Big Deal

One of the biggest art deals in recent years is in the making. It involves the transfer of the enormous Gilcrease collection of Americana (TIME, June 27, 1949) from the Thomas Gilcrease Foundation at Tulsa to public ownership and a new museum in Claremore, Okla.

The hoard of paintings, manuscripts and other valuable art objects, valued variously at $4,000,000 to $8,000,000, represents 40 years of dedicated collecting by Thomas Gilcrease, 63, part Creek Indian, who struck it rich after oil was discovered on the 160-acre Gilcrease tribal allotment in 1906. Proud of his Indian blood, Tom Gilcrease set out to assemble a monument to the American past, and over the years collected examples of the best works of the painters of the U.S. frontier: George Catlin, Frederic Remington, Charles Russell and some 250 others. He also bought masterpieces by Homer, Whistler and Sargent, and a collection of pre-Columbian gold work. Among his 70,000 books and manuscripts are a copy of the Declaration of Independence signed by Benjamin Franklin, the first letter ever written from the New World to the Old (by Christopher's son Diego Columbus), the original of a letter commissioning Paul Revere as a messenger for the Boston Committee of Safety.

All of this cost Gilcrease a mint of money, and despite a handsome income from his oil wells, he found his foundation in debt this year to the tune of $2,200,000 for items acquired but not yet paid for. One day last month Gilcrease went to Claremore to visit the Will Rogers Memorial, dropped into a curio shop run by Claremore's Mayor Jim Hammett. Gilcrease told Hammett his tale of financial woe. Hammett saw a chance to get the Gilcrease collection for Claremore, helped get together a group of influential Oklahomans, headed by Governor Johnston Murray, in a nonprofit corporation to take over the collection as a public trust.

The corporation launched a $3,000,000 bond issue, of which $2,200,000 will be used for the foundation's debts, the rest to start a new museum in Claremore. Governor Murray went on the radio to ask the public to subscribe $100,000 immediately to meet pressing needs, and by last week, $50,000 had been pledged or was in hand. Gilcrease himself plans to move from Tulsa to Claremore, to serve as director of the new museum. Anxious only to keep his collection together, Gilcrease was delighted with the prospect. Said he: "I set up [the collection] for the benefit of the people. It has value only when held intact for . . . the people."

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