"When William “Bill” Ferris served as the founding director for the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, he was concerned that the university didn’t own much work by William Faulkner, acclaimed internationally for his short stories and novels set in North Mississippi.
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Ferris took it upon himself to organize a fundraising effort to purchase Faulkner’s Rowan Oak papers. Around the same time, Ferris met famed photographer William J. Eggleston through mutual friends in Memphis and they became fast friends."
William Eggleston, Untitled, 1981. Gift of William Ferris, University of Mississippi Museum and Historic Houses.
Ferris began purchasing the prints and, in time, amassed a good collection. Realizing that Eggleston was to photography what Faulkner was to writing, Ferris decided to donate his collection of Eggleston prints to the university in the 1980s. Thanks to his generosity, the University Museum at Ole Miss has 54 Eggleston prints in its permanent collection.
An exclusive exhibition of 36 color and black-and-white Eggleston photographs from the museum’s permanent collection, “The Beautiful Mysterious: The Extraordinary Gaze of William Eggleston,” will run through Jan. 14, 2017."
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