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In Memoriam: Carlton Lake
Carlton Lake, whose exceptional collection of modern French materials forms
the basis of the Harry Ransom Center’s French collection, died May 5, 2006, after a long battle with
Parkinson’s disease. He was 90.
Lake and his collection first came to the attention of Harry Ransom in the late 1960s, and by the
end of 1968, a large portion of what is now the Carlton Lake collection was making its way to
The University of Texas at Austin from Paris and Boston—the two places Lake called home. In 1969
Ransom brought Lake aboard as a consultant and offered him the position of “lifetime curator.” While
he considered the offer, Lake worked on the Baudelaire to Beckett exhibition, one of the Center’s first
blockbuster shows, mounted in 1976, which put Austin on the map as the leading institution outside
France for the study of French Modernism. In that same year, Lake accepted appointment as Curator of
the Center’s French collection.
Lake came to his new role not only as an active collector but also as an accomplished writer, having
served as an art critic in Paris for The Christian Science Monitor and author of articles, stories, essays,
and extended interviews (with Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, Henry Moore, Giacometti, and others) in The
Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and other American and European periodicals.
Among his book publications are A Dictionary of Modern Painting, In Quest of Dali, Life With
Picasso (co-authored with Françoise Gilot), and Confessions of a Literary Archeologist.
Carlton Lake with the first edition of
Alfred Jarry’s Léda, 1981.
The original manuscript (1899–1900) of
this one-act opérette-bouffe is in the
Lake collection, but the book was not
published until 1981. Lake was associated
with the Ransom Center for almost
35 years before his retirement in 2003.
In his 34-year association with the Ransom Center, Carlton Lake served as Curator of the French
Unidentified photographer
collection, Acting Director (1978–1980), and Executive Curator (1980–2003). He continued to make gifts to the collection and was responsible for
bringing to the Center major holdings, such as the Edward Weeks Atlantic Monthly papers, Anne Sexton’s archive, Ezra Pound’s library, Robert
Lowell’s papers, Nina Matheson’s Vladimir Nabokov collection, many Beckett correspondences, Maurice Saillet’s James Joyce and Alfred Jarry
collections, Edouard Dujardin’s archive, Edgard Varése’s library, and the Durand modern-music manuscript collection.
The Ransom Center’s current online exhibition, Fathoms from Anywhere: A Samuel Beckett Centenary Exhibition, is dedicated to Lake.
A memorial service for Carlton Lake was held on May 24 at the Ransom Center.
Web exhibition celebrates centennial of Samuel Beckett
The Ransom Center introduced an online exhibition, Fathoms From
Anywhere: A Samuel Beckett Centenary Exhibition, on April 13 to celebrate the
centennial of the birth of Nobel Prize-winning writer Samuel Beckett (1906–1989).
The web exhibition traces Beckett’s career, using materials from the Ransom Center’s
collection. Exhibition highlights include a textual and pictorial overview of Beckett’s career,
brief biographies of his contemporaries and friends, and the opportunity for web visitors
to share their views on Beckett and his works.
“The online exhibition should be a destination not only for Beckett scholars, but for anyone
who wants to learn more about one of the twentieth century’s most notable writers,” said
Cathy Henderson, Associate Director and Curator of Exhibitions at the Ransom Center.
“Beckett created some of the most interesting work of our time and did so, uniquely, in
both English and French. We hope this exhibition will bring new readers to his work.”
Samuel Beckett’s first page of the second notebook
of Watt, dated “3/12/41.”
© Edward Beckett. Harry Ransom Center.
“For some, Beckett is one of the great comic writers of all time,” wrote Carlton Lake, former curator of the Ransom Center’s French collection, in
the introduction to the catalog for the 1984 Beckett exhibition No Symbols Where None Intended. “For others, his is a tragic world, bleak,
grim, even unbearable. And for still others, he is a religious writer, his works a witness to the indomitable spirit of the Godhead-in-man.”
The Ransom Center obtained its first substantial group of Beckett books and manuscripts in 1958 and continues to add to its holdings. Along
with its Beckett collection, the Ransom Center holds one of the world’s most renowned research collections of modern French materials,
including works of Charles Baudelaire, Jean Cocteau, Valentine Hugo, and Henri-Pierre Roché.
The research, design, and construction of the Beckett online exhibition was made possible through the assistance of the Gladys Krieble Delmas
Foundation and Humanities Texas. The online exhibition is dedicated to Carlton Lake (1915–2006).
Ransom Edition : : 10
8 View the online exhibition at http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/beckett.