A day at the museum...

This morning Rick and I fueled up with a great breakfast at Trudy's -- which is a little Tex-Mex place near downtown -- and then headed over to the University of Texas campus to visit the Harry Ransom Center. Rick is taking two classes this semester -- one is a geography class, and the other is "appreciating the arts." (And since Rick has never been one to appreciate the arts all that much, he REALLY needs that class... :)) One of their assignments is to write a paper on any art exhibit in any art museum anywhere -- I was really hoping to visit one in Chicago, but since our schedules are very up-in-the-air right now (we both have job interviews this week, and then who knows what else after that...), we had to stick close to home. And while Rick isn't all that crazy about "art" in general, he DOES love photography -- and lucky for him, a photography exhibit is an acceptable subject for his paper. So we visited the Harry Ransom Center to see some photos by Fritz Henle.

Fritz Henle was born in Germany in 1909, and then decided to move to the U.S. as an adult. He became an American citizen in 1942 -- as World War II was in full swing. I thought it was interesting that a German man became an American citizen right in the middle of WWII. So I took a picture of his naturalization certificate:

Here are some of the pictures I liked (the pictures of the pictures didn't all come out very well because of the glare off the glass...):


A mother and child in India...


A Chevrolet in front of the RCA building in NYC...


Frida Kahlo...


This was probably my favorite photograph in the exhibit... it was titled "Gala Evening at the Met, New York City," and it was taken in 1950. I couldn't get a good picture of it without reflections in the glass, but I thought it was a really interesting photo. The man and woman (husband and wife?) are in the balcony, and while the man seems to be appreciatively applauding the ballerina, the woman looks as if she's had enough and wants to leave... possibly because her husband keeps gawking at the ballerina... :)

In addition to the photos, the Harry Ransom Center had an exhibition on the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Omar Khayyam was a medieval Persian astronomer who was also quite the poet. In the 1800's, English translations of his poems became extremely popular -- between 1859 and 1945, there was a strange fad-like fascination with the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.


And finally -- the Harry Ransom Center also has one of only five Gutenberg Bibles on display in the United States... pretty cool stuff...