Introduction to the Gilcrease

I woke up early, around 8:30 a.m., gathered up my sleepy boyfriend Spencer, grabbed some gas station coffee and hit the road. We were west-bound on Highway 412 for Tulsa, Oklahoma; specifically, the Gilcrease Museum.

Named for Thomas Gilcrease, an Oklahoman oil man and businessman whose personal collection jumpstarted the museum, the Gilcrease Museum possesses the largest and most comprehensive collection of American West art and artifacts. It houses art expressing varying perspectives of the American West, with whites, Native Americans, and (to an extent) women represented equally. It was a great time to go because the special collection, "Bending, Weaving, Dancing: The Art of Woody Crumbo," mostly tempera paintings by a Native American artist, helped to offset the mostly-white artists displayed in the main galleries. Displayed throughout are quotes from noted authors on the West, including Willa Cather, George Catlin, and Scott Momaday. The annals on the bottom floor are perhaps the most interesting part, however-- they contain drawer upon drawer of jades, silver jewelry, moccasins, tomahawks, kachinas, and a treasure trove of other archaeological artifacts. The reverence and quietude were palpable in the air.

On our way up the walkway to the entrance, we passed by the "Pioneer Garden," one of five period gardens on the property. The Pioneer Garden housed a teepee-like trellis on which beans and other vines could grow, as well as corn, asparagus, squash, and other vegetables nearby. Flowers also abounded, including poppies, indigo, daffodils, iris, and others. This would be representative of a well-stocked and successful pioneer garden, I'd imagine.

Majestic Vistas, Big Skies

The very first thing we came upon was a model of artist Olaf Wieghorst's studio, stocked to the brim with Native American objects. Wieghorst, an immigrant from Denmark, was a mounted patrolman for the U.S. Cavalry, drawing and sketching wherever he went, and eventually settled outside of San Diego. 

This studio is reminiscent to me of the "Indian corner" so popular in the Arts and Crafts movement of the late 19th century: basically a hodgepodge of objects from varying tribes which came to symbolize a monolithic Indian "type." These objects are reduced to decoration, a means of homogenizing and anesthetizing Native American culture.

The main collection at the Gilcrease is called "Dreams and Visions: The American West and the Legacy of Imagination," which relates perfectly to our class. An incredible breadth of artists are represented, including many famous names and images recognizable to even non-art history students. 

Almost immediately into the exhibit, we were greeted by a monumental Thomas Moran painting, "Shoshone Falls." The sheer size of the image is staggering, as well as its subject matter--violent, turbulent waters crashing over a cliff, with thunderheads rolling in the distance over a craggy outcrop. It's strange to look at it as a sort of booster image "advertising" the west; no people around, just nature's majesty and the freedom of an uncivilized territory, as seen through white eyes.

Many landscapes, devoid of people, populate the walls of the Gilcrease. The emphasis on quiet, open spaces, big skies, dense forest, rushing water, vivid color and golden light speak to the perceived utopia of the American West.

Harsh Realities of the West

Scenes of western life are depicted among the quiet landscapes, period and contemporary. These are the works that depict the west in a harsher, somewhat more realistic style-- paintings such as "Meat's Not Meat Till It's in the Pan" by Charles Russell and Frederic Remington's "Stampede" that show the tougher aspects of settling in the Western frontier--hunting, killing, and carrying your own dinner across treacherous mountain passes, the hard work in driving rain on a cattle ranch. 

Remington's "The Missing" depicts the capture of a white soldier by Native Americans, led by a rope around his neck. The frontier life was dangerous, treacherous and filled with toil, endured by soldiers, families, cowboys and Native Americans alike. 

William R. Leigh's "Panning For Gold" exemplifies pioneers' labors against the forces of nature. I also really dug his impasto techniques here.

In Remington's sculptures, and memorabilia from Wild West shows, cowboys are almost deified, masters of four-legged creatures, impervious to the elements, heroic and free. 

Humanistic View of the Native American

And then there are paintings that depict Indians in a humanistic light, such as Charles Banks Wilson's "Seneca Thanksgiving Ceremony" in which a village of Senecas engage together in a peaceful, joyous gathering. I really liked Wilson's loose, illustrative style, and the attention to expressions. These people are happy, gentle, and reverent, fully clothed, and wholly unthreatening. 

Robert Henri's "Gregorita" and Frank Tenney Johnson's "Pueblo Girl" depict the docile Native American female, young, exotic, and modest. Though these artists treat their native subjects with a kind of tenderness, there still seems to be an application of WASP-y morals and ideals.

"Bending, Weaving, Dancing: The Art of Woody Crumbo" Special Collection

It is in the special collection of Woody Crumbo's work that the Native American perspective is truly explored, specifically the Potawatomi. Spencer and I thoroughly enjoyed this part of the museum. Along with a few of his own personal items, his tempera paintings depict sacred ceremonies, dances, icons, and even psychedelic trance-like beings of the Native American spiritual realm.

Among his otherworldly subjects, Crumbo paints "peyote birds," messengers of prayers to the Great Spirit; his figures are closely tied to myth and legend, story and song, which are central to Potawatomie culture. Most of his creatures are painted brilliant shades of blue, representative of their spiritual, rather than physical, nature.

Woody Crumbo wrote of horses and deer, "[They] have never been animals to me when they get on canvas. They are spirits, and if I paint them in unreal colors, it is meant to prove that they are phantoms."

The "Library" Downstairs

Downstairs we went, and in a great, quiet room with windows facing out towards a thick stand of trees, were walls stacked with artifacts. Ceramics and effigies were displayed in tall glass cases, and beneath them were wall-to-wall drawers full of period objects. We saw dozens of moccasins, each decorated carefully with minute glass beads and rawhide drawstrings. Equally intricate were the beaded vests, satchels and tomahawk sheaths.

There was a whole wall of drawers full of silver jewelry, many set with finely polished turquoise or quartz. There was no shortage of bone and teeth necklaces, tarnished silver horse bits, and large government-issue medallions. The Gilcrease's collection of pre-Columbian and northwestern artifacts is also quite large, and full of amazing objects. We saw clear quartz masks, jade effigies, Mayan ceramic stamps, Inuit carved tusks, and obsidian knives, to name a few. The quantity of ancient objects within my reach was overwhelming and, frankly, awesome.

The Victorian Garden

After a few hours in the museum, Spencer and I wandered outside and sat for a moment in the "Victorian Garden," complete with wide, shady trees, wrought-iron benches and a bubbling fountain. The Victorian Garden is what used to be the Gilcrease's front yard, and their now-dilapidated mansion still stands starkly, resolutely on the hill. With the Tulsa skyline looming on the horizon, I thought about the impermanence of Crumbo's spiritual world and the empty spaces of Bierstadt and Moran landscapes, now largely gone. It actually started to rain, which definitely cast a gloomy pall on the afternoon's events and musings. I'm glad that Thomas Gilcrease liked art and that he put his oil fortune towards something enlightening and enlivening, a glimpse into the future and the past.

A view of Stuart Park, adjacent to the Gilcrease Museum.