The grant from the Henry Luce Foundation enabled Gilcrease Museum to research and digitize more than 2,500 Indigenous paintings and drawings in its collection. Devoting resources and attention to Gilcrease’s Indigenous-made works was relevant and long overdue: the museum sits on the ancestral and removed lands of numerous tribal nations; its founder, Thomas Gilcrease, was a citizen of the Muscogee Nation; and the institution is the steward of hundreds of thousands of artistic and anthropological objects and archival materials. Until now, however, the museum’s collection of Indigenous paintings was sorely under-researched, and many works that relate to the history of Oklahoma—some predating statehood—were unavailable to scholars, museum professionals, and the wider public.

One goal was to rethink the role of culture, history, and identity in the study and display of Native arts, and this project serves as a catalyst for more ethical, appropriate, and inclusive research and representation in colonial institutions. To this end, curatorial scholar Jordan Poorman Cocker used a place-based Indigenous arts research practice centered on the artists’ connections to land as well as their biography or lived experience. She sought to uphold Indigenous sovereignty by prioritizing the voices, experiences, and ancestral or treaty territories of artists whose works exemplify pivotal shifts in Indigenous art and point to the past, present, and future trajectories of Indigenous painting practices. She corrected previous colonial misinterpretations of the artworks, removed offensive terms from titles, and, where possible, interviewed artists, their descendants, or tribal members to gain greater insight into the artworks and the scenes or people they depict.

Poorman Cocker narrowed her research to 47 artists and 80 works of art, and the brief texts she wrote to accompany these objects provide deeper contextual information about Indigenous art, culture, and tribal practices, as well as the fraught history of Native Americans in the United States. Each object text is self-contained, and you can read them in any order. If you would like to review the collection in a more systematic manner, however, we have grouped them into six thematic essays.

                                            Gilcrease Museum thanks the Henry Luce Foundation for making this project possible:

The Henry Luce Foundation seeks to enrich public discourse by promoting innovative scholarship, cultivating new leaders, and fostering international understanding. Established in 1936 by Henry R. Luce, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Time, Inc., the Luce Foundation advances its mission through grantmaking and leadership programs in the fields of Asia, higher education, religion and theology, art, and public policy.

A leader in art funding since 1982, the Luce Foundation's American Art Program supports innovative museum projects nationwide that advance the role of visual arts of the United States in an open and equitable society, and the potential of museums to serve as forums for art-centered conversations that celebrate creativity, explore difference, and seek common ground. The Foundation aims to empower museums and arts organizations to reconsider accepted histories, foreground the voices and experiences of underrepresented artists and cultures, and welcome diverse collaborators and communities into dialogue. 

Indigenous curator, scholar, and artist Jordan Poorman Cocker is an enrolled member of the Kiowa Tribe and of Tongan descent. She holds a BA in design from Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand, where she is also a PhD candidate. In 2017 she received an MA in museum and heritage practice from Victoria University of Wellington, where her practicum included the study of Indigenous museum practices with the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Her curatorial methodology utilizes oral histories, multivocality, and Indigenous knowledge systems to explore intergenerational relationships within Indigenous art forms. Poorman Cocker is the 2021–24 Terra Foundation guest co-curator of Indigenous art for the Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University. 

Chelsea M. Herr, a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, is Gilcrease’s inaugural Jack and Maxine Zarrow Curator for Indigenous Art and Culture. Her work is focused on advocacy, inclusion, and self-representation of Indigenous peoples and cultures in museum spaces. She holds a BA in art history from Seattle Pacific University and an MA in art history with an emphasis on Native studies from the University of California, Riverside. In May 2020, Herr earned a PhD in Native American art history from the University of Oklahoma, with a dissertation on Indigenous futurisms in the works of Native North American artists. She was guest curator of Stitched in Sovereignty: Contemporary Beadwork from Indigenous North America (2020, Couse-Sharp Historic Site, Taos) and guest co-curator of Indigenous Futurisms: Transcending Past/Present/Future (2020–21, IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe).

For inquires please contact Dr. Chelsea Herr, Gilcrease Museum Curator for Indigenous Art and Culture, at chelsea-herr@utulsa.edu.