Ted M. Riseling, chairman of the Adkins foundation Board, recently announced that the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa and the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma have been jointly selected to receive the Eugene B. Adkins collection of art. The joint partnership by Philbrook and OU was among many proposals submitted by leading museums across the country.
The Adkins Collection, valued at approximately $50 million, is among the most important private collections in the nation of works by the Taos artists as well as Native American works of art. It includes more than 3,300 objects in a number of categories, including 1,100 two-dimensional works, 370 pieces of pottery, over 1,600 examples of jewelry and silverwork, and nearly 250 pieces of other Native arts.
The university will add a new 6,500-square-foot gallery on an additional floor above the original art gallery building of the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art to house the collection and to honor Eugene Adkins. OU also will add a curator for the collection, additional graduate fellowships, and an Adkins Presidential Professorship in the history of Western American art.
The Adkins Collection contains 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.
Contact: Jerri Culpepper, OU, (405) 325-1701