Shortly after eBay was born, Dr. Robert Hansen nabbed a treasure: a first-century Roman theater token – now the oldest item in the Robert C. Hansen Performing Arts Collection at UNCG’s Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives. A retired associate dean in the University’s College of Arts and Sciences, he began his 34-year tenure as a theater designer and scholar-artist.
A lifelong collector, Hansen finds inspiration working with primary sources, which he relished as a theater student. “Performance only exists in the moment it’s occurring,” he says. “Everything else is simply memory and reportage. Still, artifacts like programs, set designs, scores, and dance notations survive from that moment and can be seen here.”
He built the collection because he knows how much students value understanding and making history. “I want it to be used, seen, and made available to anyone interested in seeing and touching real items from past performances,” he says. “It is a special collection that’s not dry and boring. It’s not just information reported in a textbook and droned on by a professor. I want it to have an active value beyond its monetary worth.”
Hansen donated his treasures to the University in 2007. Today, it houses thousands of valuables from the performing arts, to which he and others continue contributing. Last year, he established the Robert C. Hansen Endowed Fund in Special Collections and University Archives to help preserve these collected works. This bequest follows another planned gift he created in 2022 to establish the Robert C. Hansen Scholarship in Theatre Education for aspiring theater arts teachers.
He hopes others give to UNCG. “I encourage retired alums, staff, students, and everyone to consider paying it forward or paying it back,” he says. “I had a wonderful career, and it’s a privilege to do that now.”
NOTE: Dr. Hansen died on Oct. 20, 2025, just before UNCG Magazine went to press. Read more about his legacy here.
By Jo Carol Torrez
Photography by Sean Norona