Explore Online Collections​

Fewer Gilcrease Museum collection items are online as indigenous items are being prepared for review by associated Tribes. ​Gilcrease Museum honors each Tribe’s right to review collections and respects cultural protocols that restrict public access​ to sensitive material. We apologize for any inconvenience. Learn why culturally sensitive items are unavailable online here.

​30,000+ items are presently online with the number changing daily. Even as many indigenous items are ​moving offline to be reviewed, other types of collection items are being added. The collections are multi-disciplinary, ​totalling more than 350,000 items. Our team is dedicated to making the extensive art, anthropology, archive and library materials available to the world.

About Thomas Gilcrease
Gilcrease Museum founder Thomas Gilcrease was a citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, with a Scottish father and a mother of Muscogee (Creek) heritage. At age nine, Gilcrease was enrolled in the Tribe. When the federal government dissolved tribal land ownership as a result of the Dawes Act, Gilcrease received an individual allotment of 160 acres in Glenpool, Oklahoma. While the allotment system was often devastating for Native peoples, by happenstance Gilcrease’s allotment was in the region of the first major discovery of petroleum in Oklahoma. With newfound oil wealth at a young age, Gilcrease pursued an education at Bacone Indian University and later founded his own oil exploration company in 1922…More

The Art Collection
The Gilcrease Art Collection of paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints represents artists and subjects from across North America. From colonial portraiture in New England, to 20th-century modernism in the Southwest, to contemporary Native American artists, the collection features more than 13,000 artworks spanning 400 years, forming one of the world’s most comprehensive views of American art…More

The Anthropology Collection
Anthropology is the study of humanity in all dimensions: cultural, social, historical, biological, and linguistic. At Gilcrease, the anthropology collection and the work of the Department of Anthropology focus on the cultural history of North, Central, and South America, from the first prehistoric populations up to the present-day. The collections comprise more than 250,000 specimens, covering prehistoric and historic archaeology and ethnographic materials from Native American, Hispanic, and Anglo-American cultural traditions…More

The Archive/Library Collection
Thomas Gilcrease is known as having been a collector of Americana at a time when few others were interested in materials relating to the history of the Western Hemisphere. The archive and library collection — which contains manuscripts, books, photographs, maps, imprints, and broadsides — expanded to include nearly 100,000 items…More

Popular User Galleries
A collection of galleries submitted by our users... More

Please note that research is ongoing and therefore information presented may not be current or complete. We are continually updating the site. We are committed to revising information as it becomes available.