the novel achieved success and what it reveals about how a work of literature becomes a classic.
[Read more…] about How Gabriel García Márquez’s ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ became a classic
Ransom Center closed temporarily
The University of Texas at Austin and the Harry Ransom Center continue to prioritize the health and safety of our community, and we remain temporarily closed to the public at this time. Re-opening will be announced in accordance with the university and with proper safety measures in place to protect our valued community. [Read more…] about Ransom Center closed temporarily
For the Walls of America: Prints from Associated American Artists
In 1934, publicist Reeves Lewenthal called together a group of 23 American artists to discuss his innovative plan for distributing art to the American public. [Read more…] about For the Walls of America: Prints from Associated American Artists
Picturing the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries
The Ransom Center’s Spring 2020 Stories to Tell exhibition features some of the earliest printed examples of illustrated English plays. [Read more…] about Picturing the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries