Taylor Sheridan, the wildly popular creator behind Paramount Network hit series like Yellowstone and Landman, has bestowed a huge gift

upon his alma mater. Texas State University’s Wittliff Collections is set to become the home of a creative archive stretching from his earliest movie scripts to current work on television.

 

 

Sheridan attended the San Marcos university in the ‘90s as a theater arts major. Although he dropped out during his junior year, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Texas State earlier this spring.

According to Texas State, the archive will be built in stages. The earliest editions will be papers from Sicario, Wind River, and Hell or High Water, the latter of which earned Sheridan an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. The first phase will also include the pilot episodes for Yellowstone, 1883, and 1923.

 

 

“There’s hardly another American writer whose work would be more at home here,” said Carrie Fountain, Wittliff Collections Literary Curator, via a release. “Within these walls echo the voices of Cormac McCarthy, Larry McMurtry, and Charles Portis. To acquire the papers of such a preeminent writer making work at the very top of his game will provide endless inspiration and insight to generations of creatives and researchers.”

The archive is a natural fit for The Wittliff Collections. The archive was founded in 1986 by Sally and Bill Wittliff, known for producing and adapting the script for the film adaptation of McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove. The collections include the papers of many Western writers, a tradition Sheridan continues on TV.

“Taylor Sheridan’s storytelling has transformed not only television and film but also the cultural imagination of Texas and the American West,” added David Coleman, Director of the Wittliff Collections, in the release. “His archive will be an essential resource for understanding how contemporary stories are crafted, and we are immensely proud that he has entrusted The Wittliff to preserve and share his legacy.”

Taylor Sheridan’s archive will open to the public later in 2025, although the university did not specify an exact date. The Wittliff Collections is located on the seventh floor of Texas State’s campus Alkek Library at 601 University Dr. Admission to the exhibits is always free.