Hollywood Motion Picture Backdrops Endure at Texas Performing Arts

The museums and archives at The University of Texas at Austin contain more stories than could ever be told. From the Harry Ransom Center and the Blanton, to the lesser known gems of campus—actual gemstones are on display in the Hamman Gem and Mineral Gallery—UT’s collections befit its status as a world-class research university. The Hollywood Backdrop Collection at Texas Performing Arts (TPA) is no exception.

The materials in the collection date back as early as 1942, to the golden age of Hollywood, long before scenic painting was supplanted by printed backdrops and green screens, and then the LED screens of today’s motion picture industry. Scenic painting draws upon such diverse disciplines as landscape painting, faux finishing, sculpture, and trompe-l’œil to replicate real-life environments.  

In the climactic chase scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (1959), for example, actors Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint are pursued across Mount Rushmore. But the U.S. Department of the Interior and National Park Service denied Hitchcock access to the monument, for fear of desecrating the so-called “Shrine of Democracy.” The production designers and scenic artists at MGM instead crafted a scale replica on the sound stage, complete with a painted muslin backdrop nearly 100 feet in width. 

In 2017, the Art Directors Guild Archive in Los Angeles helped establish the Backdrop Recovery Project to ensure the preservation of this rich cinematic history, scenic artwork, and the artists’ contributions. The ADG’s preservation efforts led to the establishment of backdrop collections in museums and educational institutions in the United States and abroad, including at UT Austin. TPA now owns and teaches from the most comprehensive educational collection of its kind—thanks in large part to the efforts of Karen Maness, a 2026 Texas 10 Teaching Award–winning professor of practice in the College of Fine Arts and TPA’s associate director of fabrication.

Unique in its use, the Hollywood Backdrop Collection plays a significant role in fine arts education at UT through the curriculum of the College of Fine Arts and TPA’s Fabrication Studios. The collection serves as a teaching device and a critical link to the historic knowledge of materials and techniques used to create monumental illusions held within each backdrop.  

Students benefit from the work of MGM-trained artists at the top of their profession in a period considered the High Renaissance of scenic art. Working directly with the backdrops through stabilization, restoration, and recreation, contemporary students learn a refined visual language of color theory, perspective drawing, and painting techniques easily transferable to the digital tools of the 21st century.