Like America itself, the architecture of the United States is an amalgam, an imitation or an importation of foreign forms adapted to the natural or engineered landscape of the New World. So can there be an "American School" of architecture? The most legitimate claim to the title emerged in the 1950s and 1960s at the Gibbs College of Architecture at the University of Oklahoma, where, under the leadership of Bruce Goff, Herb Greene, Mendel Glickman, and others, an authentically American approach to design found its purest expression, teachable in its coherence and logic. Followers of this first truly American school eschewed the forms most in fashion in American architectural education at the time—those such as the French Beaux Arts or German Bauhaus Schools—in favor of the vernacular and the organic. The result was a style distinctly experimental, resourceful, and contextual—challenging not only established architectural norms in form and function but also traditional approaches to instructing and inspiring young architects. Edited by Luca Guido, Stephanie Pilat, and Angela Person, this volume explores the fraught history of this distinctively American movement born on the Oklahoma prairie. Renegades features essays by leading scholars and includes a wide range of images, including rare, never-before-published sketches and models. Together these essays and illustrations map the contours of an American architecture that combines this country’s landscape and technology through experimentation and invention, assembling the diversity of the United States into structures of true beauty. Renegades for the first time fully captures the essence and conveys the importance of the American School of architecture.

This beautifully illustrated catalogue highlights 101 works of art from the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma. Combining full-color reproductions with explanatory text, the catalogue presents significant examples of Asian, European, American, American Indian, and contemporary art from the museum’s permanent collection. For visitors to the museum and art aficionados, these pages offer a tour of the museum’s exceptional paintings, sculptures, works on paper, and photographs. Arranged in chronological and thematic sequence, the catalogue entries focus on single works, each by a different artist. Authors Eric McCauley Lee and Rima Canaan discuss the artists’ backgrounds and analyze the featured works. Where appropriate, related objects in the collection appear as accompanying illustrations. The celebrated artists represented in the catalogue include Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, Allan Houser, and members of the Taos Society of Artists. Published to coincide with the opening of the museum’s new wing, designed by renowned architect Hugh Newell Jacobsen and named in honor of Mary and Howard Lester, this catalogue celebrates the extraordinary development of the museum’s collections over nearly three-quarters of a century.

One of the most important collections of modern Native American art assembled by one individual, the James T. Bialac Native American Art Collection is an encyclopedic compilation of easel paintings and three-dimensional works. Showcased in this stunning catalogue, the collection comprises nearly four thousand items, including drawings, sculptures, prints, kachinas, jewelry, ceramics, rattles, baskets, and textiles. James T. Bialac began collecting art in the 1950s, when he was a student at the University of Arizona School of Law. It was then that he purchased the first of what would develop into a collection of more than one thousand kachina dolls. In 1964 he acquired his first painting, Robert Chee's Moccasin Game, and he went on to expand his collection to reflect the diversity of Native American art forms. Inspired by his connections with other collectors, Bialac learned the importance of documenting, cataloging, and preserving his collection. In 2010 he bequeathed the collection to the University of Oklahoma, where the art will be displayed at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, as well as at other locations, including Bialac's native Arizona. The Bialac Collection represents indigenous cultures across North America, especially the Pueblos of the Southwest, Navajos, Hopis, and many of the tribes of the Great Plains. It encompasses such important and innovative artists as Fred Kabotie, Alfonso Roybal, Fritz Scholder, Joe Hilario Herrera, Allan Houser, Jerome Tiger, Tonita Peña, Helen Hardin, Pablita Velarde, George Morrison, Walter Richard "Dick" West, and Patrick DesJarlait, all of whose work is featured in this volume. Along with its rich sampling of works from the Bialac Collection, this catalogue offers informative essays by art historians, who draw on their areas of expertise to explain the significance of the artwork. The volume also features a foreword by David L. Boren, President of the University of Oklahoma, a preface by Ghislain d'Humières, Director of the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, and an introduction by Mary Jo Watson, Director of the School of Art and Art History. Published in cooperation with the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, University of Oklahoma

Themes of the American West have been enduringly popular, and 'The American West in Bronze' features sixty-five iconic bronzes that display a range of subjects, from portrayals of the noble Indian to rough-and-tumble scenes of rowdy cowboys to tributes to the pioneers who settled the lands west of the Mississippi. Fascinating texts offer a fresh look at the roles that artists played in creating interpretations of the "vanishing West"--Whether based on fact, fiction or something in-between. These artists, including Charles M. Russell and Frederic Remington, embody a range of life experiences and artistic approaches."'The American West in Bronze, 1850-1925' is the first full-scale exhibition to explore the aesthetic and cultural impulses behind the creation of statuettes with American western themes, which have been so popular with audiences then and now. Both the exhibition and this accompanying catalogue offer a fresh look at the multifaceted roles played by these sculptors in creating three-dimensional interpretations of western life, whether based on historical fact, mythologized fiction, or most often, something in-between. Examples by such archetypal representatives of the West as Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell are complemented by the work of sculptors such as James Earle Fraser and Paul Manship, who contributed to the popularity of the American bronze statuette even though their western subjects were less frequent."--Publisher's description.

The Western is the quintessential American epic--a mythic story of nation building, triumphs, failures, and fantasies. This book accompanies the first major exhibition to examine the Western genre and its evolution from the mid-1800s in fine art, film, and popular culture, exploring gender roles, race relations, and gun violence--a story that is about more than cowboys and American Indians, pursuits and duels, or bandits and barroom brawls. From 19th-century landscape paintings by Albert Bierstadt and Frederic Remington to works by Andy Warhol, Ed Ruscha, and Kent Monkman; from the legends of "Buffalo Bill" Cody and Billy the Kid to John Ford's classic films and Sergio Leone's spaghetti Westerns and recent productions by Quentin Tarantino, Ang Lee, and Joel and Ethan Coen, The Western observes how the mythology of the West spread throughout the world and endures today.

In the late 1920s, a group of young Kiowa artists, pursuing their education at the University of Oklahoma, encountered Swedish-born art professor Oscar Brousse Jacobson (1882–1966). With Jacobson’s instruction and friendship, the Kiowa Six, as they are now known, ignited a spectacular movement in American Indian art. Jacobson, who was himself an accomplished painter, shared a lifelong bond with group member Stephen Mopope (1898–1974), a prolific Kiowa painter, dancer, and musician. Painting Culture, Painting Nature explores the joint creativity of these two visionary figures and reveals how indigenous and immigrant communities of the early twentieth century traversed cultural, social, and racial divides. Painting Culture, Painting Nature is a story of concurrences. For a specific period, immigrants such as Jacobson and disenfranchised indigenous people such as Mopope transformed Oklahoma into the center of exciting new developments in Indian art, which quickly spread to other parts of the United States and to Europe. Jacobson and Mopope came from radically different worlds, and were on unequal footing in terms of power and equality, but they both experienced, according to author Gunlög Fur, forms of diaspora or displacement. Seeking to root themselves anew in Oklahoma, the dispossessed artists fashioned new mediums of compelling and original art. Although their goals were compatible, Jacobson’s and Mopope’s subjects and styles diverged. Jacobson painted landscapes of the West, following a tradition of painting nature uninfluenced by human activity. Mopope, in contrast, strove to capture the cultural traditions of his people. The two artists shared a common nostalgia, however, for a past life that they could only re-create through their art. Whereas other books have emphasized the promotion of Indian art by Euro-Americans, this book is the first to focus on the agency of the Kiowa artists within the context of their collaboration with Jacobson. The volume is further enhanced by full-color reproductions of the artists’ works and rare historical photographs.

- Presents a selection of works in the Petrie Institute of Western American Art collectionThis volume collects a selection of works of art produced in the western United States belonging to the collection of the Petrie Institute of Western American Art housed in the Denver Art Museum. This collection is one of the richest and most substantial in the world on this subject, thanks to its outstanding bronze sculptures, early modern works, and contributions from the artistic communities of Taos and Santa Fe. The central theme of the book is the period stretching from the beginning of the 19th century to the mid-20th century. More than 200 pages of portraits, genre scenes, landscapes, and depictions of a still-intact wilderness make evident the diversity of the collection. The narrative proceeds chronologically, presenting early luminaries such as Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Remington, and Charles M. Russell; Robert Henri and the artists of the TAO community; and prominent modernist painters, including Maynard Dixon, Marsden Hartley, and Raymond Jonson. Numerous illustrations and expert interpretations chronicle the artistic, cultural, and identarian climate in the western United States during this period. A prologue by historian Dan Flores and an epilogue by art historian Erika Doss describe the vaster context in which to view this rich history of American art.