Tahoma and The Philbrook Museum

Philbrook Mansion Gardens

The Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma organized the first prestigious American Indian art competition. It was called the Philbrook Annual and offered prizes in several categories, partly determined by geography.

What a thrill it was for us to learn several years ago that Quincy Tahoma won the first place purchase prize for Southwest Indian painting in the very first Philbrook Indian Annual in 1946.

Charnell visited the Philbrook and with the help of librarian Thomas Young, found copies of programs, entry forms, and even Tahoma’s hand-written description of a painting entered in the 1947 show. He did not win in 1947, and did not enter after that. But Charnell got to see the magnificent painting that won the 1946 prize and other paintings the museum owns. And when we finalized the biography of Tahoma, Philbrook gave us permission to reproduce the prize-winning painting, In the Days of the Plenty, in the book.

Reminder–Quincy Tahoma: The Life and Legacy of a Navajo Artist, will be published in the Spring of 2011.

When I (Vera) went to Tulsa recently, I was fortunate to be able to visit the Philbrook too. This unique museum occupies a 72-room mansion built by an oil baron, so a visit combines the pleasures of seeing a glorious 1920′s mansion, beautiful gardens, and an art collection that spans many centuries and countries.

Philbrook Mansion, Tulsa

I met with the curator who had previously helped Charnell, Christina Burke, and she told me about an enormous new collection that the Philbrook  acquired 3 years ago.  An art collector named Eugene B. Adkins split his collection between the Philbrook and the Fred Jones, Jr. Museum of Art at Oklahoma University. The collection is so enormous that both have had to find or build new quarters in which to house their acquistions.

The Philbrook will be blending the 3200-object Adkins American Indian collection into their already strong collection and moving the entire thing to a downtown Tulsa location.

But the big news for Charnell and me–the Adkins collection included three Tahomas that we had not previously seen, a 1948 painting, Calling all Warriors, and two untitled 1952 paintings.

Christina took me into their storage area and showed me these three Tahomas, one of which has one of the most finely detailed signatures that we have seen on his paintings. The tiny cartouche on the 1948 painting shows three warriors, riding hard, their steeds’ manes flying in the wind. One of the warriors is waving a rifle over his head.  This entire scene occupies a space not much more than an inch wide.

Meanwhile, Thomas Young had given me the Tahoma file to go through, and I recognized the papers that Charnell had copied several years ago, except that there was also a letter in Tahoma’s fancy, loopy handwriting, concerning a second painting that he had entered in the Philbrook Annual in 1946. We knew that he had entered three paintings that year.  This letter refers to a painting  he calls Shiprock and, in it,  he is reluctantly accepting a purchase price from Philbrook, although he has another potential buyer. Philosophically, he says he will paint another one for the buyer.

If he did paint two paintings called Shiprock, we surely would like to see at least one of them.  We have never come across a painting by that name. Let us know if you have it or know someone who might own Shiprock.

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