Recently my wife and I drove to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and toured the Gilcrease Museum. Built around the art collection of an Oklahoma oilman, the Gilcrease houses an astounding collection of American art. Well worth the time and expense of a trip to Tulsa.

I first became aware of this museum several years ago when I noticed that many of the paintings printed in the American history textbooks I used were housed there.

The collection includes

James Madison (1792) by Charles Wilson Peale

Black Hawk and His Son, Whirling Thunder (1833) by John Wesley Jarvis

Boone's First View of Kentucky (1849) by William T. Ranney

And many, many more, including sculptures.

The art collection includes over 10,000 paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures by 400 artists from colonial times to the present. Some of the important, non-western artists featured in the Gilcrease Collection include Thomas Eakins, Robert Feke, Charles Wilson Peale, Daniel Chester French, John Singleton Copley, James McNeil Whistler, John Singer Sargent, Winslow Homer, John James Audubon, William Merritt Chase, and N. C. Wyeth. Among the Western artists for which Gilcrease is renowned are the following:

Albert Bierstadt
William M. Cary
George Catlin
Woody Crumbo
William R. Leigh
Alfred Jacob Miller
Thomas Moran Frederic Remington (including 18 of his 22 bronzes)
Charles M. Russell
Olaf Seltzer
Joseph H. Sharp
Willard Stone
Charles Banks Wilson