Philbrook Museum of Art, Art museum in Tulsa, United States.
The Philbrook Museum of Art is an art museum housed in a 72-room mansion with marble-stucco exterior walls and limestone trim. The building stands on landscaped grounds designed as formal gardens similar to Italian Renaissance estates.
Oilman Waite Phillips and his wife Genevieve had architect Edward Buehler Delk design a 72-room Italian-style villa, completed in 1927 on 23 acres with gardens modeled on Villa Lante. In 1938 Phillips donated the estate to Tulsa for cultural use, and it opened as a museum in 1939 with Eugene Kingman as first director. Renamed Philbrook Museum of Art in 1987 after financial difficulties in the 1980s, it had added an art studio in 1940 and a children's museum in 1949.
The collections represent American, European, African, and Asian creators. Sections devoted to Native American work such as baskets, pottery, and jewelry show how different traditions shaped artistic expression.
The museum is open daily from 9:00 to 17:00 except Mondays and Tuesdays, so plan your visit around those closures. The 23-acre grounds hold formal gardens modelled on Villa Lante, reached by paths and stairs around the mansion. Allow time to walk between the galleries and the garden areas.
The 23-acre grounds were laid out as formal gardens modelled on those of Villa Lante in Italy. The first director, Eugene Kingman, took charge when the museum opened in 1939, the year after Waite Phillips gave the estate to Tulsa.
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