A new exhibit, Stories to Tell has recently opened at the Harry Ransom Center, a research library / museum located on the University of Texas campus. This exhibit consists of over 250 items which demonstrates the wide range of the Ransom’s Center collection. Stories to Tell remains open through mid-July. Admission is free.

This hat, along with the famous Curtain Dress, was previously on display in the Ransom Center’s wonderful 2014 exhibit, The Making of Gone with the Wind.

I’m pretty sure that Robert De Niro’s costume for Taxi Driver was also displayed in a previous Ransom Center exhibit.  

According to their website, the Ransom Center houses the largest collection of James Joyce’s classic work, Ulysses. On display was a rare signed first-edition. 

In case you were wondering what the author looked like, the Ransom Center also owns James Joyce’s death mask.

Several items from the David Foster Wallace archive were on display. Gaining insight into a famous author’s writing process is always interesting.

The Ransom Center also contains the Watergate Papers of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Although the scribbles in Bob Woodward’s notebook are almost impossible to decipher, but it’s still interesting to see this historical artifact.

The Ransom Center also owns George Frideric Handel’s manuscript for the Coronation Anthems. The museum label noted that this manuscript was probably created in 1730 by Handel’s copyist and used by Handel himself for a performance. This score is part of the Theodore M. Finney Music Manuscripts Collection.

My favorite display was on Albert Einstein—his 1953 hand-written pages for his “first approximation of gravitational waves.” According to the museum label, this theory was only proven to be correct in September 2015.

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