Entertaining SNL / Lorne Michaels exhibit- Not to be missed The video room varied from amazing and very moving, to hokey and dull. Just like the show.The Gutenberg Bible was a bit underwhelming. Two volumes, one the Latin vulgate NT and the other I assume the Old Testament (but I didn’t notice a sign). One NT volume was open and the other (?) closed. The first photograph (ever? ) on pewter plate was interesting for what it was but the image of a Southern French village skyline was very faint. Don’t miss it. Oh and free.

Has temporary exhibits like the Ansel Adams photography one, to be followed by another one on writing/literature. A Gutenberg Bible is on permanent display as is a self portrait of the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. It also has a research center for rare books which I visited to see some antiquarian maps from Dutch cartographers from 16th and 17th centuries. One must register first as a researcher then book a visit in advance.

Where else can you read Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's notes, interviews and manuscripts relating to the Watergate scandal, see the sunglasses that Gloria Swanson wore in the 1950 movie Sunset Boulevard, view one of only 21 complete copies known to exist of the Gutenberg Bible, marvel at the first successful permanent photograph from nature taken in 1826 and examine selected costumes, script drafts, storyboards and audition media from David O. Selznick's Gone With The Wind collection? It's all here--and much more--in the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Located at 300 West 21st Street, on the UT Austin campus, it is an internationally known humanities research center, an archive, library and museum that specializes in the collection of literary and cultural artifact from the Americas and Europe for the purpose of advancing the study of the arts and humanities. Established in 1957, it is open from 10 to 5 Tuesday through Friday and noon to 5 on Saturday and Sunday. It houses five million literary manuscripts, one million rare books, five million photographs and more than 100,000 works of art. Other extraordinary holdings on display include Albert Einstein's unpublished notes and calculations for his work on general relativity, three copies of William Shakespeare's 1623 First Folio plays, one of only 23 copiesw known to exist of a suppressed 1865 first edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the papers of Robert De Niro, David O. Selznick and Gloria Swanson, unused props designed by Salvador Dali to have been used in the dream sequence of the 1945 film Spellbound, a complete set of Pablo Picasso's 1930-1937 Vollard Suite, Edgar Allan Poe's writing desk, John Wilkes Booth's personal production promptbook for Richard III, David Garrick's diary from his 1751 trip to Paris, which once belonged to Harry Houdini, a writing journal kept by Jack Kerouac in preparation for writing his classic On the Road in 1957 and the love letters of the ill-fated Mexican Emperor Maximilian I and his wife Carlota. All that's missing is a letter from Julius Caesar to Cleopatra.

hey, it was free and air conditioned. It was really small and had a few interesting pieces highlighting their featured exhibit. It was not laid out great and you were not sure what to read first. Like I said it was free and was air-conditioned. It is a short visit (we were there for less than 30 minutes) also has a bathroom and water fountain.

The statements that The Ransom Center acquired the self-portrait in 1965 as one of a large collection of artworks assembled by photographer Nickolas Muray (American, b. Hungary, 1892–1965), who purchased the painting from Kahlo. The collection, known as the Nickolas Muray Collection of Mexican Art, includes two other works by Kahlo—the 1951 Still Life with Parrot and Fruit and a 1930 drawing, Diego y Yo, inscribed by Kahlo to Muray—as well as a number of works by other Mexican artists active in the first half of the twentieth century. about a large collection and two other works led us to believe that that's exactly what they had but we were exceptionally disappointed to find that they only had the one Kahlo and that stuck down a corridor not even in a featured display.So unless you are keen to see an early bible or an almost non-existent first photograph, do not go out of your way to visit, as we did, because you will be in and out in 10 minutes and feel like you wasted your time.