The rebuilt Gilcrease Museum is two years away from opening its modern facility to the public.
The museum since 1949 has held oil businessman Thomas Gilcrease’s collection of 350,000 pieces of art from North and South America. It's the largest private collection of American art in the world.
The museum has had roughly $140 million poured into its construction. Just over $91,000 of that is public money, mostly from Vision2025 and Improve Our Tulsa sales tax and bond packages approved by residents.
City officials on Friday took a tour of the new 91,000-square-foot museum building, which is three stories with multiple exhibition rooms, a spiral staircase, a party area with a wraparound balcony and an outdoor amphitheater.
It sits on the museum’s northwest Tulsa property atop a hill on the museum property, which Thomas Gilcrease Denney said respects his grandfather’s wishes.
"This is where he wanted it — on this hill, for the citizens of Tulsa, the citizens of Oklahoma, and all citizens who want to come and see it,” Denney said.
Museum director Brian Lee Whisenhunt said the building can’t display all of the more than 350,000 items in its collection at once — but that keeps the museum a fresh experience for visitors.
“The exhibitions are designed to hold rotations of the exhibition. So each time you come back to the museum, you’ll see new ideas, new works of art, new objects, maps and other documents from Gilcrease collection, exploring the lines and connecting the lines across history and time in the more than 12,000 years of American history that’s encompassed in the collection,” Whisenhunt said.
Mayor G.T. Bynum said the new museum building “will transform Tulsa’s cultural legacy for generations.”
“This is a proud day for our city, and I am thrilled to see this project come to life,” Bynum said.
