Visit Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland on Saturday, April 25, between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. and enjoy free activities for the young and young in your mind. You are able to take part in writing activities with teaching artists from Austin Public Library Friends Foundation’s Badgerdog Creative Writing Program or engage with Lewis Carroll–inspired math activities with local math literacy organization Math Happens. University of Texas at Austin museum theater students will lead visitors through the galleries. Additional activities include docent-led exhibition tours and story times in the theater. Family days are generously sustained by a grant through the Austin Community Foundation, with in-kind support given by Terra Toys.

Below is a detailed schedule:

Teaching artists from Austin Public Library Friends Foundation’s Badgerdog Creative Writing Program will lead activities that are writing the top the hour from 10 a.m. through 4 p.m.

Join a tour that is docent-led of exhibition at noon, 2 p.m., and 4 p.m.

Enjoy story time when you look at the theater at 1:15 p.m. and 3:15 p.m.

Follow University of Texas at Austin museum theater students through the galleries between 10 a.m. and noon.

Complete Lewis Carroll–inspired math activities with Math Happens while you tour the galleries.

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Before and After: “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” Movie Jecktors

The exhibition Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland features two 1933 toy paper film strips called Movie Jecktors. The movie strips portray two of the most extremely memorable parts of the Alice story: “Down the Rabbit Hole” and “The Mad Hatter.” Images and text are printed in three colors on 35? strips of translucent paper. The strips are rolled onto wooden dowels and stored in colorfully printed boxes that are little. The Movie Jecktors might have been used with a toy film projector to create a simple animation.

The Ransom Center’s Movie Jecktors required conservation before they could be safely displayed within the galleries. Both the wooden dowel additionally the storage box, which will be made from wood pulp cardboard, had a high acid content. An environment that is acidic bad for paper. The Movie Jecktors had become brittle and discolored, and there were many tears and losses towards the paper. The movie strips had been repaired in the past with pressure-sensitive tapes (the common tape we all use to wrap gifts). These tapes are never suitable for repairing paper that people desire to preserve because they deteriorate and sometimes darken over some time are also difficult to remove once set up.

Given that Ransom Center’s paper conservator, I removed the tapes using a tool that is heated reduced the rest of the adhesive using a crepe eraser. I mended the tears and filled the losses using Japanese paper and wheat starch paste. The japanese paper was pre-toned with acrylic paint to allow these additions to blend with the original paper for the fills. Regions of ink loss are not recreated.

People to the exhibition can easily see the certain aspects of the filmstrips that have been damaged, but those areas are actually stabilized and less distracting. This sort of treatment reflects the practice of conservation to preserve, but not “restore,” the object’s appearance that is original. Libraries, archives, and museums today often select the conservation approach given that it allows researchers and other visitors a far better understanding of the object’s history, including damages that occurred, which may speak to the materials used in the object’s creation.

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Please click on thumbnails to enlarge images.

Easter weekend hours

The Ransom Center will likely be open throughout Easter weekend, including on Friday, April 3, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m, as well as on Saturday and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m.

Free docent-led gallery tours occur daily at noon and Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m. No reservations are expected.

Admission is free. Your donation will offer the Ransom Center’s exhibitions and public programs. Parking information and a map are available online.

Please also be conscious that the Ransom Center’s Reading and Viewing Room is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, April 4.

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John Crowley, whose archive resides at the Ransom Center, is an American author of fantasy, science fiction, and mainstream fiction. He published his first novel, The Deep, in 1975, along with his 14th level of fiction, Lord Byron’s Novel: The Evening Land, in 2005. He has taught writing that is creative Yale University since 1993. A special 25 th -anniversary edition of his novel Little, Big will be published this spring. Below, he shares how Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s that is classic Adventures Wonderland influenced his very own work.