Works of art from the Eugene B. Adkins Collection – one of the most important private collections in the nation featuring the Taos artists as well as Native American art – opened to the public the month of March at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art on the University of Oklahoma Norman campus. Other works from the collection opened to the public at Tulsa’s Philbrook Museum of Art.
The Adkins Collection, which is valued at approximately $50 million, is a recent acquisition that features more than 3,300 objects, including more than 400 paintings by such distinguished American artists as Maynard Dixon, Worthington Whittridge, Andrew Dasburg, Alfred Jacob Miller, Victor Higgins, Charles M. Russell, Nicolai Fechin, John Marin, William R. Leigh, Leon Gaspard and Joseph H. Sharp. The collection also includes impressive examples of Native American painting, pottery and jewelry by such famed Native American artists as Jerome Tiger, Maria Martinez and Charles Loloma.
The exhibit, “Highlights of the Adkins Collection,” will include more than 200 of those works. It will remain on display through December 2008.
The Adkins Collection at OU’s Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art will complement the already outstanding collections held by the museum, including those acquired within the past 12 years: the Weitzenhoffer Collection of French Impressionism; the Richard H. and Adeline J. Fleischaker Collections, the museum’s first major collection of Taos art; the Thams Collection of Southwestern masterpieces; the Tate Collection of masterworks by the Taos Society of Artists; and the R.E. Mansfield Collection by some of the world’s most celebrated Native American artists.