 "Photo: Emily Kinsolving/Daily Texan")
The Harry Ransom Center revealed the new Robert De Niro Collection to the public Wednesday night.
The materials in the collection were donated in the summer of 2006 by the actor. The collection documents De Niro’s professional career from the 1960s to 2005 and includes boxes of scripts, film, movie props and costumes.
The collection is made up of 8,500 items and archived into more than 1,000 boxes. The center placed some of the items on display in the front lobby, including De Niro’s costume from the 1976 film “Taxi Driver,” the script from 1980s “Raging Bull” and the hat that he wore in the 1973 film “Mean Streets.”
The collection took more than two years to catalogue. Steve Wilson, the associate film curator at the Ransom Center, said it was the only institution that was willing to take the entire collection.
“It’s very common for the collector to want all of his collection to be taken together and not be broken up,” he said. “Not every institution takes the whole collection. Some take films but not scripts or just photographs and costumes.”
Wilson said students could learn from the collection about the “tremendous” amount of work that goes into filmmaking.
“[The Harry Ransom Center] spent a good amount of time talking to people in the radio-television-film department just to be sure that if we did take this collection, UT students would be able to use it for research in their specific fields,” he said.
Helen Adair, associate curator of performing arts at the center, said the collection of costumes would allow students to learn how wardrobe can contribute to a film.
“The wardrobe collection contains such detail and precision that it would allow any student to acquire more knowledge about the different development of filmmaking costumes,” she said.
The University Co-op provided a warehouse to store some of the costumes because the collection was so extensive.
The center will continue to display a selection of film-related materials from the collection in its lobby until Sunday.
Be the first to comment on this article!