Content about Ransom Center
Tucked inside 21st and Guadalupe streets, underneath a group of trees and passed by hundreds, if not thousands of students a day stands a building seven stories high made of grey concrete and with few windows. The building, the Harry Ransom Center, appears enigmatic and imposing, impenetrable to the average student.
With Valentine’s Day and spring around the corner, students and locals congregated Wednesday afternoon to listen to a number of speakers recite love poems.
Poetry on the Plaza, hosted by the Harry Ransom Center, occurs about once a month during the academic year, and each event features a number of poets who recite poems, some dealing with the current season or holiday.
World-renowned photographer Elliott Erwitt has photographed a wide variety of subjects, from major historical figures to Parisian passersby and poodles. Erwitt presented personal favorites and well-known pieces at the Harry Ransom Center on Thursday night.
Erwitt joined the Magnum Photos agency in 1953, and his photos will be archived along with other Magnum pieces at the Ransom Center.
On Monday, the Harry Ransom Center hosted a reading by W.S. Merwin, one of the greatest American poets of our time. In addition to being a phenomenal poet, Merwin is also one of the kindest men you will ever meet. There is an anecdote about Merwin that I found to be quite poignant after my experience at the Ransom Center on the evening of his reading.
The Harry Ransom Center will display a plate painted by Pablo Picasso in an upcoming exhibition.
The plate was donated to the Ransom Center by photojournalist David Douglas Duncan in honor of Stanley Marcus, said Mary Alice Harper, a photography archivist at the Ransom Center.
“Picasso was a very generous man. He gave David Duncan one of the books he had been working in as a gift the first day they met. Later in the friendship on the spur of the moment, he picked up one of his dinner plates and painted [Lump], Duncan’s dog, for him,” said Harper.
