Founded in 1883 with only one building, eight professors, and over 200 students, the University of Texas at Austin has evolved through the years and now ranks among the top 40 best universities across the globe. It is not an institution as it also acts as a community with over 50,000 students, dispersed in 18 colleges and schools, alongside highly-skilled staff, researchers, and teachers.
Aside from providing top-notch education, UT Austin also boasts a vast campus with stunning facilities and buildings, which are all essential in creating an environment conducive to learning. These include libraries and museums that give access to students to the latest databases, journals, collections, and resources as well as artworks and artifacts. In this article, let’s discover more about UT Austin’s libraries and museums that support learning beyond the normal instructional means inside the classrooms.
Blanton Museum of Art
UT Austin’s Blanton Museum of Art is renowned as one of the biggest university museums in the United States. It spans 189,340 square feet and serves as a home to collection galleries, temporary exhibitions, auditorium, classrooms, print study room, offices, cafe, and shops. Its permanent collection has nearly 18,000 works composed of European, American, and Latin American art, prints, paintings, and drawings. Some of the collection from the museum includes masterpieces from artists such as Alice Neel, Natalie Frank, El Anatsui, Brice Marden, Donald Moffett, Yayoi Kusama, and Glenn Ligon.
Perry–Castañeda Library (PCL)
Lying at the heart of the campus is the Perry–Castañeda Library, which is UT Austin’s main central library. Its name was derived from former professors from the University, namely Professor Ervin S. Perry, the first African-American elected as a professor, and Professor Carlos E. Castañeda, who had a big contribution to Benson Latin American Collection’s development. UT Austin’s library system holds about 8 million volumes, making it the first largest among the academic institution, and the eleventh largest in the United States.
Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library and Museum
The Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum (LBJ Presidential Library) is dedicated to the United States’ 36th President. About 45 million pages of historical papers are stored in the library, including President Johnson’s and his associates’ documents.
Harry Ransom Center
Harry Ransom Center is a library, museum, and archive of cultural and literary artifacts from Europe, Latin America, and the United States, collection for the advancement of studies concerning arts and humanities. Its collection is composed of one million special books, five million photos, 36 million manuscripts, and a hundred thousand artworks.
Visual Arts Center
Lying in the Department of Art and Art History, the Visual Arts Center has five gallery spaces that display artworks from national and international artists. It also exhibits works from the University’s skilled students, making it the campus’s creative hub for its flourishing arts community.
Texas Memorial Museum
The Texas Memorial Museum was planned during 1936 and formally opened in 1939. In 1959, it moved to the main campus of UT Austin. The museum exhibits collections focusing on geology, biology, paleontology, ichthyology, herpetology, entomology, and natural history.
Other Libraries
Other libraries in the University of Texas at Austin includes the Architecture and Planning Library dedicated to the School of Architecture’s curriculum, which includes architectural theory, design, and history, and the Benson Latin American Collections, which is deemed as one of the world’s premier libraries with Latina and Latin American studies and collection.
The Classics Library is one of UT Austin’s pride, having one of the greatest classical studies collections worldwide, revolving around Greek, Latin, and Roman literature, history, and civilization plus numismatics, arts, epigraphy, and archaeology.
Meanwhile, the Fine Arts Library (FAL), Mallet Chemistry Library, Marine Science Library, and McKinney Engineering Library all support the instruction and research needs of their respective fields and colleges. The remaining libraries specialized in the different fields of science, such as the Walter Geology Library, the Kuehne Physics Mathematics Astronomy Library, and Life Science Library.
