Cultural Heritage Experiences

HILT participants are invited to attend special experiences on UT Austin’s Cultural Campus. Organized especially with our institute in mind, taking part in these experience also offers an opportunity to befriend fellow HILT participants outside of your classroom.

Photo by Florian Holzzer

Thursday, June 8 at 8:00 pm

25 spots available – FULL
If you signed up for this, you’re in! We’ll meet on the back patio of the Glickman Center at 7:45pm, and we’ll walk together from there.

Student Activity Center
Third floor, Rooftop Garden
2201 Speedway at 22nd Street
Austin, Texas 78712

The Skyspace is a naked eye observatory in the heart of campus at UT Austin. Visitors can view the sky through through an opening in the ceiling, called an oculus. During sunset and sunrise, colored lights illuminate the walls and oculus. This affects the way we see the sky and produces the experience of James Turrell’s art.

The Color Inside is part of Landmarks, UT Austin’s public art program.

Photo courtesy of the Blanton Museum of Art

Friday, June 9 at 10:00 am
45 spots available

200 E Martin Luther King Jr Blvd
Austin, TX 78701

As the primary art collection for the city of Austin, the Blanton Museum of Art is a major resource for the community. With nearly 18,000 works in the collection, the Blanton showcases art from across the ages, from ancient greek pottery to abstract expressionism.

Led by the Blanton’s Education Team, participants of the museum tour will engage in an interactive gallery experience that focuses on invisible histories and community building.  Slow looking will be practiced, thoughtful participation will be practiced, and connections to digital humanities will be explored in an intimate group setting.

Image courtesy of the Ransom Center

Friday, June 9 at 10:00 am
25 spots available

300 West 21st Street
Austin, Texas 78712

The Ransom Center is an internationally renowned humanities research library and museum at The University of Texas at Austin. Its extensive collections provide unique insight into the creative process of writers and artists, deepening our understanding and appreciation of literature, photography, film, art, and the performing arts. Visitors engage with the Center’s collections through research and study, exhibitions, publications, and a rich variety of program offerings including readings, talks, symposia, and film screenings.

In Stories to Tell,  the Harry Ransom Center presents stories of inspiration, adaptation, innovation, confrontation, collaboration, and frustration, selected from its extensive cultural collections. The Ransom Center’s rich holdings highlight the struggles, the complexity, and the rewards of creative work in literature, art, photography, film, and the performing arts.

This exhibition of more than 250 items includes, among many others, David Foster Wallace, Julia Alvarez, and Gabriel García Márquez manuscripts, Henri Matisse’s Jazz, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s spirit photographs, and the hat that accompanied the green “curtain” dress worn by Vivien Leigh in Gone With The Wind.

The exhibition provides insight into the creative process and establishes meaningful, personal connections between the past and the present.

Friday, June 9 at 10:00 am
25 spots available

2313 Red River Street
Austin, TX 78705

“It is all here: the story of our time with the bark off…This library will show the facts, not just the joy and triumphs, but the sorrow and failures, too.”  —from the words of Lyndon Baines Johnson at the dedication of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum, May 22, 1971

Spoken by Lyndon Johnson at the dedication of the LBJ Presidential Library in May 1971, these words capture the 36^thPresident’s intent to make all the records of his administration available to all Americans—and to let them render their own verdict as to his place in history.

In that spirit, and in the hope that the institution would also serve as a “springboard to the future,” the mission of the LBJ Presidential Library is “to preserve and protect the historical materials in the collections of the library and make them readily accessible; to increase public awareness of the American experience through relevant exhibitions and educational programs; to advance the LBJ Library’s standing as a center for intellectual activity and community leadership while meeting the challenges of a changing world.”