If you’re a libertarian-minded Texan or just curious about who John Galt is, you’re in luck. Texas’ capital city is getting something we’ve all been clamoring for: a museum dedicated to Russian-American writer and philosopher Ayn Rand.
According to filings with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation registered last week, the Ayn Rand Museum and Archives Foundation is bringing a massive center dedicated to Rand to Austin. The Ayn Rand Museum and Archives Foundation stores and preserves Rand’s manuscripts and is a subsidiary of the Ayn Rand Institute, a California-based think-tank that promotes Rand’s work. The filings were first reported by real estate news outlet The Real Deal.
Per the filings, the new Ayn Rand Center will be built at 1000 W. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., just minutes away from the University of Texas. Construction is expected to start July 1 on a new, two-story building that will include a library, exhibition space, offices and classrooms, as well as an attached parking garage. The Ayn Rand Center will cost $30 million and is expected to be completed by October 2028. TDLR filings are often subject to change.
The Ayn Rand Institute didn’t immediately respond to Chron’s request for comment, but this project isn’t exactly a secret. The institute announced the Ayn Rand Center in Austin at 2024’s OCON, its annual convention dedicated to all things Rand and Objectivism, the philosophy she developed. The video announcement at OCON showed preliminary renderings of what the building might look like and said it will house “rare artifacts” related to Rand. Foundation chairman Yaron Brook also touted that the center is near UT Austin and the University of Austin, the anti-woke university that CBS editor-in-chief Bari Weiss and others established in 2021.
TDLR filings place the Ayn Rand Center near other properties that the foundation has purchased in Austin. According to the Travis County Central Appraisal District, the Ayn Rand Museum and Archives Foundation bought two properties nearby for undisclosed sums. In 2023, they bought a 0.4-acre plot across the street at 1900 San Gabriel Street. In 2024, they scooped up 0.2 acres next door at 1904 San Gabriel. So far, those spots remain undeveloped.
Born in Russia in 1905, Rand moved to the United States in 1926 and began working as a playwright and novelist. She is best remembered for two novels, The Fountainhead in 1943 and Atlas Shrugged in 1957. In Atlas Shrugged, Rand developed Objectivism, her philosophy that capitalism is the economic system most compatible with respect for individual rights and the pursuit of individual happiness. While dismissed by many mainstream philosophers, who argued it lacked rigor, Objectivism has been hugely influential in the history of modern conservatism and libertarianism.
Her work influenced David Nolan, one of the founders of the American Libertarian Party, who once said that “without Ayn Rand, the libertarian movement would not exist.” Rand’s work influenced many Republican figures, including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who said in 2013 on the Senate floor that Rand was one of his “all-time heroes.” Still, Rand clashed with some in the conservative movement, most notably William F. Buckley Jr., over her support for abortion rights and her atheism, among other topics.
The museum is part of a broader libertarianism that’s taken hold in Austin. Many of the tech founder right, which counts among its membership the likes of Palantir co-founders Peter Thiel and Joe Lonsdale, have either spent time in Austin or live there full time. Others, like Tesla CEO Elon Musk, have based their businesses there and spread their influence all over the city. Whether the Ayn Rand Museum gets built is an open question, but you can bet cryptocurrency on it that students at the University of Austin will go there on a field trip if and when it does.