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
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!
Then there are the landscape. Blow this one to the largest size you can to see the beautiful rendition of a prairie scene.
Traditional paintings are also in the collection.
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.
I live in Black Hawk County in Iowa, named in honor of this Sac and Fox chief.
Classic American landscape artists are well represented like this one from John Singer 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!
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.
There is a nicely done exhibition of artifacts from the Pacific Northwest. This raven effigy made from a whale vertebrae was amazing.
There was an entire wall of original paintings by Audubon. I chose the American Turkey to photograph.
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!
