7 must-see highlights in central Oklahoma museums that you can see anytime

The past year has been tough for museums - and the entire tourism industry - due to affects of the COVID-19 pandemic, from temporary shutdowns and fundraiser cancellations to exhibit delays and social distancing guidelines.

It's Museums Advocacy Day, the annual time frame that the American Alliance of Museums sets aside for showing support for museums with members of Congress and their staff in Washington, D.C.

In the spirit of this day, here are 7 popular highlights from the permanent collections of some of central Oklahoma's top museums, which means you can see them any time these attractions are open:

1. Kehinde Wiley's "Jacob de Graeff" at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art

The Oklahoma City Museum of Art is rightfully well-known for its expansive and beautiful collection of Dale Chihuly glass art, but it also became home two years ago to this stunning large-scale work by celebrated African American artist Kehinde Wiley, who famously painted Barack Obama's presidential portrait.

Kehinde Wiley is best known for recreating paintings by renowned masters but replacing the European aristocrats, saints and generals with people of color, especially young African American men, attired not in ancient finery but in current fashions like puffy jackets, hoodies and sneakers.

For “Jacob de Graeff,” on view on the museum's second floor, Wiley streetcast Brincel Kape’li Wiggins Jr., and modeled the 2018 portrait on the 17th-century Dutch artist Gerard ter Borch’s portrait of Jacob de Graeff.

“The person in the original was actually the son of the head of the Dutch East India Trading Company, so it was actually a major company in the 17th century that made a lot of their money on the basis of slave labor. So, there’s all kinds of dimensions to the work,” said museum President and CEO Michael Anderson.

“Kehinde Wiley is providing one of the most important and interesting interventions in the portrait in the 21st century. It’s changing who it is that we see on museum walls."

As a bonus, admission is free for museum guests 17 and younger. For more information, go to www.okcmoa.com. 

2. Egyptian mummies at the Mabee-Gerrer Museum of Art in Shawnee

The oldest art museum in Oklahoma, the Mabee-Gerrer Museum is a virtual treasure trove of art ranging from Tang dynasty terra cotta figures and Amazonian shrunken heads to a full suit of armor and two Egyptian mummies, the only ones in Oklahoma.

The older and better preserved, Tutu, is especially beloved, and in 2015, radiologists at St. Anthony Shawnee Hospital performed CT scans to give researchers a look under the mummies’ wrappings. As part of its centennial celebration in 2019, the museum worked with a forensic artist to recreate Tutu’s face. The likeness is now on view alongside the mummies as well as an array of Egyptian artifacts like mummified animals, canopic jars (which are pretty but - shudders - were made to hold the mummified internal organs of the deceased) and more.

For more information, go to www.mgmoa.org. 

3. "Destination Space" at Science Museum Oklahoma

Oklahoma is the only state that can claim astronaut participation in every phase of NASA’s space program, and with last week's historic landing of the Perseverance rover on Mars, there's still a lot about space that America is exploring. 

The museum's second-floor "Destination Space" exhibit offers an introduction to all things space, where visitors can train like the pros in the Mercury Capsule Simulator, learn about the history of the Apollo program and Oklahoma's connections to the lunar landing and see real rocket engines and space artifacts.

For more information, go to www.sciencemuseumok.org.

4. 92-foot-long Apatosaurus at the Sam Noble Museum in Norman

The University of Oklahoma's museum of natural history and science boasts 50,000 square feet of exhibit space that traces about 500 million years of Oklahoma’s history.

But the highlight is almost certainly the Hall of Ancient Life's “The Clash of the Titans," in which the world’s largest Apatosaurus, which towers 92 feet tall, extends his long neck as he faces a most fearsome Oklahoma predator, the Saurophaganax.

For more information, go to samnoblemuseum.ou.edu. 

5. "Canyon Princess" at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum

Although James Earle Fraser's "The End of the Trail statue" is better known, master sculptor Gerald Balciar's monumental recreation of a female mountain lion that guards the art galleries remains my personal favorite.

Balciar created the unforgettable white marble panther sculpture from a single 31-ton block of Colorado yule marble. The finished piece is about twice the size of an actual cougar, towering 15 feet above its base. It weighs slightly more than 8 tons.

In 1995, the sculpture was donated by Balciar for his appreciation for winning the museum’s annual Prix de West Award for outstanding artistic accomplishment as a critical point early in his career. According to the museum, the making of the "Canyon Princess" took the artist more than a year, with the actual sculpting process lasting five months.

For more information, go to nationalcowboymuseum.org.

6. Luis Jiménez's "Mustang (Mesteño)" at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art in Norman

Colombian artist Fernando Botero's massive bronze "Sphinx" sculpture outside the OU art museum is definitely an attention grabber, but inside the museum, it's hard to look away from this gorgeous 8-foot tall fiberglass sculpture of a rearing horse with piercing red eyes.

A gift to the museum from Jerome M. and Wanda Otey Westheimer, "Mustang" now is on view in the second-floor Stuart Wing in the Eugene B. Adkins Gallery.

The 1997 work was created by the late Jiménez (1940-2006), an American sculptor of Mexican descent best known for his large-scale, brightly colored sculptures steeped in the Mexican-American culture of Texas and New Mexico.

Friendly reminder that admission is free to this museum. For more information, go to www.ou.edu/fjjma.

7. Jazz Age Banjo Treasures, American Banjo Museum

Even if you're not a fan of the banjo or even music in general, you'll be dazzled by this eye-popping collection of elaborately adorned instruments.

The Bricktown museum boasts that it houses the largest collection in the world of ornately decorated American-made banjos from the 1920s and '30s. Even if you have zero musical aptitude, the craftmanship and sheer glitter of the display are sure to impress. 

For more information, go to americanbanjomuseum.com. 

Features Writer Brandy "BAM" McDonnell covers Oklahoma's arts, entertainment and cultural sectors for The Oklahoman and Oklahoman.com. Reach her at bmcdonnell@oklahoman.com, www.facebook.com/brandybammcdonnell and twitter.com/BAMOK. Please support work by her and her colleagues by subscribing at oklahoman.com/subscribe.  

-BAM