Austin has a wonderful invitation to step inside the Paris home of one of modern literature’s most original voices. The Worlds of Gertrude Stein is on view at the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin through January 11, 2027, and admission is free.
Organized by guest curator Dr. Sophie Oliver of the University of Liverpool, the interdisciplinary exhibition explores three intersecting worlds Stein inhabited: the everyday world of her home, the creative world of words she made so distinctively her own, and the public world where she found fame. Together, they invite visitors to reconsider a literary icon who was both an artistic insider and, in many ways, a joyful outsider.
Clothing, stationery, photographs and household items tell the story of Stein’s life in Paris with Alice B. Toklas, including a quilted vest Toklas made for her around 1920 and Pablo Picasso’s playful collage sculpture Hommage à Basket, a tribute to Stein’s poodle. Manuscripts reveal her radical experiments with language, while her famous "word portraits" of fellow writers and artists, and artworks she collected in the 1920s and 1930s, show her central role in the avant-garde between the wars.
The Ransom Center, at 300 West 21st Street, is open Tuesday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. Come curious, and leave inspired by a home where living itself became an art.
Photo: Carl Van Vechten / Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons
