Admission to exhibitions and events is FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.
Exhibitions
On Permanent Display
THE LONESOME DOVE COLLECTION
From hats to bandanas to boots, the complete outfits of Woodrow F. Call and Augustus “Gus” McCrae (played by Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duvall) are just a few of the many “making of” materials on display from the beloved miniseries based on Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. This exhibition from the Wittliff’s major Lonesome Dove production archive takes visitors behind the scenes of the Emmy-winning show, with a look at props and principal costumes, set designs, costume sketches and production notes, Bill Wittliff's screenplay drafts, script pages, and photographs, plus much, much more.
See 60 of Bill Wittliff’s images from A Book of Photographs from Lonesome Dove, plus Gus’s “mortal remains” and grave marker, his Walker Colt, and the iconic painted dove from above Pumphrey’s mercantile, at the Witte Museum in San Antonio, September 19, 2009 - January 3, 2010.
Tour the Lonesome Dove Collection online.
Purchase A Book of Photographs of Lonesome Dove by Bill Wittliff
October 17, 2009 – February 1, 2010
THE LIGHTNING FIELD :: Mapping the Creative Process
Mark Twain once noted, “the difference between the almost right word and the right word is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” Leading writers of the Southwest make it their business to be lightning rods, and their journals, notes, correspondence, and manuscripts in the Wittliff’s Southwestern Writers Collection document their struggles to find precisely the right word. This exhibition features drafts of work by Cormac McCarthy, Molly Ivins, Jim Hightower, Sam Shepard, Jovita González, Rick Riordan, Tino Villanueva, the King of the Hill writers, Texas Monthly journalists, and many others as it illustrates a variety of authors’ compositional dilemmas and, through them, illuminates the how of creation. Fine-art prints from the Wittliff's Southwestern & Mexican Photography Collection complement the display, with portraits of photographers including Keith Carter, Graciela Iturbide, Russell Lee, and more. Presented in conjunction with Texas State’s 2009-2010 Common Experience text, Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind.
October 17, 2009 – March 13, 2010
A CERTAIN ALCHEMY :: Photographs by Keith Carter
Drawing from the animal world, popular culture, folklore, and religion, Carter’s photographs explore relationships that are timeless, enigmatic, and mythological. The inaugural show in the Wittliff Collections’ new gallery spaces, this exhibition presents 60 images from Carter’s monograph published last fall in their Southwestern & Mexican Photography Collection Book Series with UT Press.
October 17, 2009 – March 13, 2010
FIREFLIES :: Photographs of Children by Keith Carter
From Keith Carter’s new monograph with the University of Texas Press, the more than 20 images in this exhibition showcase the marvelous depictions of children that Carter has crafted throughout his photographic career.
October 17, 2009 – March 13, 2010
NUEVA LUZ / NEW LIGHT :: Recent Acquisitions
The Wittliff Collections open the vault to bring out the newest additions to their Southwestern & Mexican Photography Collection. With over 40 images by Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Marco Antonio Cruz, Graciela Iturbide, Robb Kendrick, Tina Modotti, Fernando Edward Weston, Joel-Peter Witkin, and a host of other internationally acclaimed photographers, it’s a show not to be missed.
Events
September 10, Thursday
3:30 pm Reading | 5:00 pm Q & A
JAYNE ANNE PHILLIPS Reading / Book Signing / Q & A
Jayne Anne Phillips was born and raised in West Virginia. Her first book of stories, Black Tickets, published in 1979 when she was 26, won the prestigious Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction, awarded by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Featured in Newsweek, Black Tickets was pronounced “stories unlike any in our literature . . . a crooked beauty” by Raymond Carver and established Phillips as an writer “in love with the American language.” She was praised by Nadine Gordimer as “the best short story writer since Eudora Welty,” and Black Tickets has since become a classic of the short story genre. Since then, Phillips has published four novels and another collection of stories, all highly regarded. Her most recent novel, Lark & Termite, which, according to a New York Times book review, “renders what is realistically impossible with such authority that the reader never questions its truth.” Phillips is currently Professor of English and Director of the MFA Program at Rutgers-Newark.
This Therese Kayser Lindsey / Katherine Anne Porter Series event is co-sponsored by Texas State’s English Department and the Wittliff Collections. Books will be for sale by the University Bookstore.
Phillips will also read at Texas State’s Katherine Anne Porter House in Kyle on Friday, September 11, at 7:30 pm; contact Michael Noll at mn19@txstate.edu.
October 5, Monday
4:00 pm
SUZANNE KEEN Lecture
Thomas H. Broadus Professor of English at Washington and Lee University, Suzanne Keen will speak on “Strategic Empathy and the Arts: The Novel-reading Mind,” which draws on her interests in psychological approaches to the study of the arts in general and to literary narratives in particular. In articles and her recent book, Empathy and the Novel (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007), Professor Keen takes into account the results of medical and psychological studies completed in the past decade that show the human brain responds viscerally to the experiences of others, whether observed directly or suggested directly. Professor Keen shows that these findings have important implications for the physiological foundation of experience of the arts and specifically for the ways readers of literary narratives, such as novels, are altered by the experience of reading, contributing to the building of basic human senses of mutuality and community. This event is sponsored by the Common Experience, and supports Texas State’s 2009-2010 Common Experience theme, “The Whole Mind.”
October 6, Tuesday
5:00 pm
Texas State’s MFA STUDENTS read from their poetry and fiction.
October 15, Thursday
3:30 pm Reading | 5:00 pm Q & A
TONY HOAGLAND Reading / Book Signing / Q & A
Tony Hoagland's poems have been described as moving unerringly with wit and irony, like an arrow through its target—we, the readers—with exhilarating results. His poems sprint across the page and unexpectedly blow apart a single moment, exposing its contradictory nature—and often our folly. Hoagland explores the spiritual bereftness of American satisfaction, creating poetry that is scathing, funny, rich, and refreshingly intelligent. He is the author of three volumes of poetry: Sweet Ruin, winner of the Brittingham Prize in Poetry; Donkey Gospel, winner of the James Laughlin Award of The Academy of American Poets; and What Narcissism Means to Me, as well as a collection of essays about poetry, Real Sofistakashun, all by Graywolf Press. He currently teaches in the poetry program at the University of Houston
This Therese Kayser Lindsey / Katherine Anne Porter Series event is co-sponsored by Texas State’s English Department and the Wittliff Collections. Books will be for sale by the University Bookstore.
Hoagland will also read at Texas State’s Katherine Anne Porter House in Kyle on Friday October 16 at 7:30 pm; contact Michael Noll at mn19@txstate.edu.
October 17, Saturday
7:00 pm
GRAND REOPENING of the WITTLIFF COLLECTIONS
The major event of the season celebrates the newly expanded Wittliff Collections with a reception and program highlighting their fall literary and photographic exhibitions. Special guest Keith Carter will be signing his two most recent monographs from the University of Texas Press: A Certain Alchemy, the latest in the Wittliff’s Southwestern & Mexican Photography Collection Book Series, and Fireflies, Carter’s photographs of children.
RSVP to thewittliffcollections@txstate.edu or 512.245.2313.
October 23, Friday
CELEBRATE ARCHIVES MONTH!
The Wittliff Collections and Texas State's Alkek Library are once again co-hosting an Archives Month event.
2:00-4:00 pm Archives Building and Renovation Projects
Representatives from area archives who have undergone recent building projects, as well as a shelving/space planning expert and an architect, will participate in a panel on building and renovating archives and library spaces. Each panelist will give a short presentation about a recent project, followed by a moderated discussion. There will also be time for questions and/or comments from audience members. Confirmed panelists include:
- Mark Boone, Architect, Bailey Architects Inc.
- Representatives from Southwest Solutions Group
- Laura Saegert, Archivist, Texas State Library and Archives Commission
- Eric Shoaf, Assistant Dean for Administration, UT-San Antonio Library
4:00-4:30 pm Archives & Gallery Renovation at Alkek Tour
Archivists and curators will lead tours of the recently renovated Wittliff Collection and the newly constructed University Archives in the Alkek Library.
4:30-6:30 pm Catered Reception
Join fellow archivists, curators, librarians, students and others for a catered reception in the new Wittliff Collections gallery spaces. For more information or to RSVP, call 512.245.2313 or email southwesternwriters@txstate.edu.
October 28, Wednesday
3:30 pm
WOMEN AND PLACE :: TWO VOICES, TWO PERSPECTIVES
Reading / Book Signing with
SUSAN WITTIG ALBERT & SUSAN J. TWEIT
Susan Wittig Albert, founder of the Story Circle Network, will read from the latest book in the Wittliff’s Southwestern Writers Collection Book Series, Together, Alone: A Memoir of Marriage and Place, published by the University of Texas Press. Susan J. Tweit, a much-published nature writer, will read from her latest memoir, Walking Nature Home, also from UT Press. Books will be for sale by the University Bookstore.
November 3, Tuesday
3:30 pm
TIM O’BRIEN Reading / Book Signing
Currently holding the University Endowed Chair in Creative Writing for Texas State’s Department of English, Tim O’Brien is the author of Going After Cacciato, winner of the 1979 National Book Award in fiction, and The Things They Carried, which was named by the New York Times as one of the ten best books of l990. He received the Chicago Tribune Heartland Award in fiction, and was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1993 the French edition of The Things They Carried received the prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger. In the Lake of the Woods was named by Time magazine as the best novel of 1994. The book also received the James Fenimore Cooper Prize from the Society of American Historians and was selected as one of the ten best books of the year by the New York Times. His other books are If I Die in a Combat Zone, Northern Lights, and The Nuclear Age. His two most recent books, Tomcat in Love and July, July, were national bestsellers. This summer, his essay, “Telling Tails,” on the craft of fiction appeared in The Atlantic Fiction Issue. O’Brien’s short stories have appeared in Esquire, Harper’s, Atlantic, Playboy, Granta, Gentleman’s Quarterly, The New Yorker, and in several editions of The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Pushcart Prize, and Best American Short Stories. In 1987 he received the National Magazine Award for his story The Things They Carried, which was also selected for inclusion in the Best American Short Stories of the Century, edited by John Updike. O’Brien has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
November 10, Tuesday
5:00 pm
Texas State’s MFA STUDENTS read from their poetry and fiction.
November 14, Saturday
7:00 pm
KATHERINE ANNE PORTER :: A DRIVING DESIRE
A performance by PENNYLYN WHITE
In a tribute to Katherine Anne Porter’s life, work, and legacy, actress Pennylyn White brings to life the woman behind the myth in a probing performance using extracts of Porter’s body of work, including her personal letters.
Co-sponsored by the Department of English with special thanks to the Jane Hope Hastings Philanthropic Trust.
November 19, Thursday
4:00 pm
J. FRANK DOBIE :: A LIBERATED MIND
Reading / Book Signing with STEVEN L. DAVIS
In this lively biography, Steve Davis takes a fresh look at a J. Frank Dobie whose “liberated mind” set him on an intellectual journey that culminated in the folklorist becoming a political liberal who fought for labor, free speech, and civil rights well before these causes became acceptable to most Anglo Texans. Tracing the full arc of Dobie's life (1888–1964), Davis shows how Dobie’s insistence on “free-range thinking” led him to such radical actions as calling for the complete integration of the University of Texas during the 1940s, as well as taking on governors, senators, and the FBI (which secretly investigated him) as Texas’s leading dissenter during the McCarthy era. Davis is assistant curator of the Wittliff’s Southwestern Writers Collection at Texas State University-San Marcos. http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/books/davjfr.html
December 1, Tuesday
5:00 pm
Texas State’s MFA STUDENTS read from their poetry and fiction.
INSTRUCTING | ILLUMINATING | INSPIRING
Committed to furthering the cultural legacy of the region’s literary and photographic arts and to fostering “the spirit of place” in the wider world, THE WITTLIFF COLLECTIONS welcome visitors, tours, and classes, host lectures, readings, and symposia, assist researchers, and present major exhibitions year-round from their archival repositories. The Southwestern Writers Collection preserves and exhibits the literary papers and artifacts of principal writers, filmmakers, and musicians, including the major archives of such noted authors as Cormac McCarthy, Sam Shepard, and John Graves, as well as the production archives of Texas Monthly magazine, Fox’s animated series King of the Hill, and the CBS miniseries Lonesome Dove, which is featured in a permanent exhibition of props, costumes, and other materials from the making of the film. The Southwestern & Mexican Photography Collection includes the major holdings of work by such renowned artists as Kate Breakey, Keith Carter, and Graciela Iturbide, and houses the largest archive of modern and contemporary Mexican photography in the United States. The Wittliff Collections are located on the seventh floor of the Alkek Library, Texas State University-San Marcos. Connie Todd, Curator | 512.245.2313