The first thing you see when you walk inside the Harry Ransom Center, on the University of Texas at Austin campus, is the Gutenberg Bible, one of only twenty remaining from the fifteenth-century holy book’s first print run. The atmosphere is hushed, reverent, and scrupulously climate-controlled, as befits one of the top archival collections in the world. Just past Gutenberg, there’s the world’s earliest surviving photograph. Keep going and you’ll encounter a third marvel, this one a highlight from the Ransom Center’s 2025 acquisitions: one of the boxes from “ Dick in a Box .”

What exactly does this hallowed library—home to the papers of Gabriel García Márquez, T. S. Eliot, and a host of other renowned literary names—want with this stage prop, once attached to the groin of Saturday Nigh

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