In 1994 an art collector named Robert Manning walked into the Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin with a worn brown folder filled with reproductions of his family's collection of European paintings and drawings. Manning showed the museum director and her curator a sampling of what was considered by scholars to be the greatest collection of late Renaissance and Baroque art in private hands.

The collection encompassed 250 paintings, 400 drawings, and 20 sculptures from the 14th to the 18th centuries.

Robert Manning gradually revealed the reason for his visit. He was originally from Texas and he wanted to find a permanent home for the collection in his native state. He preferred to keep the collection intact at an institution where it would be used for scholarly study and also be accessible to the public.

"I've taught for 20 years at UT, and if someone had told me that we'd have Old Master paintings in Austin, Texas, I would not have believed it," says UT art history professor Linda Henderson.

But that's exactly what has happened.