Tulsa Celebrates Ribbon-Cutting For Gilcrease Museum Building

The City of Tulsa cut the ribbon Friday on a new $137 million building to house Gilcrease Museum.

The old museum, a collection of adjoining buildings, was demolished, with new construction on the same spot: a peak in the Osage Hills.

“This is where he wanted it, on this hill, for the citizens of Tulsa, for the citizens of Oklahoma,” said Thomas Gilcrease Denney, the grandson of the late oilman who collected art and established a private museum to display it. He donated it to the City of Tulsa in 1955, with an agreement the city would build a proper place to preserve and display it.

Tulsa voters approved the majority of funding for the construction, and private donors contributed $49 million.

“In the time I've been at the City of Tulsa, every single time the citizens of Tulsa have been given the opportunity to invest in Gilcrease, they have done so, in a landslide,” said Mayor G.T. Bynum. “One of the truly great, world-class things about Tulsa is the Gilcrease Collection, and I think there was long a belief we had a building that didn't reflect the majesty of the collection that we have here.”

Gilcrease CEO Brian Lee Whisenhunt said the staff would be moving into the building soon. “And then about the middle of next year we'll begin to move and rehouse the collection. The Gilcrease collection is over 350,000 objects so that will take 6-8 months, and once that's finished, we'll begin to install the exhibit space and the galleries to be ready for our formal opening in Fall 2026.”