Day: June 9, 2021

Gilcrease Museum

Today’s visit was to Tulsa, OK and the Gilcrease Museum. Thomas Gilcrease was an enrolled member of the Creek nation who became one of the numerous oil magnates in eastern Oklahoma when oil was discovered on his family land. He was fabulously rich, but his passion was for the history of the Americas. He collected hundreds of thousands of items, buying entire collections when he could. There were paintings, sculptures, pottery, textiles, and an incredibly valuable collection of paper and books. He was in debt in 1954 and offered the entire collection to the city of Tulsa for a greatly reduced price of $2.5M, promising to pay even that back in the future. The museum is managed jointly by the University of Tulsa and the city of Tulsa. There are now over 500,000 items in the collection making it the largest collection of material regarding the Americas in the world.

When I was a child, I came to the museum. I remember most the wonderful impressionist paintings. At that time they had the material organized by type of artifact, so the paintings were all together. Now the museum is organized by what part of the Americas the material came from, a more helpful view IMHO. I will show a tiny bit of the wonderful items.

I said earlier how much I like Impressionists. This is a piece by Kevin Connywerdy (Kiowa/Comanche) called Touched by the Spiritt

This was one of my favorite modern paintings

Then there was this one by a Portuguese Hawaiian, Harry Fonseca) of a Hopi subject, Three Coyote Koshare. What a great take on the legend!

This is the first painting in the gallery of Native American ethnography – a modern view

Then there are the landscape. Blow this one to the largest size you can to see the beautiful rendition of a prairie scene.

One of the Native American impressionists

Traditional paintings are also in the collection.

Very traditional painting of a Crow encampment

Chief Justice John Marshall wrote the ruling the agreed the Cherokees were an independent nation whose treaty rights should be respected. Andrew Jackson forced the Cherokees on the Trail of Tears where thousands died. It was painted by the nephew of the famous founder of Methodism, John Wesley, who raised him.

Chief Justice John Marshall by John Wesley Jarvis

I live in Black Hawk County in Iowa, named in honor of this Sac and Fox chief.

Chief Black Hawk and his son whirling Thunder, also by John Wesley Jarvis

Classic American landscape artists are well represented like this one from John Singer Sargent.

Landing in Brittany by Sargent

But my favorite of the landscapes had to be this study of the Grand Canyon. The photo I took of the attribution is too blurry for me to make it out!

My favorite of the Grand Canyon landscapes

And then there is sculpture. The Gilcrease owns 18 of the 22 bronze sculptures created by Frederic Remington. They are wonderful, but I found this life-mask of Abraham Lincoln’s face and hands more moving.

A face and hands mask of Lincoln

There is a nicely done exhibition of artifacts from the Pacific Northwest. This raven effigy made from a whale vertebrae was amazing.

Eskimo raven effigy of unknown age

There was an entire wall of original paintings by Audubon. I chose the American Turkey to photograph.

Audubon original of a turkey

Again I was lucky my back held out, but I sorely regretted not being able to spend more time just standing and enjoying the individual items. We spent 2 hours, and it wasn’t nearly enough. It was also raining so we didn’t go see the historic gardens. Obviously I need another visit!

Mostly Woolaroc

After Hamilton, MO we drove to northeastern Oklahoma and Copan Lake, a relatively small Corps of Engineers lake just at the OK/KS border. Site was fairly unlevel but lovely.
Copan Lake at sunset. Lots of trees in the water.

I set up the sewing machine since we would be here a few days. This is my current setup. I got a bunch of appliqué done, but it was so slow!

My sewing setup at Copan

I also experimented with our newish Air Fryer from Gourma. I took a “just add water” muffin mix and added some gorgeous blueberries. I reduced the recommended temp by 25 degrees and the time by 15%. It worked!

Muffins made in the Air Fryer

We found this grumpy snapper trying to cross the road. He was big; his shell was close to 12” long.

Moved this very irritated snapping turtle across the road

We were primarily here to visit some places neither of us had been to since we were kids. The first spot was Woolaroc Animal Preserve and Museum near Bartlesville, OK. It was the retreat of Frank Phillips of Phillips Oil Company (Phillips 66 fame). There is a LOT of old oil money in this part of the state, and they spent lavishly. Frank decided he wanted a large ranch with exotic animals, space for his friends to come out and play cowboy, and to show off the early American artifacts he had. As you enter the attraction (now owned by a foundation), you drive through a series of large animal pens.

Water Buffalo in Oklahoma?
Not worried about us at all
Lake at Woolaroc
Decorative waterfall
Lichen encrusted rocks
Eastern Oklahoma is known as “Green Country” for a reason. The small building is the Phillips family mausoleum.

This year they had a fur trader’s encampment set up with two re-enactors. We are close to the Arkansas River, and fur traders travelled up the river to the mountains.

The older re-enactor was voluble and knowledgeable. He even let Kevin fire his muzzle loader! Kevin didn’t hit the target, but he did get close!

Kevin firing a flintlock rifle.

We finally got to the museum. The entry is definitely old school “Noble Savage” style, and much of the interpretation inside is similar. The artifacts make up for it though!

The entry to the museum
So so many items in a small space
A tiny piece of the outstanding pottery collection at Woolaroc
Hand made birchbark canoe made by an Ojibway woman in Minnesota. They didn’t think she was worthy of identifying by name 🙁

My normally very sore back let me walk through the entire thing, though I didn’t get to dawdle much. All the physical therapy I have been doing seems to be (finally!) working.

Not everything was old. There is a scale model of an oil field and a lot of equipment. The airplane was one of many built by small companies in the heyday of early aircraft. The company that built it no longer exists.

Some modern items too

A few miscellaneous things to note:

The restaurant is just a concession stand in these COVID times, but the BBQ bison burger was pretty good. We at dinner at a local diner, the Cohan Restaurant which just happens to be the only one in the very small town. Mediocre, but edible.

Next post will be about the Gilcrease Museum, another incredible place we visited on this trip.