Cultural Asset

The Gilcrease Museum has announced an entirely new facility for its world-class collection in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Strip down the various expansions and upgrades at the Gilcrease Museum and you end up with one building built in 1913 and four layers of renovation that occurred between 1940 and 1987. A recent exhaustive analysis of the site in Tulsa, Oklahoma, determined that another expansion or another renovation would not be enough to meet the growing needs for the museum. But an entire new facility would.

The Gilcrease Museum has announced it plans to build a new museum facility to house and exhibit the 350,000 objects related to the art, history and culture of North America. The project will begin with a two-year initial design phase, during which the museum will remain open, and then a two-year construction phase that will necessitate the closure of the museum, though the collection will be featured in various pop-up exhibitions at partner locations during that time. The 89,000-square-foot museum will be smaller than the current 134,000-square-foot facility, but because it will be designed using modern standards and efficiencies there will be more exhibition and storage space than the current facility.

The museum, which is owned by the city of Tulsa, has approved a budget of more than $83 million for the project, with $10 million coming from a gift from the A.R. and Marylouise Tandy Foundation. The city will oversee the design and construction. The new museum, which may still incorporate elements of Thomas

Gilcrease’s 1913 building, will deliver increased gallery space to show more of the Gilcrease collection, accommodate exciting traveling exhibitions and ensure best-in-class preservation of the museum’s invaluable art, artifacts and documents.

“This new direction for Gilcrease Museum will ensure more exhibit space and room for traveling exhibits while safeguarding Gilcrease Museum’s collections for decades to come,” Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum says. “Instead of making incremental improvements to an existing structure, the new facility will be able to maximize our museum offerings and create a full museum space both indoors and outdoors that match the true vision of Gilcrease Museum.”

For more information about the Gilcrease Museum and its massive collection of Western art visit www.gilcrease.org.

The Gilcrease Museum’s campus in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The museum will soon begin planning stages for a new museum facility that will likely begin construction in two years.