Thomas Gilcrease and the Making of an American Treasure
June 6, 2009-January 10, 2010

Thomas Gilcrease and the Making of an American Treasure, opening June 6, 2009, will bring to light the extraordinary life of Thomas Gilcrease. The exhibition presents the Gilcrease story by highlighting significant chapters of the man’s life as he realized his life’s purpose of creating a museum dedicated to the history of American. Featured segments will include biography, his early collecting, his career in the petroleum industry, his patronage of artists, the acquisition of the Cole Collection, the library, archives and the anthropology collection, the masterworks of art, and finally the importance of the legacy he left behind.

Born in 1890, Thomas Gilcrease came of age roughly at the same time Oklahoma evolved from territory to statehood. In his lifetime he acquired hundreds of thousands of historical objects – rare artifacts, documents, books, maps, manuscripts and works of fine art. He became a farmer, rancher, oil producer and banker. He raised horses, cattle and three children. He married twice and traveled the world. Though it was a life of hard work and disappointment, it was also filled with wonder. Gilcrease developed and maintained an appreciation for history that would shape his perspective on all things. His life was dedicated to an enduring desire to leave behind him something worthwhile – a track as he often called it. Today his track is known all over the world as Gilcrease Museum, the collections of which are unprecedented.

Gilcrease, with his keen intellect, immersed himself in the pursuit of knowledge with a burning passion. Even as a boy, he loved books, and reading would remain one of the greatest pleasures of his life. The oldest of 14 children, he had little time to pursue formal education. His father needed him to work in the fields and stock pens of the Gilcrease farm and to travel the countryside, selling produce from the back of a wagon with strict instructions not to come home until the cart was empty.

Though his family valued education, Thomas went to rural schools only sporadically because of his responsibilities. His father, however, did arrange for him to be schooled by the noted Creek writer and poet Alexander Posey. Inspired and influenced by his experience with Posey, Gilcrease nurtured a thirst for knowledge throughout his life. He enrolled for a short time, thought to be only a few months in 1907, at the institution that is now known as Bacone College.

The real education Gilcrease acquired is what he sought out for himself, fueled by his own hunger for knowledge. He was disciplined and motivated to read, travel, and absorb as much as he could of history and culture, and to study whatever he was engaged in. He learned about geology through the oil business and about flowers and plants through his interest in gardening. With his sensitivity toward life and nature and his appreciation of culture, Gilcrease’s special qualities set him apart from his peers.

It has been said that Thomas Gilcrease was a difficult person to know, that he was quiet and introverted, a private person. An objective of the exhibition is to reveal more of the man behind the collections by exploring the footprints of his accomplishments; to learn the how, what and why that motivated him to create a national treasure and leave to future generations something so significant. Robert Gregory, in his book Oil in Oklahoma, wrote of Gilcrease: “He was practical, yet idealistic. Calm, yet zealous. Charitable, yet possessive. Those personal conflicts as much as his intuitive genius made possible his extraordinary museum. And nothing so impressive ever had a more unlikely beginning.”

Representing key acquisitions of art, artifacts and documents, supported by archival photographs of his family, friends, and associates, the exhibition follows Gilcrease’s track. The study and collecting of Americana was a new and previously ignored field at the time Gilcrease began. He systematically acquired items from myriad sources — artists, galleries and dealers the world over — with purchases of single items and whole collections. The process by which he assembled his collections is told through the evolution of his efforts — from his first museum in San Antonio, to the Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art in Tulsa, and the role of the Gilcrease Foundation — an evolution that shaped and reshaped what has become Gilcrease Museum.

Money was never a real driving force for Thomas Gilcrease; he considered his wealth a matter of mere luck. He was awarded a 160-acre allotment of land because he was one-eighth Creek. His allotment happened to be in what was eventually called Glenn Pool. In 1905, oil was discovered there, and the area would become one of the greatest producing oil fields in the history of the United States. Money to Gilcrease, however, was only a means to an end. A restlessness of spirit spurred him to do something with his money that had a lasting value.

In 1925, Gilcrease traveled extensively for five months with French businessman and acquaintance, Nema Bouttier, exploring the history and scenery of the Mediterranean, soaking up all the information and culture he could as he traveled. They visited Nice, Marseilles, Algiers, Biskra, Tinis, Batna and Constantine, the ancient Roman settlement of Timgad, and Carthage, and Gilcrease became familiar with the great museums of Europe. In Rome, he spent time among the Vatican archives and saw works by artists such as Titian, Rafael, and Michelangelo. He visited Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Athens, Florence and Venice, and more.
Traveling abroad transformed Gilcrease. He expanded his knowledge of history and art, and broadened his view of the world. He learned French and Spanish and read literature of both countries. Eventually Gilcrease would live in Paris for a time with his family and meet Robert Lee Humber, a North Carolina native, who was a Rhodes scholar and graduate of Oxford and Harvard. Their friendship would directly influence the formation and vision of Gilcrease’s foundation and museum.

Through an interesting turn of events, Gilcrease eventually passed on his collection to the City of Tulsa. He knew then that he had been merely a caretaker of a collection. During his lifetime, he had amassed some of the most important documents, books, artifacts, fine paintings and sculptures that tell America’s story.

Gilcrease’s fondness for the collection and his hope of keeping it intact become evident in a story told by friend and artist Charles Banks Wilson. Once, in Gilcrease’s Tulsa office, Amon Carter, rival collector and eventual museum founder, took a blank check from his pocket, signed it and pushed it across the Oklahoman’s desk. According to Wilson, Thomas Gilcrease responded with raised eyebrow: “Now, Mr. Carter, if someone asked you to sell one of your children, would you do it?”

Gilcrease Museum is more than a storehouse of artifacts, writings, and art. Thomas Gilcrease knew that understanding the past is essential to comprehending the present and creating the future. He collected and preserved what is valuable to humanity. His Oklahoma oil money was used wisely for a greater good. His legacy will continue to enlighten our interpretation of what and who have come before us, and give cause for us to ask what and who we want to become.
Thomas Gilcrease’s national treasure remains a living, fluid thing that will continue to shape our notions of history and American life.

Emissaries of Peace: The 1762 Cherokee and British Delegations
July 4, 2009 - January 10, 2010

The depth and breadth of the Gilcrease collection is such that it is continually the source of new exhibits and academic research including Emissaries of Peace: The 1762 Cherokee and British Delegations, which will be displayed at Gilcrease July 4, 2009 - January 10, 2010. Inspired, in part, by art and archival records in the Gilcrease Museum collection, the exhibition was developed by the Museum of the Cherokee Indian and has been seen by almost 4 million people at three museums including the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History. To date, only reproductions of the original portraits and archival material have been displayed. However, that will change when Gilcrease adds its original 247-year-old portraits and the archival documents that provide the exhibit’s historical context.

Gilcrease audiences have often pondered the significance of the regal portraits of 18th century Cherokee diplomats on display intermittently since Thomas Gilcrease acquired them. With Emissaries of Peace, for the first time, the portraits will be interpreted with the historical and cultural objects from the period in which they originated.

The portrait “Scyacust Ukah 1762” is by Sir Joshua Reynolds, one of the best-known and prolific English portrait painters of the day. It is a half-length portrait in oil, measuring 47 ½” x 35” and was painted in Reynolds’ studio at Covent Garden during the last week in June and first week in July 1762. Reynolds’ standard fee for a portrait like this was 40 guineas. The other portrait is that of Cunne Shote, or Stalking Turkey, by Francis Parsons whose studio was in a second floor loft at Queens Square in London. It is a half-length portrait in oil measuring 35”x 28”. Parsons began the portrait on June 29, 1762. Upon seeing the completed portrait, Cunne Shote remarked through his interpreter that he was glad to have his likeness preserved so that his friends would remember what he looked like after he went to fight the French.

In addition to the two oil portraits, a number of other depictions of the Cherokee diplomats in London were made. The only known hand-colored copy of the engraving, “The Three Cherokees came over from the head of the River Savanna to London, 1762. / Their interpreter that was Poisoned,” is part of the Gilcrease collection. This depiction is considered to be mostly fictitious. Although the interpreter, William Shorey, was ill before reaching England, he was not poisoned. The depictions of the three Cherokees and the wolf/dog were copied in part from portraits of Mohawk Kings painted by Jan Veresldt in 1710 as a commission from Queen Anne. One of the faces appears to be from a 1762 engraving of Ostenaco by Joshua Reynolds.

Although several individual copper plate engravings were made during the Cherokees’ visit to London, the only other illustration showing all three Cherokees was the masthead of a “A new humorous song, on the Cherokee Chiefs Inscribed to the Ladies of Great Britain. By H. Howard.” This broadside, which is part of the Gilcrease Collection and will be included in the exhibition, was the only publication in London at the time that lists all three names of the diplomats: “The Stalking Turkey,” “The Pouting Pidgeon” and “The Mankiller.”

Emissaries of Peace: The 1762 Cherokee and British Delegations will also contain a copy of the first printing of the Memoirs of Lt. Henry Timberlake, originally published in 1765 near the time of Timberlake’s death at age 29. Considered one of the rarest books in Americana, the book is most significant because it contains Timberlake’s eyewitness account of Cherokee society at its height of political power on the international stage.

Although Timberlake spent only three months in the Overhill Cherokee country in early 1762, his observations of Cherokee social and political activities provide one of the best sources for understanding Cherokee life during the mid-18th century. To a large extent, our good fortune in having his account was the result of Timberlake’s misfortune. Intertwined with the rich narrative of Cherokee ethnography and the adventures of a young army officer, is an account replete with accidents, mishaps, errors of judgment, and the financial ruin of an ambitious and patriotic soldier.

In mid-1762, Timberlake accompanied three Cherokees, led by Ostenaco of Tommotley, to London to discuss the prospects for a lasting peace with King George III. This was after a three-year war with the British, which resulted in heavy losses for both sides including the destruction the Cherokee Lower and Middle Towns and the demolition of a British fort whose garrison had been massacred.

Timberlake was part of the third expeditionary force in two years sent to chastise the Cherokee Nation. A map of the Cherokee Nation was published in the February 1760 edition of the London Magazine to acquaint readers with the area about to be invaded by the British Army. Gilcrease is fortunate to hold this map in its collection and it will be included in the exhibition.

In addition to probing the vaults of the Gilcrease collection for the exhibition, other original material will be loaned by museums throughout the country. A larger than life copy of the official coronation portrait of King George III by Allan Ramsay was seen by the Cherokee delegation in Williamsburg, Virginia, and served as a basis for their request to visit England. One of the portraits made in Ramsay’s studio in London in 1761, on loan from the Indianapolis Museum of Art, will be part of Emissaries of Peace: The 1762 Cherokee and British Delegations, along with other art and artifacts from the period including archaeological material from the 18th-century Cherokee town sites in present day Tennessee where the diplomats lived.

Emissaries of Peace: The 1762 Cherokee and British Delegations is sponsored by the Cherokee Nation.

Art of the Oklahoma State Capitol: The Senate Collection

Frank Eaton. President Theodore Roosevelt signing the proclamation affirming Oklahoma as the 46th state. Washington Irving meeting the Osage. All are part of Oklahoma’s colorful and fascinating history, and all are part of the exhibition, Art of the Oklahoma State Capitol: The Senate Collection. The exhibition is on display July 4 through October 11, 2009 at Gilcrease Museum.

More than 100 works depicting Oklahoma’s historical moments, its legends and the people who make up the state are included in the collection. While art was added throughout the years to the Capitol building, a strong surge began in the 1990s by the Oklahoma State Senate Historical Preservation Fund. Fine art by Oklahoma artists was commissioned to tell Oklahoma’s story. The commissioned works, including ones in Gilcrease’s exhibition, bring energy and vibrancy to the state’s capitol and grounds with bronzes, murals, portraits and landscapes that transcend regional and ethnic diversity.

The exhibition, located in Helmerich Hall and Gallery 4, includes works ranging in size from 12” x 8” to monumental 6’ x 8’ canvases.

Special thanks to The Oklahoma State Senate Historical Preservation Fund, Inc., including Charles R. Ford, President and Director, Robert L. Rollins, Director, Blake Wade, Director, and Pam Hodges, Executive Assistant, for their assistance in organizing this exhibition.

Student Art Exhibits

Gilcrease Museum exhibits student art year-around in the Student Art Gallery. Schools and organizations are invited to submit their proposals.
Learn more.