Final bow
Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art offers last look at O. Gail Poole's `Sideshow' after coronavirus closure
INORMAN n the topsy-turvy pandemic days of 2020, O. Gail Poole's “Sideshow” is getting the chance this week to take a final bow. And Nicole Poole, the daughter of the late Oklahoma artist, couldn't be more delighted.
“The world is an absurd place right now, and there's very little chance for outside stimulus outside of social media and the news. Seeing these paintings in person ... not only honors Dad, but it honors this very peculiar spirit of Oklahomans — of resilience, of embracing absurdity. That there's even an opportunity for people
to see it again — or see it for the first time — even for a short window, the feeling's indescribable. My joy is indescribable,” said Nicole Poole, trustee of the O. Gail Poole Collection.
Featuring more than 70 surreal, spectacular and satirical works by the Norman-based artist, who died in 2013, “Sideshow” debuted in January at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of
Art and was originally slated to continue there through May 10. But the curtain abruptly came down on the “Sideshow” exhibit in mid-March when the museum and the rest of the University of Oklahoma's Norman campus closed in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
“It's exciting. It feels a little too good to be true to finally be welcoming people back,” said Kaylee Kain, director of communication at the museum, which reopened Tuesday. “This is a big facility ... so this is a great place for people to get out of the house and yet still feel like they're being safe.”
Long-awaited reopening
The museum, which offers free admission, reopened Tuesday, and it is recognizing its members and front line workers through Sunday.
Its COVID-19 protocols include requiring visitors ages 3 and older to wear masks, adhere to social distancing and limit occupancy in confined spaces like the Weitzenhoffer rooms and the elevator. Memberships are on sale.The museum will officially reopen to the general public Aug. 11, but people who want to see “Sideshow” are invited to visit this week as Sunday is the exhibit's final day, Kain said.
“It's such a cool and different and unique show that I really hope that people come and see to appreciate what type of local artists we have in our community,” she said.
Nicole Poole said “Sideshow” is the first solo museum exhibit of her father's artwork.
“It honors my father in a way that I didn't imagine would happen in my lifetime,” she said. “Just before Dad died, I made him a promise that I would take care of the paintings. ... So, it was important for me to try to get his name out there and try to get his images out there. ... It's been an amazing grassroots effort of Oklahomans who really connect to what my dad was trying to say, connect to what I'm trying to do.
“Luckily, there's a museum that focuses on the art of Oklahoma, and here we are. Step right up.”
Absurdity in art
Born in Marlow, raised in Bradley and based for many years in Norman, O. Gail Poole started out in advertising before embarking on an everevolving 50-year career as a full-time artist.
“Dad dragged me here so many times when I was a kid. This was in his back yard, and he was in this museum two or three times a week,” his daughter said. “The spirit of Poole is all over (this) museum.”
But deciding what aspect of the prolific artist's career to feature in an exhibit was tricky. After participating in the 1974 “Western Artists of Oklahoma” exhibit in Manz, Germany, Poole became a key player in the Southwestern art movement. He expanded his repertoire in the 1980s to include traditional landscapes, academic nudes, still life pieces and portraits, garnering admirers and collectors.
“In many ways, I felt like it made a lot of sense for us to look at the last two decades of his career to celebrate an artist that really made Norman his home,” and Mark White, the curator of “Sideshow” and the former Wylodean and Bill Saxon Director of the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art.
In the 1990s, Poole broadened his artistic horizons, creating fantastical scenes, embracing surrealism and creating art that was increasingly idiosyncratic. “Sideshow” showcases those latecareer works, with visual themes that include circus performers, American cultural foibles and, interestingly enough, masked characters.
“The title `Sideshow' refers not only to the unusual, the absurd, in O. Gail Poole's late career, but it also refers to this sense of a sideshow is a distraction: It keeps one from thinking about or paying attention to something that might be corrupt, something that might be an abuse of power. Certainly, in the `90s, Poole was very concerned about the state of politics in the nation and in Oklahoma, so he began to think about the absurdity of American culture in the '90s.
He began to think about what he considered its shortcomings, its failings. So, his work in response becomes very sort of unusual. It becomes a kind of satire of what he saw happening in American culture,” said White, who in May became the executive director of the New Mexico Museum of Art.
“I think that in very ways it's still very topical. ... We have a nation that is very much divided politically; we have a nation that discusses that divide very openly via television, social media. ... We are distracted continuously by the sideshow of American politics. Regardless of your particular perspective on the state of politics, I think most people would agree that we have become a nation that is invested in the spectacle.”