The Collections Archives - Humanities Media Project

The Collections

The University of Texas at Austin has long been one of the world’s distinguished collecting universities. Its holdings span more than 170 million objects and result from research and pedagogical interests in a broad range of subjects—archaeology, ethnography, fine and performing arts, rare books and manuscripts, decorative arts, photography, film, music, popular and material culture, regional and political history, natural history, science, and technology.

The Collections: The University of Texas at Austin edited by Andrée Bober, the founding director of Landmarks, the public art program of The University of Texas at Austin, and with a foreword by President Gregory L. Fenves offers the first published guide to the university’s treasures. It features about eighty collections, outlining their histories, highlighting their strengths, and speaking to their educational functions.

The print edition was published by the University of Texas Press and can be purchased at https://utpress.utexas.edu/books/bober-the-collections
Downloaded the digital edition at http://thecollections.utexas.edu/

The RRK: The Rob Roy Kelly American Wood Type Collection

The RRK, or Rob Roy Kelly American Wood Type Collection is a collection of over 150 nineteenth-century American wood type specimens assembled by design educator, collector, and historian Rob Roy Kelly. Kelly began collecting wood type from local printers in the late 1950s for use by his students at the Minneapolis College of Art & Design, and continued adding to the collection over the next decade. He started researching the history and manufacture of American wood type partly in response to his students’ questions about it. Over time, the RRK collection made its way to the … [Read more...]

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UTEX Culture Collection of Algae

Why is algae important to humanity? Watch these videos and you'll find out! The UTEX Culture Collection of Algae at the University of Texas at Austin has been in continuous operation since 1953. Richard Starr established the collection at Indiana University in 1952, and it originally included several hundred strains that had been in continuous cultivation since the 1930s. In 1976, the collection moved to The University of Texas at Austin where Starr oversaw its development. Jerry J. Brand became the director of UTEX in 1998, and since then, the collection has grown to more than 2,800 … [Read more...]

The H. J. Lutcher Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sports

Opened in 2009, The H. J. Lutcher Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sports was founded by University of Texas faculty members Terry and Jan Todd, whose personal collection of physical culture and sports materials constitutes the majority of the center’s research holdings. These holdings and those acquired by the Todds, span the fields of strength training, physical education, sports, alternative medicine, and performance-enhancing drugs. The Stark Center also houses the media files of the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics, as well as several golf-related collections and Olympic … [Read more...]

The Historical Music Recordings Collection

The Historical Music Recordings Collection is the major repository at the university for sound recordings and is one of the largest such collections in the United States, housing more than three hundred thousand items and providing examples of a wide variety of genres in almost every type of format. With a dedicated rerecording studio in-house, the collection can also produce high-quality reproductions of materials from the collection for public use and preservation copies of fragile or deteriorating media. Classical music is predominant among the holdings, but there are considerable … [Read more...]