OKCMOA’s reinstallation of the permanent collection arrived after Matisse in His Time. The second floor galleries feature works of art from the Museum’s permanent collection and select long-term loans beginning with the Works Projects Administration’s donation of twenty-eight works of art to the city of Oklahoma City in 1942. Today, the Museum’s collection has grown to include more than 3,000 objects spanning five continents over more than five centuries and includes works made in a wide variety of visual art mediums including painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, photography, and film.
The extremely eclectic nature of the Museum’s permanent collection calls for a new approach to the display— one that presents the works in a series of themes rather than chronologically:
Animals, Animal Painting & Genre
The Portrait
The Body & the Nude
Genre Painting, History and the Narrative “Scene”
Seas, Rivers & Skies
Still Lifes, Dead Nature
The Earth, the Land & the City
The concept of genre is especially important to this new approach, providing an organizing principal and set of conceptual concerns for a number of the galleries. The effect of this original, subject-matter-driven installation is to place works of dramatically different eras and styles side by side. In so doing, we invite you to consider the continuities and differences that emerge across historical eras and national boundaries.
*PLEASE NOTE: OKCMOA’s new mobile guide is now available so visitors may learn details and background information on works of art in the permanent collection on the second floor!
