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Former name | Oklahoma University Museum of Art |
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Established | 1926 |
Dissolved | 1971 |
Location | University of Oklahoma campus, Norman, Oklahoma |
Type | Art |
Collections | Weitzenhoffer Collection, Fleischaker Collection, McGhee Collection, Thams Collection, State Department Collection, Eugene B. Adkins Collection, James T. Bialac Native American Art Collection, |
Founder | Oscar Jacobson |
Owner | University of Oklahoma |
Website | www |
The Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art is an art museum on the University of Oklahoma campus in Norman, Oklahoma.
The University of Oklahoma’s Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art holds over 20,000 objects in its permanent collection. The museum collection also includes French Impressionism, 20th-century American painting and sculpture, traditional and contemporary Native American art, the art of the Southwest, ceramics, photography, contemporary art, Asian art, and graphics from the 16th century to the present. [1]
The Oklahoma University Museum of Art, the forerunner of the Fred Jones Jr. Museum was founded in 1936 by OU art professor Oscar Jacobson, who became the museum's first director and served in that post until his retirement in 1950. [a]
The collection continued to grow, and in 1971, a new building was built called the Fred Jones Jr. Memorial Art Center. In 1992 it was renamed the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art. When current OU president David Boren arrived at OU in 1994, he and his wife Molly Shi Boren began a campaign to expand the museum's collections.
In 2000 a gift of the Weitzenhoffer Collection of French Impressionism was made to the museum. In 2003, construction began to expand the museum with the addition of a new wing that was completed in 2005. The new "hut like" wing doubled the museum size; it was designed by Washington, D.C.–based architect Hugh Jacobsen. [3] The new addition is named in honor of Mary and Howard Lester of San Francisco.[ citation needed ]
In 2007, the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art and the Philbrook Museum of Art were named stewards of the Eugene B. Adkins Collection. To properly display OU’s portion of the collection, the University began construction in 2009 on a new level above the original structure. Opened in October 2011, the new 18,000 square-foot wing houses collections acquired within the past 15 years. Designed by architect Rand Elliott, the addition is named the Stuart Wing to honor a gift from the Stuart Family Foundation. The construction included renovations to the original 1971 building and the addition of the Eugene B. Adkins Gallery, a new photography gallery and new administrative offices. The total museum exhibition space is approximately 40,000 square feet (3,700 m2).[ citation needed ]
Ghislain d'Humières served as the Wylodean and Bill Saxon Director from 2007 to 2013. Emily Ballew Neff was appointed Wylodean and Bill Saxon Director and Chief Curator from 2013 to 2014. In 2015, Mark White was named the Wylodean and Bill Saxon Director and Eugene B. Adkins Curator.[ citation needed ] White resigned from the position in April 2020. [4]
Pissarro’s Shepherdess Bringing in Sheep has been the object of several restitution claims. Prior to its seizure by Nazis during the German occupation of France, it was owned by Raoul and Yvonne Meyer, heirs to the French department store Galeries Lafayette. [5] Meyer's attempts to recover it after the war in Switzerland failed, and in 2014 his adopted daughter, Léone-Noëlle Meyer filed a lawsuit against the Fred Jones Jr. Museum and the University of Oklahoma to reclaim the painting. [6] The refusal of the Fred Jones Jr. Museum caused Oklahoma's Republican state representative Mike Reynolds to call on the American Association of Museums to review the museum's accreditation status for violating ethical bylaws. [7]
In 2016, after a long legal battle for Shepherdess Bringing in Sheep Meyer arrived at a settlement with Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, recovering the painting and bringing it back to France where it was exhibited by the Orsay Museum in Paris. [8] However the settlement specified that after five years, the Pissarro should return to Oklahoma that the process of transferring the painting be repeated every three years in a kind of shared custody agreement. [9] In 2020 Meyer initiated a lawsuit in a French court to stop the rotations of the painting between Paris and Oklahoma. The Musée d'Orsay expressed the "difficulties" and "cost" involved in the project." [10] The Fred Jones Jr Museum then sued Meyer, demanding that she be fined "$3.5m in the US and face penalties of up to $100,000 a day for contempt of court if she does not halt proceedings in France in which she is seeking full ownership of the impressionist work". [11]
“At the end of the day what the [Oklahoma] museum wants is to have the painting on the wall,” says Olivier de Baecque, the university’s lawyer in Paris. [12]
On 1 June 2021, after years of litigation, Meyer abandoned ownership of the Pissarro painting to the Fred Jones Jr. museum. [13]
"The important question is to ask why Oklahoma has been fighting for the past decade not to restitute a painting that they do not contest is of dubious origin, that they do not contest was taken from Mrs Meyer's adopted father by the Nazis?" Meyer’s French lawyer, Ron Soffer, said. [5]
The main collections are:
Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro was a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas. His importance resides in his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. Pissarro studied from great forerunners, including Gustave Courbet and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. He later studied and worked alongside Georges Seurat and Paul Signac when he took on the Neo-Impressionist style at the age of 54.
The University of Oklahoma (OU) is a public research university in Norman, Oklahoma, United States. Founded in 1890, it had existed in Oklahoma Territory near Indian Territory for 17 years before the two territories became the state of Oklahoma. In Fall 2023, the university had 32,676 students enrolled, most at its main campus in Norman. Employing nearly 4,000 faculty members, the university offers 174 baccalaureate programs, 199 master's programs, 101 doctoral programs, and 88 certificate programs.
The Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain de Strasbourg is an art museum in Strasbourg, France, which was founded in 1973 and opened in its own building in November 1998.
The Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, or simply the Thyssen, is an art museum in Madrid, Spain, located near the Prado Museum on one of the city's main boulevards. It is known as part of the "Golden Triangle of Art", which also includes the Prado and the Reina Sofía national galleries. The Thyssen-Bornemisza fills the historical gaps in its counterparts' collections: in the Prado's case this includes Italian primitives and works from the English, Dutch and German schools, while in the case of the Reina Sofía it concerns Impressionists, Expressionists, and European and American paintings from the 20th century.
Philbrook Museum of Art is an art museum with expansive formal gardens located in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The museum, which opened in 1939, is located in a former 1920s villa, "Villa Philbrook", the home of Oklahoma oil pioneer Waite Phillips and his wife Genevieve. Showcasing nine collections of art from all over the world, and spanning various artistic media and styles, the cornerstone collection focuses on Native American art featuring basketry, pottery, paintings and jewelry.
Wilhelm Peter Bruno Lohse was a German art dealer and SS-Hauptsturmführer who, during World War II, became the chief art looter in Paris for Hermann Göring, helping the Nazi leader amass a vast collection of plundered artworks. During the war, Göring boasted that he owned the largest private art collection in Europe.
Spencer Asah was a Kiowa painter and a member of the Kiowa Six from Oklahoma.
Monroe Tsatoke (1904–1937) was a Kiowa painter and a member of the Kiowa Six from Oklahoma.
The Bacone school or Bacone style of painting, drawing, and printmaking is a Native American intertribal "Flatstyle" art movement, primarily from the mid-20th century in Eastern Oklahoma and named for Bacone College. This art movement bridges historical, tribally-specific pictorial painting and carving practices towards an intertribal Modernist style of easel painting. This style is also influenced by the art programs of Chilocco Indian School, north of Ponca City, Oklahoma, and Haskell Indian Industrial Training Institute, in Lawrence, Kansas and features a mix of Southeastern, Prairie, and Central Plains tribes.
Théophile Bader, co-founder of Galeries Lafayette, was a French businessman and art collector whose family was persecuted during the Nazi occupation of France because of their Jewish heritage.
Léone-Noëlle Meyer is a French heiress, pediatrician, businesswoman and philanthropist. The adoptive granddaughter of the founder of the Galeries Lafayette, she served as its chairman from 1998 to 2005. She was a pediatrician for 45 years. She has made humanitarian trips to South America, Africa and Asia, and she has supported Jewish causes and the Paris Opera. She was awarded the 2007 Medal of the Great Donor by the French Ministry of Culture for her philanthropy.
Oscar Brousse Jacobson was a Swedish-born American painter and museum curator. From 1915 to 1945, he was the director of the University of Oklahoma's School of Art, later known as the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art. He curated exhibitions and wrote books about Native American art.
Rue Saint-Honoré, dans l'après-midi. Effet de pluie is an 1897 oil painting by Camille Pissarro. The work was made towards the end of Pissarro's career, when he abandoned his experiments with Pointillism and returned to a looser Impressionist style. It is part of a series of works that Pissarro made in 1897–98 from a window of the Grand Hôtel du Louvre, looking down across the edge of the Place du Théâtre Français and along the rue Saint-Honoré, portraying the people, carriages and buildings, the trees, fountains and streetlamps, in an early afternoon shower of rain. Other paintings in the series depict a similar scene in morning sunlight, or in the shadows of the evening. The painting measures 81 cm × 65 cm.
Carl Christoph Friedrich Bernoulli was a Swiss art dealer and interior designer from the Bernoulli family of scholars.
Helga Kreuter-Eggemann, née Helga Eggemann, was a German art historian involved in looting art in France during the Nazi occupation.
Shepherdess Bringing in the Sheep is a painting by Camille Pissarro from 1886.
Armand Dorville (1875–1941) was a French art collector and lawyer whose art collection was plundered during the Nazi occupation of France.
Raoul Salomon Meyer, was a French businessman and anti-Nazi resistance fighter who directed the Galeries Lafayette group.
Max Weitzenhoffer is an American theatre producer living in Oklahoma. He is known for his theatrical productions, philanthropic and contribution to the theater industry. He was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 1994.
35°13′N97°26′W / 35.22°N 97.44°W