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
 

February 2, Tuesday
5:00 pm
Texas State’s MFA STUDENTS read from their poetry and fiction.

February 18, Thursday
3:30 pm Reading  |  5:00 pm Q & A
FRANCINE PROSE Reading / Book Signing / Q & A
Hailed by Larry McMurtry as “one of our finest writers,” Francine Prose is the author of 12 novels, including Blue Angel, which was a finalist for the 2000 National Book Award. Her newest book, Goldengrove (Harper Collins, 2008), was released to immediate critical acclaim. In all, she has written 12 novels, two story collections, a collection of novellas, four children’s books, and several works of nonfiction. Prose is a contributing editor of Bomb magazine and Harper’s Magazine, for which she has written such controversial essays as “Scent of A Woman’s Ink” and “I Know Why the Caged Bird Can’t Read”. She writes regularly on art for The Wall Street Journal. A film of her novel, Household Saints, was released in 1993. She lives in New York City. 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. Prose will also read at Texas State’s Katherine Anne Porter Literary Center in Kyle on Friday, February 19, at 7:30 pm; contact Michael Noll at mn19@txstate.edu.

March 18, Thursday
7:00 pm
ALAN GOVENAR Presentation | Film Screening | Book Signing
Alan Govenar, a writer, folklorist, photographer, and filmmaker, and President of Documentary Arts will screen three short Texas documentaries:  Human Volcano (1997, 10 min), Texas Style (1986, 28 min), and Osceola Mays: Stories, Songs, Poems (1996, 28 min), followed by a book signing of his latest title, Texas Blues: The Rise of a Contemporary Sound, published in the Center for Texas Music History’s John and Robin Dickson Series. Co-sponsored by Texas Folklife and the Wittliff Collections.
NOTE: this event will be held in the Alkek Library Teaching Theater, across the breezeway from the main library.

April 21, Wednesday
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. His essay, “Telling Tails,” on the craft of fiction recently 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, and he as just won the 2010 Katherine Anne Porter Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.