Each Friday, the Ransom Center shares photos from throughout the week that highlight a range of activities and collection holdings. We hope you enjoy these photos that reveal some of the everyday happenings at the Center.

Dale Rapley, of Actors From The London Stage, performs at Poetry on the Plaza. Photo by Pete Smith.

Ransom Center’s Audio-Visual Equipment Technician Jason MacLeod runs the audio for Wednesday’s Poetry on the Plaza. Photo by Pete Smith.

Undergraduate student Adriane Pudom examines Frank Shay’s bookshop door in the Center’s current exhibition ‘The Greenwich Village Bookshop Door: A Portal to Bohemia, 1920-1925′. Photo by Pete Smith.

Afternoon sun shines through the north atrium’s etched windows. Photo by Pete Smith.

Cover of exhibition catalog for 'Picasso at Work, Through the lens of David Douglas Duncan.'

In October 1996, world-renowned photographer and author David Douglas Duncan donated his archive to the Harry Ransom Center. The Center has preserved, organized, cataloged, exhibited and made available a variety of images and artifacts that complete the archive, including many that document his years of friendship with Pablo Picasso. Recently, Duncan donated a plate painted by Picasso of his beloved dachshund named Lump.

The new exhibition Picasso at Work. Through the lens of David Douglas Duncan, runs through September 25 at the Museo Picasso, Malaga, and will then move to the Picasso Kuntsmuseum Munster from October 15 to January 15, 2012 and finally at La Piscine Musee d’Art…

The American publication of

Philip Christensen, College Associate Dean for Curriculum Development at Suffolk County Community College, maintained a seven-year correspondence with novelist Penelope Fitzgerald, whose archive is housed at the Ransom Center. Christensen recently donated the letters from their correspondence to the Ransom Center, and in this essay, he shares some of the contents of those exchanges.

Email and social media appear virtually spontaneous, and yet, as Robert McCrum conceded in a recent blog on The Guardian’s website, “a physical correspondence, an exchange of missives, in envelopes, carries more freight than a high speed email.” In 1993, I mailed a letter to British novelist Penelope Fitzgerald, care of her publisher, asking if she would read my paper on her uncle Ronald Knox,…

First edition of the authorized version of the King James Bible, 1611, Pforzheimer Collection. Harry Ransom Center.

In the four centuries since its printing, the King James Bible has influenced much of the English-speaking world in its history and culture. In a collaboration between the Harry Ransom Center, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the Bodleian Library, an exhibition has been launched that tells the little-known story of this influential work. From today through January 15, the Folger will present Manifold Greatness: The Creation and Afterlife of the King James Bible. This exhibition will present the history leading up to the publication of the King James Bible in 1611, the process of translating the book, and finally, its influence on English-speaking cultures from…

Each Friday, the Ransom Center shares photos from throughout the week that highlight a range of activities and collection holdings. We hope you enjoy these photos that reveal some of the everyday happenings at the Center.

Photographer Elliott Erwitt views his own collection during a tour of the Ransom Center. Photo by Pete Smith.

Ransom Center intern Jenn Shapland helps during the bug check of an incoming collection. Photo by Pete Smith.

While visiting the Ransom Center for her book reading and signing on Tuesday, author Nicole Krauss signed the Center's authors' door located in the fifth floor stacks. Photo by Alicia Dietrich

Undergraduate intern Kelsey McKinney examines the Tropic of Cancer book cover in the Ransom Center Galleries' current exhibition Burned, Banned,…

Continue Reading Photo Friday

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The archive of photographer Elliott Erwitt (b. 1928), which includes more than 50,000 signed photographic prints, will be housed at the Ransom Center. Spanning more than six decades of Erwitt’s career, the archive covers not only his work for magazine, industrial, and advertising clients but also photographs that have emerged from personal interests.

Collectors and philanthropists Caryl and Israel Englander have placed the archive at the Ransom Center for five years, making it accessible to researchers, scholars, and students.

Born in Paris to Russian émigré parents, Erwitt spent his formative years in Milan and then immigrated to the United States, living in Los Angeles and ultimately New York. In 1948, Erwitt actively began his career and met photographers Robert Capa, Edward Steichen, and Roy Stryker, all who would become mentors.

In 1953, Erwitt was invited to join Magnum Photos by Capa, one of the founders of the photographic co-operative. Ten years later, Erwitt became president of the agency for three terms. A member of the Magnum organization for more than 50 years, Erwitt’s archive will be held alongside the Magnum Photos collection at the Ransom Center.

In addition to providing access to the archive, the Ransom Center will promote interest in the collection through lectures, fellowships, and exhibitions. The Erwitt materials are currently being prepared for public access.

BRAZIL. Buzios. © Elliott Erwitt/MAGNUM PHOTOS.

As part of the Harry Ransom Lectures, legendary Magnum photographer Elliott Erwitt discusses his life and work tomorrow evening at 7 p.m. CST in Jessen Auditorium at The University of Texas at Austin. The program will be webcast live.

Steve Hoelscher, Chair of the Department of American Studies at The University of Texas at Austin, shares his thoughts on the work and career of Erwitt:

CUBA. Havana. 1964. © Elliott Erwitt/MAGNUM PHOTOS.

Few photographers have had a greater impact on American visual culture than Elliott Erwitt. Even if you’ve never heard the name Elliott Erwitt, you’ve seen his pictures. Some are icons of photojournalism: Richard Nixon burying his finger in Nikita Khrushchev’s chest during their so-called Moscow “kitchen debate” in 1959; Jacqueline Kennedy,…

Photo by David A. Beloff.

Rappahannock County, a new musical theater piece about life during the Civil War, will be performed tonight and tomorrow night at McCullough Theater at The University of Texas at Austin. The Ricky Ian Gordon-Mark Campbell work was co-commissioned by Texas Performing Arts to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War and draws from diaries, letters, and personal accounts to explore the war’s impact, from secession to defeat, on a community of Virginians.

In honor of the work’s Texas premiere, Civil War-era documents from the Ransom Center will be on display in the Center’s lobby through October 2.

On display is an early edition of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin and scripts from the first stage-production…

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Commentary magazine has donated its archive to the Ransom Center. Founded in November 1945, just months after World War II, Commentary magazine was established to reconnect assimilated American Jews and Jewish intellectuals with the broader Jewish community and to bring the ideas of young Jewish intellectuals to a wider audience.

According to historian Richard Pells, Professor Emeritus at The University of Texas at Austin, “no other journal of the past half century has been so consistently influential, or so central to the major debates that have transformed the political and intellectual life of the United States.”

Throughout its history, Commentary has published significant articles on historical, political, cultural and theological issues in addition to fiction and memoirs. The magazine has a reputation for featuring many of the leading intellectual and cultural figures of the time.

Spanning from 1945 to 1995, the archive consists mainly of editorial correspondence, galleys and other records. The collection contains correspondence with a number of writers whose archives reside at the Ransom Center, including Norman Mailer, Bernard Malamud and Isaac Bashevis Singer, in addition to correspondence with S. Y. Agnon, Hannah Arendt, James Baldwin, Saul Bellow, William F. Buckley, George W. Bush, Henry Kissinger, George Orwell, Amos Oz, Philip Roth, Elie Wiesel, Tom Wolfe, and A. B. Yehoshua.

Commentary study guides and galleys of essays by George Orwell and Pearl S. Buck published in Commentary. Photo by Pete Smith.

While studying art history in graduate school, novelist Nicole Krauss spent hours in the library researching Rembrandt, only to find that she preferred imagining the details of his life instead.

“Beyond looking at his paintings, no amount of research would ever take me there. But a novel might,” Krauss said.

Krauss’s vivid imagination has resulted in three critically acclaimed novels: Great House, The History of Love, and Man Walks Into a Room. Krauss was named a National Book Award Finalist for Great House, her most recent novel. In 2010, The New Yorker named her one of the 20 best writers under 40.

On Tuesday, September 20 at 7 p.m. CST, the Harry Ransom Center presents Krauss at Jessen Auditorium where she will read from…