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Split in two by a highway as communities of color often are the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma, was once known as America’s Black Wall Street. At the start of the 20th century, Greenwood was home to one of America’s most affluent Black communities, including a notable density of doctors, lawyers, bankers, and entrepreneurs. I didn’t fully appreciate the neighborhood’s significance when I pulled up to the Greenwood Cultural Center during my first visit to Tulsa in January 2019…….Continue reading….
By: Nicholas Lalla
Source: WIRED
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Critics:
Tulsa culture is influenced by the nearby Southwest, Midwest, and Southern cultural regions, as well as a historical Native American presence. These influences are expressed in the city’s museums, cultural centers, performing arts venues, ethnic festivals, park systems, zoos, wildlife preserves, and large and growing collections of public sculptures, monuments, and artwork.
Tulsa is home to several museums. Located in the former villa of oil pioneer Waite Phillips in Midtown Tulsa, the Philbrook Museum of Art is considered one of the top 50 fine art museums in the United States and is one of only five to offer a combination of a historic home, formal gardens, and an art collection. The museum’s expansive collection includes work by a diverse group of artists including Pablo Picasso, Andrew Wyeth, Giovanni Bellini, Domenico di Pace Beccafumi, Willem de Kooning, William Merritt Chase, Auguste Rodin and Georgia O’Keeffe. Philbrook also maintains a satellite campus in downtown Tulsa.
In the Osage Hills of Northwest Tulsa, the Gilcrease Museum holds the world’s largest, most comprehensive collection of art and artifacts of the American West. The museum includes the extensive collection of Native American oilman and famed art collector Thomas Gilcrease with numerous works by Frederic Remington, Thomas Moran, Albert Bierstadt and John James Audubon among the many displayed.
On the west bank of the Arkansas River in the suburb of Jenks, the Oklahoma Aquarium is the state’s only freestanding aquarium, containing over 200 exhibits, including a shark tank. In addition, the city hosts a number of galleries, experimental art-spaces, smaller museums, and display spaces located throughout the city (clustered mostly in downtown, Brookside, and the Pearl District). Living Arts of Tulsa, in downtown Tulsa, is among the organizations dedicated to promoting and sustaining an active arts scene in the city.
Opened in April 2013, the Woody Guthrie Center in the Tulsa Arts District is Tulsa’s newest museum and archive. In addition to interactive state-of-the-art museum displays, the Woody Guthrie Center also houses the Woody Guthrie Archives, containing thousands of Guthrie’s personal items, sheet music, manuscripts, books, photos, periodicals, and other items associated with the iconic Oklahoma native. The archives of Guthrie protégé, singer-songwriter Bob Dylan will also be displayed in Tulsa when a new facility designed to showcase The Bob Dylan Archive is completed.
The Church Studio is a recording studio and tourist attraction with an archive of more than 5,000 pieces. Constructed in 1915, the church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places due to musician Leon Russell, who turned the old church into a recording studio and office to Shelter Records in 1972. With remnants of the Holocaust and artifacts relevant to Judaism in Oklahoma, the Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art preserves the largest collection of Judaica in the Southwestern and South-Central United States.
Other museums, such as the Tulsa Historical Society, the Tulsa Air and Space Museum & Planetarium, the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame, and the Tulsa Geosciences Center, document histories of the region, while the Greenwood Cultural Center preserves the culture of the city’s African American heritage, housing a collection of artifacts and photography that document the history of the Black Wall Street before the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921.
Since 1969, public displays of artwork in Tulsa have been funded by one percent of its annual city budget. Each year, a sculpture from a local artist is installed along the Arkansas River trail system, while other sculptures stand at local parks, such as an enlarged version of Cyrus Dallin’s Appeal to the Great Spirit sculpture at Woodward Park. At the entrance to Oral Roberts University stands a large statue of praying hands, which, at 60 feet (18 m) high, is the largest bronze sculpture in the world.
As a testament to the city’s oil heritage, the 76-foot (23 m) Golden Driller guards the front entrance to the Tulsa County Fairgrounds. Tulsa has a number of exhibits related to U.S. Route 66, including The Cyrus Avery Centennial Plaza, located next to the east entrance of the historic 11th Street Bridge. The Plaza contains a giant sculpture weighing 20,000 pounds (9,100 kg) and costing $1.178 million called “East Meets West” of the Avery family riding west in a Model T Ford meeting an eastbound horse-drawn carriage.
In 2020, Avery Plaza Southwest is scheduled to open, at the west end of the bridge, and should include replicas of three neon signs from Tulsa-area Route 66 motels from the era, being the Will Rogers Motor Court. Tulsa Auto Court, and the Oil Capital Motel. Tulsa has also installed “Route 66 Rising,” a 70 by 30 ft (21 by 9 m) sculpture on the road’s eastern approach to town at East Admiral Place and Mingo Road.
In addition, Tulsa has constructed twenty-nine historical markers scattered along the 26-mile (42 km) route of the highway through Tulsa, containing tourist-oriented stories, historical photos, and a map showing the location of historical sites and the other markers. The markers are mostly along the highway’s post-1932 alignment down 11th Street, with some along the road’s 1926 path down Admiral Place.
The largest augmented reality mural in the world, “The Majestic”, a 15,000-square-foot (1,400 m2) work which adorns two sides of the Main Park Plaza at 410 S. Main downtown, was completed in October 2021. The $230,000 project was created by Los Angeles-based artists Ryan “Yanoe” Sarfati and Eric “Zoueh” Skotnes. The mural becomes animated when viewed through a smartphone camera.
The largest library system in the Tulsa Metropolitan Area, the Tulsa City-County Library, contains over 1.7 million volumes in 25 library facilities.[169] The library is active in the community, holding events and programs at most branches, including free computer classes, children’s storytimes, business and job assistance, and scholarly databases with information on a variety of topics. The McFarlin Library at the University of Tulsa is a federal depository library holding over three million items.
Founded in 1930, the library is known for its collection of Native American works and the original works of Irish author James Joyce. The Tulsa City-County Library and the University of Tulsa’s Law Library are also federal depository libraries, making Tulsa the only city in Oklahoma with more than two federal depository libraries.The Tulsa City County Library’s Downtown branch was massively renovated and opened to the public on Saturday, October 1, 2016.
Tulsa contains several permanent dance, theater, and concert groups, including the Tulsa Ballet, the Tulsa Opera, the Tulsa Symphony Orchestra, Light Opera Oklahoma, Signature Symphony at TCC, the Tulsa Youth Symphony, the Heller Theatre, American Theatre Company, which is a member of the Theatre Communications Group and Oklahoma’s oldest resident professional theatre, and Theatre Tulsa, the oldest continuously operating community theatre company west of the Mississippi River.
Tulsa also houses the Tulsa Spotlight Theater at Riverside Studio, which shows the longest-running play in America (The Drunkard) every Saturday night. Many of the world’s best choreographers have worked with Tulsa Ballet including: Leonide Massine, Antony Tudor, Jerome Robbins, George Balanchine, Paul Taylor, Kurt Jooss, Nacho Duato (ten works), Val Caniparoli who is its resident choreographer (with seven works and four world premieres), Stanton Welch, Young Soon Hue, Ma Cong, Twyla Tharp and many others.
In April 2008, Tulsa Ballet completed an ambitious $17.3 million integrated campaign, which was celebrated at the opening of the brand new Studio K; an on-site, three hundred-seat performance space dedicated to the creation of new works. Tulsa’s music scene is also famous for the eponymous “Tulsa Sound” which blends rockabilly, country, rock ‘n’ roll, and blues and has inspired local artists like J.J. Cale and Leon Russell as well as international superstars like Eric Clapton and Hanson.
A number of concert venues, dance halls, and bars gave rise to the Tulsa Sound but Cain’s Ballroom might be the best known. Cain’s is considered the birthplace of Western Swing, housed the performance headquarters of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys during the 1930s. The centerpiece of the downtown Brady Arts District, the Brady Theater, is the largest of the city’s five operating performing arts venues that are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Its design features extensive contributions by American architect Bruce Goff. The Pearl District features The Church Studio. Large performing arts complexes include the Tulsa Performing Arts Center, which was designed by World Trade Center architect Minoru Yamasaki, the Cox Business Center, the art deco Expo Square Pavilion, the Mabee Center, the Tulsa Performing Arts Center for Education, and the River Parks Amphitheater and Tulsa’s largest venue, the BOK Center.
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