The Worlds of Gertrude Stein Opens at the Harry Ransom Center

The Worlds of Gertrude Stein exhibition at The Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin will examine the life and writing of Gertrude Stein.

Opening August 15 and running through January 11, 2027, the exhibition will explore the everyday world of her home, her creative world of words, and the public world where she found fame, and will reflect on the themes of home and belonging, insiders and outsiders, and the thirst for fame and the desire for privacy.

“Stein was an artistic insider but, as a Jewish queer woman whose writing overturned conventions, she always remained an outsider," said exhibition guest curator Dr. Sophie Oliver, Senior Lecturer in Modernism at the University of Liverpool. "Her work was philosophically and linguistically challenging, but it was grounded in the ordinary world. Through objects from her personal and writing lives, the exhibition explores all these complexities through her everyday experience.”

Artifacts on display including clothing, stationery, photographs, and household items, all telling the story of Stein's life in Paris with Alice Toklas, their ideas about taste and beauty, and their attempt to shape Stein’s literary reputation. Artworks by figures she collected in the 1920s and 1930s illuminate Stein’s role in the development of modern art between the wars, while her 'word portraits' of fellow writers and artists situate her as an important arbiter of the avant-garde.

“Gertrude Stein sought artistic freedom abroad,” notes Stephen Enniss, Director of the Harry Ransom Center. “The home that she and Alice Toklas shared was a locus for ideas about literature, art, and life. This exhibition gives visitors intimate access to this domestic world and reminds us even the manner of one’s living is an art.”