A First Time for Everything

Perhaps you remember your first museum visit. I certainly do.


The Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma was the first art museum I ever saw. These days it's called "Gilcrease: The Museum of the Americas," and touts itself as "one of the country's best facilities for the preservation and study of American art and history," according to its web page. But in the mid-2oth century Gilcrease was one of a bare handful of museums devoted to Western art. Today there are considerably more institutions in the western United States that exhibit Native American art, "Western" art (more on that below), or historical art. Anyway, around that time we went to the museum for a school field trip, a mass of elementary school students, gleeful at escaping from the classroom and giddy with the excitement.


The Gilcrease, as I'll call it throughout this piece, was then as now located northwest of downtown Tulsa in the Osage Hills. Thomas Gilcrease, after making a fortune in the oil business, began buying art--a lot of art. In 1943 he opened The Museum of the American Indian in San Antonio, Texas, but it attracted little attention. In 1947 he bought an entire art collection. Today that collection is the nucleus of the Gilcrease. The group of works contained forty-six paintings by Charley Russell, the famous "cowboy artist," plus nearly thirty of his bronzes, but the jewel of the collection was (and is) bronzes and paintings by Frederic Remington. Remington began his career in art as an illustrator but made the leap to fine art in the early 20th century. In addition to works by these two iconic western artists, Gilcrease's acquisition included photographs by Edward Curtis and an archive of documents and correspondence of well known figures in the American West. Gilcrease, himself a member of the Creek tribe, exemplified a new interest in the Old West and the American Indian. (He had made his fortune primarily because as a Creek he had been granted 160 acres in Oklahoma that just happened to be on top of the largest oil discovery in North America up to then--what luck!) After the lack of interest in his Texas museum, in 1949 Gilcrease founded the museum I visited around a decade or so later.

Today the institute is called (rather grandly) Gilcrease Museum of the Americas, but the core of the collection is still Remington and Russell, with a healthy dollop of other well-knowns, including Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Moran, and George Catlin, among others.

So lets take a look at some of the features of the collection. You can't talk about Western Art without talking about Frederic Remington. Although many think he must have been a westerner, Remington was actually from New York. During the late 19th century, he made a reputation (and a great deal of money) as an illustrator for various periodicals and books, but he yearned for recognition as a fine artist. Although Remington did briefly attend art school at Yale, he wasn't that interested and left when he was still only eighteen. Refusing to go back to school, Remington instead went west to Montana in 1881 when he was about twenty. The mythical "Old West" was already fading by Remington's time, but the hook was set and he would return numerous times to sketch and paint. Nevertheless, except for brief periods, he never lived in the west.

The painting to the right, "The Stampede," is one of my favorites by Remington. It dates from 1908, a year before the painter's death, the period when he was intent on throwing off the label of illustrator. To that end, he began a series of extensive studies that resulted in a series of about 70 paintings he dubbed nocturnes. In these paintings, of which "The Stampede" is one of the finest examples, he throughly studied the color of night as he saw it. (For other examples, see the entry for the 2003 exhibition The Color of Night at http://www.nga.gov/programs/abstracts/remington.shtm .) If you look carefully, you can see too that Remington was a master draftsman. His animals and humans all have real bones, convincing anatomy, and personality. And he could render action better than many of his contemporaries. Note that the galloping horse has all four hooves off the ground. Clearly, Remington had studied the pioneering photographic work of Edweard Muybridge.

Although he made his name in painting, by the end of the 19th century Remington had also begun sculpting in bronze. The Gilcrease is rich in original bronzes by Remington and now hold 18 of his originals. Today you can buy reproductions via many sources, and there is a brisk trade in fakes. But the Gilcrease pieces were all produced by the artist himself. To the right is a view of the one that I've always loved. Remington called it "Off the Range," but it has come to be known as "Comin' Through the Rye," which in my view is much more appropriate. Here we have four cowboys, probably fresh off a cattle drive, tanked to the maximum (hence the "rye") and having a great time. Remington originally sold these through Tiffany's in New York City.

Besides Remington, the Gilcrease has perhaps one of the finest collections of Charley Russell's work. Russell was perhaps as well-known as Remington a century ago, although today I suspect his reputation is less glossy. Russell, like Remington, was not a native of the Old West but instead was born in St. Louis. Unlike Remington, though, Russell went West and stayed there, emigrating to Montana in 1880 to become a cowboy. He seems to have had no formal art training, and in fact his reputation was of "cowboy artist" came after a small watercolor of his, painted in the early 1890s, was circulated by the owner of a ranch where Charley was a cowboy. A his fame grew, Russell made many friends among well-off collectors of his works, including actors and film makers such as William S. Hart, Will Rogers, and Douglas Fairbanks. He died in 1926.

My favorite from that first visit to Gilcrease is this one, aptly titled "Meat's Not Meat 'Til It's In The Pan," is one that caught my adolescent fancy, probably because the title is humorous and the painting clearly needs the viewer to add some narrative. Russell was never the great draftsman or colorist that Remington was, but for a primarily self-taught painter, he was damn good.

Gilcrease is also a repository of American history and anthropology. The museum holds one of the circulated copies of the Declaration of Independence, signed by Ben Franklin, among other documents and letters by Founding Fathers, early maps, and even correspondence from the family of Christopher Columbus. There is also an extensive collection of Native American artifacts--clothing, pottery, basketry, and weapons.

If you're ever in Tulsa, take a couple of hours and visit. It's well worth your time.

Museums in History

The word museum used to mean "a place of study" and was inimately connected to scholarly work. The word derives from the Alexandrian temple called the Mouseion. It was built to honor the nine minor Greek goddesses known as Muses who presided over creative activity in aniquity. Over two millennia ago the Mouseion was a school and library; our word museum is rooted in that ancient Greek name. And the traditional meaning seems to have lasted for 1500 years or more. So a scientist in the 17th century might have worked in his personal museum, not a laboratory; a scholar often had a museum in his home--the kind of home office we'd call his study.

By the 19th century the word became closely connected to curiosity shows, displays of artifacts and the like. The great showman P.T. Barnum had a "museum" in New York City that was more like a carnival sideshow. Barnum's American Museum was located in lower Manhattan for more than twenty years including the Civil War before being destroyed by fire in 1865. Ever the showman, Barnum made a fortune charging visitors to see everything from the Cardiff Giant to General Tom Thumb, the most famous midget who ever lived. Barnum seems to have salved his scalawag conscience by providing serious lectures and displays as well; even devoting some space to natural history, notably by showing live animals and taxidermy exhibits. There were nods to political and social history, too. The American Museum owned paintings, wax figures, and personal memorabilia of a number of very famous people. In short, Barnum's place housed just about anything you could use to extract an admission charge for the public to see. Surprisingly, Barnum was both a teetotaler and a campaigner for temperance and promoted both in lectures at his establishment. If you'd like to read more, you can read more at http://www.lostmuseum.cuny.edu/archives/museum.htm.

Perhaps because of Barnum, among others, people in the 20th century began to view museums as places where virtually any collection of items was put on display, rather than as places of contemplation and education. It's tempting to say that the Smithsonian Institution also contributed to the trend; its vast and eclectic holdings spread all over Washington and environs represent the ultimate museum. And besides the well-known art and natural science museums of today, oddball museums devoted to nearly anything you can imagine have popped up across the world. Today you can visit museums of cheese, museums of barbed wire, museums of Bad Art. It's arguable that museums today are more like Barnum's and less like Alexandria's.

Quite a few contemporary museums of art rely on blockbuster shows of popular artists or movements to attract more visitors and hence more income. It costs considerable money to run an establishment like the Museum of Modern Art in New York and if the institution wasn't endowed by a billionaire the way the Getty (in Los Angeles) was or is not run by a government the way the National Gallery in Washington is, then the huge sums and considerable publicity accrued by running popular exhibitions are very very important. So we see continual (and repetitive) shows of Impressionists or Post-impressionists. Or we have head-to-head shows of Picasso and Braque. Or we see yet another show of the work of the gloriously mad Vincent van Gogh.

Luckily, the best art museums in this country do occasionally organize shows of the lesser-known artists of past centuries and the present day.

Why?

Because.

Because as the years have rolled by my visits to art museums (and other, similar institutions) have enriched my life, added knowledge, staggered me with their glories. And of course on occasion certain museums have been less than a pleasant experience, depending on all sorts of variables--crowds, too-strict guards, lousy exhibitions, and other failings.

Because museums are often the sites of the latest, most comprehensive, biggest "blockbuster" exhibitions of whatever Impressionist or abstractionist or modernist or concept has currency in our popular culture.

Because museums offer us windows into other lives, other ideas, other locations and times.

And of course, because I can.

So herewith is a blog devoted to museums visited by the author and evaluated according to his own very personal taste and ideas. None of the posts here should be read as anything except my opinion. As such this blog probably has little value for those who want to know about the latest art exhibitions (although if I happened to be in the museum during a show I might comment on it). And if you are eager to learn about contemporary art galleries, or you're curious about the latest in conceptual art or installation art or any of the myriad newer kinds of art, you should look elsewhere. This blog is written for my own amusement and my own favorites are all you'll find. This blog will be decidedly personal.

Nor will I argue the meaning of art, or "what is art" because those are circular and non-productive discussions. Look elsewhere for arguments on aesthetics, or the ability (or lack of it) of any of the usual artists/targets, or for any of the dozens of disagreements that have characterized the ever-shifting scene in art.

I don't know much about this technology but as the blog continues there will doubtless be additions, links, indexes, images, and who-knows-what-all that finds its way into these pixels.

Last, although most people don't, if you want to post a comment, great. It's fun to hear from the rest of the world.