America: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of a Nation
June 26, 2010 – August 21, 2011

America: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of a Nation opens June 26 at Gilcrease Museum. The exhibition will offer a sweeping look at American history from colonial days to the closing of the Western frontier. The epic show explores three centuries of American history through period art, artifacts and archival materials – drawn entirely from the diverse collections of Gilcrease Museum.

America: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of a Nation will present a look back at the magnificent experiment that has become the most successful and lasting democracy of all time, but it will also shed light on personal stories of perseverance, and, often tragedy.

Beginning with the settlements at Jamestown and Plymouth, America: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of a Nation will showcase the colonial era through artifacts of the period including a cover of The Royal American Magazine with a woodcut by Paul Revere, and through portraits by artists like John Singleton Copley, Robert Feke, and Benjamin West. The Revolutionary War period will be explored, and crucial American documents such as Gilcrease Museum's handwritten copy of the Declaration of Independence will be on display, as well as a rare bust of the Marquis de Lafayette by Jean Antoine Houdon.

The next section of the exhibition will focus on the rapid growth of the United States under Thomas Jefferson, following the story of the first explorers to the West and showcasing the work of George Catlin, Alfred Jacob Miller and other artist-explorers of that era. Catlin's first portrait of a Native American are featured here, as well as an American Art Union piece, Boone's First View of Kentucky. An essential narrative of this time is the removal of Native Americans from their land. The important work, Black Hawk, and His Son Whirling Thunder by John Wesley Jarvis is found in this section of the exhibit.

The exhibition also highlights such figures as Andrew Jackson, Daniel Webster, and the story of America's first war on foreign soil, the Mexican War. Art and documents reflect the ideas behind the notion of Manifest Destiny that served as a justification for western expansion and the struggles involved in shaping American identity before the Civil War.

The debates about slavery and the tragedy of war will also be presented, with the figure of Abraham Lincoln looming large in this portion of the exhibition, both in the art of sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens and in the signed copy of the Emancipation Proclamation. The exhibition will conclude with a discussion of the last push westward and the closing of the frontier, featuring the art of Frederic Remington, as well as Native American art and artifacts.

Although our nation's history is short, its story is remarkably rich and ever-complicated. America: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of a Nation traces the evolution of an American identity across centuries as the nation struggled to define itself.

A companion book, Forging a Nation: The American History Collection at Gilcrease Museum, will be available for purchase in the Museum Store beginning in fall 2010.

A host of educational programming for adults and children will complement the exhibition, which runs through August 21, 2011. Visit the museum's website, gilcrease.utulsa.edu, for exhibition programming information.

America: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of a Nation is presented by the C.W. Titus Foundation, with additional support made possible by the Grace and Franklin Bernsen Foundation, H.A. and Mary K. Chapman Charitable Trust, James D. and Cathryn Mayo Moore Foundation, William S. Smith Charitable Trust, and The Williams Foundation.

History in Focus: Photographic Images from the Gilcrease Collection
July 24, 2010 – October 10, 2010

History in Focus: Photographic Images from the Gilcrease Collection showcases more than 75 of the museum's most significant photographic portraits, landscapes, and historical scenes – images rarely displayed to the general public. The photographs are drawn from the museum's 10,000-item historical photo archival collection, which spans more than 150 years.

Many of the images on display in the exhibition are related to Oklahoma, including a photograph of the Oklahoma Land Run by William S. Prettyman. Other subject highlights are: President Abraham Lincoln, Gen. Robert E. Lee, Sitting Bull and Osage Chief Bacon Rind.

Other famed works are Edward S. Curtis' The Scout-Apache and William Henry Jackson's Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.

By the 1850s, photography had become the most popular form of portraiture in the United States and abroad, supplanting oil painting as the medium of choice in the homes of an expanding middle class. Photography was soon used to document important places and events. In the United States, most notably, images taken on the battlefields of the Civil War effectively changed how the public came to view and understand the world around them.

Photography continues to be an enduring tool in documenting the present for future generations.

History in Focus: Photographic Images from the Gilcrease Collection, provides museum visitors a unique glimpse of a visual American history, an assemblage of renderings in light and shadow that continue to influence and shape our perceptions and understandings of American life.

The exhibition is featured in Helmerich Hall and Gallery 4 through Oct. 10, 2010.

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.