Gilcrease Museum

Perched in the Osage Hills northwest of downtown Tulsa, Gilcrease Museum is one of Oklahoma’s most significant cultural institutions and home to an extraordinary collection devoted to the art, history, and people of the Americas. Its holdings encompass more than 300,000 works and objects spanning roughly 12,000 years, bringing together American art, Indigenous cultural materials, historical documents, maps, manuscripts, archaeological objects, and other artifacts that tell the complicated and interconnected story of the American continent. The museum traces its origins to Thomas Gilcrease, an Oklahoma oilman, collector, and member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Born in Louisiana in 1890, Gilcrease grew up in Indian Territory after his family moved to the Creek Nation. As a child enrolled on the Creek tribal rolls, he received a 160-acre allotment that later proved to be situated within the highly productive Glenn Pool oil field. The resulting oil income helped transform his life and eventually provided the resources with which he assembled one of America's great private collections. Gilcrease initially concentrated on art depicting the American West, eventually acquiring important works by artists including Frederic Remington, Charles M. Russell, and other major figures in Western American art. His interests grew far beyond paintings and sculpture, however. He collected Native American cultural materials, rare books, maps, manuscripts, archaeological objects, and documents associated with centuries of American history. His archives ultimately came to include more than 100,000 rare books, manuscripts and other archival materials.