Masters Move to UT
Just when you thought Austin’s arts scene had made about all the strides toward Big City Culturehood that it was likely to in this decade, up it jumps and takes another one. The latest giant step for the little Paris-on-the-Colorado is the placement of a major art collection at the Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art at UT Austin. The Suida-Manning Collection, assembled by art historian William Suida, his daughter Bertina Suida Manning, and her husband Robert Manning, contains a wealth of works by Old Masters, including Coreggio, Fragonard, Tiepolo, Rubens, and Veronese. Suida began the collection in the early 1900s and added to it until his death in 1959, whereupon it was passed on to his daughter and her husband. By that time, the Mannings had started their own quite impressive collection, which they displayed in their New York home. For half a century, they continued to build on this stunning assemblage, eventually amassing approximately 250 paintings, 400 drawings, and 50 sculptures. Mrs. Manning died in 1992, and Mr. Manning died in 1996. It fell to the couple’s daughter, Alessandra Manning Dornier, to determine the collection’s fate. She felt strongly that the collection should remain together, that dispersing it piecemeal to collectors, galleries, and museums across the globe would diminish her parents’ efforts and their legacy. Of course, that meant placing it in an institution with the resources to be able to accept the full collection and care for it. The Blanton qualified and, with the assistance of three anonymous donors who contributed gifts totaling $4.75 million, was able to secure the collection. (UT will be raising a total of $15 million for the acquisition.) The placement satisfies not only the Mannings’ main desire that the collection stay together but a personal wish by Robert Manning, a native Texan, that it end up in his home state. Well, we’re tickled to have ’em, Mr. Manning, and we think all that 16th-century Italian art and 17th-century French art and 18th-century German art will look right nice next to that fine collection of 20th-century American art left us by James and Mari Michener. Howdy, Mr. Boucher! Welcome to Austin, Mr. Poussin! Settle on in. We’re pleased to have you and hope you’ll be right happy here. With classy folk like y’all in town, this is purt-near a Big City.
UT Drama Alum Honors
In 60 years, you’d think the UT Department of Theatre & Dance would have managed to turn out one or two graduates whose contributions to the stage have been noted. Well, you’d be right. Just this week, an announcement of one of the Great White Way’s grandest honors showed just how far a pair of Longhorns have been able to go. Among the names to this year’s inductees to the Theatre Hall of Fame: Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt, the musical duo who left the Forty Acres and turned out the longest continuously running musical in the English-speaking world, The Fantasticks, as well the shows I Do! I Do! and 110 in the Shade.
Closer to home, a more recent department alum was also honored this past week. At the Harvest Festival of New American Plays, sponsored annually by the State Theater Company (formerly Live Oak Theatre), playwright John Walch, who contributes to these pages, was awarded the 1998 Larry L. King Outstanding Texas Playwright Award for his play The Dinosaur Within. John is also the author of Craving Gravy, which won the 1997 award for Outstanding New Script from the Austin Theatre Critics Table.
This article appears in November 20 • 1998 and November 20 • 1998 (Cover).