The grant from the Henry Luce Foundation enabled Gilcrease Museum to research, conserve, and digitize its collection of works by famed American landscape artist Thomas Moran, as well as works by his wife, Mary Nimmo Moran, herself a talented artist and printmaker. The combined collection of prints, sketches, watercolors and archival material, such as letters and catalogs of works, number more than 2,300 items. Many have rarely been put on display at the museum or loaned to other institutions. 

The first goal of the project was to provide the public and scholars with access to the Moran collection in its entirety. Museum staff photographed all the objects—paintings, prints, sketches, notebooks, photographs, personal letters, and unfinished manuscripts—and those images are now available online. As the bulk of the collection comprises works on paper, which are often fragile and seldom seen by the public, the digitization of these objects was vital to the overall project. In addition to the images online, we have provided documentation of the size, medium, date, inscriptions, signatures, and titles for all objects. Staff also updated the artwork titles to reflect correct and current spelling. 

The digitization and documentation of the Moran collection provided a foundation for the project. Sandra Pauly, Gilcrease’s curatorial scholar for Moran collection research, chose 90 objects to represent various aspects of the Morans’ individual careers, their collaborative efforts, and their work in a variety of mediums. She wrote brief texts to accompany these 90 objects, providing deeper contextual information. Each object text is self-contained, and you can read them in any order. If you would like to review the dozens of object texts in a more systematic manner, however, Pauly also explores the Morans’ work through six thematic essays.

Project adviser Joni Kinsey’s essay, “The Moran Collection at Gilcrease: Opportunities for New Understandings,” provides background on the collection and looks forward to potential areas for further scholarly inquiry. 

The Moran collection at Gilcrease is important for understanding the history of our national engagement with the land. Moreover, the work of the husband-and-wife team of Thomas Moran and Mary Nimmo Moran creates an opportunity to examine the changing role of women in the United States. Future exhibitions of the work of the Morans can support the museum’s core ideas of presenting the United States as a nation that continues to evolve. 

—Sandra Pauly, Henry Luce Foundation Curatorial Scholar for Moran Collection Research, 2022

                                            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. 

Sandra Pauly received her MA in art history from the University of Georgia with a thesis on the Long Island landscapes of Thomas Moran and Mary Nimmo Moran. She then entered the university’s PhD program, writing her dissertation on the 1884 New Orleans World’s Fair. She was a curatorial intern at the Saint Louis Art Museum, had a curatorial fellowship at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, worked as an assistant registrar at the Georgia Museum of Art, and taught art history at the University of Georgia and Georgia State University.

Joni L. Kinsey received her PhD from Washington University in St. Louis in 1989 and joined the University of Iowa faculty in 1991. Her research specialties include nineteenth-century landscape painting and art of the American West and Midwest, but her interests range from nineteenth-century popular prints to the rise of women artists in the central U.S. She has written two books on Moran: Thomas Moran and the Surveying of the American West (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992) and Thomas Moran’s West: Chromolithography, High Art, and Popular Taste (University Press of Kansas, 2006). In 2014 Professor Kinsey was a Fulbright Fellow in the United Kingdom. She has written numerous articles and book chapters and she lectures frequently. 

Contact Senior Curator and Curator of Art, Laura Fry for collection inquiries or to contribute new information about items in the art collection.

For inquires please contact Laura Fry, Gilcrease Museum Senior Curator and Curator of Art, at laura-fry@utulsa.edu.